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Using the stock clock in Android 4.2.2 (Jelly Bean) on my Nexus 4, I can add world clocks for other cities around the world by scrolling through the long list of available cities (in alphabetical order).

However, what if I can't find any cities, that I am familiar with, in the respective timezone? The list of cities included in the clock app does not seem to be comprehensive; all the cities covered by the IANA timezone database are not included. I do not see any way of adding an additional city, or searching the current list by timezone or even just specifying a timezone?

Am I missing something?

Reference: List of tz database time zones

Example:

My initial problem came about when trying to set a clock for "Central Indonesian Time" (Abbreviated CIT or WITA officially). I know this is UTC+08:00. I also know the tz identifier is "Asia/Makassar". Makassar is the provincial capital of South Sulawesi. This time zone also includes the popular tourist island of Bali, of which the capital is Denpasar (international airport).

But neither of these cities are included on Android and further more, none of the cities mentioned on the Wikipedia page for CIT are included either. In fact, having trawled through the entire list, there are no Indonesian cities listed in this (Indonesian) time zone!

In the end I used Kuala Lumpur (Malaysian Capital) and assumed it will always be the same (although that is no guarantee, since it is officially a different timezone (MYT) - different government).

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MrWhite
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  • A workaround might be to find out what the current time is in the city of your choice via Google. Then scroll thru the list of cities (the current time is shown in light grey below each city) and choose the city with a matching time. – Sparx May 15 '13 at 13:11
  • @Sparx - That is certainly a (time consuming) workaround, however, another problem is knowing that a city adopts the same DST settings as the target city - which requires further research. – MrWhite May 15 '13 at 14:00
  • I think this would be more of a one-time issue. Have you seen any of the other Timezone converter apps in the store to see if their functionality meets your needs? – Sparx May 15 '13 at 17:30
  • @Sparx: Yes, I have since used World Clock from timeanddate.com and this includes both "Makassar" and "Denpasar" from my example above. – MrWhite Apr 10 '14 at 13:30

2 Answers2

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It's incredibly annoying that Google doesn't care about those things. If your phone is rooted, fire up a terminal or "adb shell" from a computer. Get a root shell by typing "su" and then:

setprop persist.sys.timezone "Asia/Makassar"

After restarting the phone, you get "Central Indonesia Time" under "Select time zone", despite the fact that it's not in the list.

fheshwfq
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  • So, simply stating "Asia/Makassar" is enough for Android to look up the required information from some database? – MrWhite Oct 29 '16 at 09:09
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It does not seem to be comprehensive? You don't expect this list to consist every backwoods from all over the world, do you? (BTW this is the android time zone list we are talking about LIST.)

Android provide NITZ feature - your time zone is taken from cellular network you're registered to.

If Nitz fails to work (your cellular network does not send time zone), then you have to find out what time zone you are in and set it manually.

BTW provide a link to "IANA timezone", if you please.

Marian Paździoch
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    Nope, not expecting every "backwoods". In fact the list in the stock clock is far more comprehensive than the LIST you link to. I'm not in the country I wish to set a world clock for. I've updated my question with links and an example. – MrWhite Apr 09 '14 at 20:12