Defer Until Times changing with time zone

Hello,

I use OF on the Mac (v2), iPhone and iPad. I sync with the OmniSync server.

My “Defer Until…” times are changing on their own, with no input from me. I suspect this is because I travel a lot and changing time zones seems to trigger the problem. All of my devices change time zones when they discover they are in a new time zone, including OSX on the Mac.

Example: I have a task set to Defer Until 5/24/2014 12:00am. When I fly from one time zone to the next, the task will now have a Defer Until of 5/24/2014 1:00am. Not a huge difference (just one hour) but irritating at least. Sometimes, after changing times zone back and forth, Defer Until will change from 5/24/2014 12:00am to 5/24/2014 11:00pm – a 23 hour difference!

All I want is for the Defer Until times to never change at all unless I change them. 12:00am is 12:00am, regardless of what time zone I am in.

I submitted this to support and all I got was the fact that OF does not support time zones and I should shut down OF before changing time zones. Shutting down OF does no good whatsoever.

Has anyone else seen this problem? Is there a fix?

This is a problem with any date-based app: some dates are “floating” and some are fixed. If something needs to be done by close of business on the East Coast, and you’ve entered its due date as 8pm PST at home, it better change to 5pm EST when you land in New York for that business meeting!

On the flip side, my 9am daily review should not be deferred until noon when I open my laptop in the hotel.

We’re aware of this issue. I’m not sure whether fixing it would require a change to the file format that would break sync compatibility with OF1.

1 Like

Kyle,

Thanks for the reply. I see the flip side you mention. With my particular use of OF, I tend to treat 5pm as 5pm, regardless of what time zone I am in but I dig the “close of business” case, where 5pm in one place is 8pm in another.

I’m not sure what the answer is. All the options that leap to mind would require a change to your data structures.

One odd thing is when I move from EDT to CDT, the times change (5pm becomes 6pm) but when I later move back from CDT to EDT, the times don’t change back (6pm doesn’t move back to 5pm). From your description, this is not what is supposed to be happening.

Not sure what’s going on there.

So, how does OmniFocus actually treat this issue. Is it floating or fixed with times? If I’m adding something to be due while I’m in Chicago, but I know I’ll be in Pacific Time when it is due, am I supposed to enter it in as 7pm (knowing that it will float to 5pm as I travel) or should I enter it as 5pm?

OmniFocus uses fixed times. The time zone inferred is whatever time zone your computer is set to when you enter the time. So yes, in your example you should enter it as 7pm to make sure it correctly reads as 5pm when you’re in Chicago.

I think you went a bit in reversal on your example there, but yes, I now see how the time zones work. Thanks!

It has been a while since this thread has been active. Checking in to see whether floating timezones would be support in a future release of OmniFocus?