I’ve officially bogged myself down in my own overthinking.
I’m going to Europe in a few weeks and I have started entering events (Eurostar times, event times, check in times) for some of our scheduled site seeing.
So let’s say my Eurostar leaves London on September 13th at 8:30am London time.
If I type “Eurostar train departure at 8:30am” into Fantastical for that day, it works but it’s entered as Eastern Time. To circumvent this, I enter it as 8:30am London time. But then it shows in my calendar as 3:30am because I’m in Canada at the moment. So it’s hard to plan my day out when it shows the train leaving at 3:30am when it’s in fact 8:30am.
I do see Fantastical’s option for a “show second time zone in Day and Week” which seems to help, but I wonder if a) I’m overcomplicating this or b) when I am actually on European soil and my time zone changes with that mess anything up?
My first trip over the pond, so this is new territory.
You’re good. If ‘show second time zone…’ isn’t enough, just check Time Zone Override and add London while you’re planning so you see +1 as it’ll appear when it’s local time.
When you get to London and your Mac’s time zone switches, Fantastical will switch too and you’ll see everything just like when you you planning in the forced time zone.
So if I have an event that is 3:30pm London time, I should enter it as 3:30pm London time in the calendar, even though it might show as 10:30 eastern in my calendar for now?
FWIW, when I schedule events in another time zone, I tend to change my calendar to that time zone. This is certainly unnecessary, but it gives me peace of mind and makes it easier to visualize my schedule in local time.
It took me a few tries to fully grasp “time zone override”, but I think changing the calendar to UK time and planning out my week is easier than looking at that narrow secondary time zone panel on the right hand side in Fantastical.
This drives me crazy. I don’t get to Europe much but I’ve done a fair amount of hopping between time zones in the US.
Thirty years ago, I asked a calendaring software vendor to set a feature where I can set a timezone for a particular day. Like, California is home for me, but if I’ll be in New York next week, let me set the timezone for that particular week to Eastern time so that I can easily plan my calendar at a glance.
This seems like a simple feature that is useful to all road warriors, and I’m still waiting to see it.
That sounds like a massive engineering challenge. I’ve heard our Devs talking about setting up time zones for reporting of Health and Safety data, it always sounds simple, but it’s a nightmare.
How about giving this app, What is the Time, a try? While it is not a calendar app, it let’s you swipe a slider to go forward and backward in time and you can tell the local London time vs the Canada time. I find this very useful when travelling and I need to call home. I don’t have to do mental calculation anymore.
I’m not usually the Luddite in the group - but I have found there are often gotchas when some apps don’t adjust as expected to automatic time zone changes.
When I travel I often turn off “Set time zone automatically.” If I were planning a meeting in London next week at 9AM then I would enter it for 9AM just as if I were planning to be home.
Then when I travel, at my destination I set the time manually. So if London were 5 hours ahead my computer would now say 9AM Eastern when it 9AM in London but 4AM in the Eastern time zone.
I find this is more reliable because I don’t have to worry about which apps are “smart” aboujt handling time zones and which are not.
