It’s that time of the year once again when you have to set the clocks forward for daylight saving time in the U.S. At 2 a.m. local time today (March 13, 2015), daylight saving time (DST) will arrive with the promise to give you an extra hour of evening light.
If you’re a new iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Mac user, and wondering if your devices will automatically “spring forward” by an hour for the start of DST, then the short answer is “Yes”, your device will automatically move forward by an hour on their own.
You don’t need to manually set the time forward as long as you have correctly set the timezone. However, it is not surprising if you’re worried about the timezone change as there have been bugs in iOS that has resulted in all sorts of issues, and there were no major issues reported with iOS 9 onNovember 1st, when the clocks moved back by an hour. The good news is that Apple has fixed most daylight savings related bugs so you should ideally not have an issue this year.
In case, your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch did not move forward by an hour automatically, then you need to check the following:
- Ensure that Location Services for “Setting Time Zone” has been enabled (Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services > Setting Time Zone). You may have disabled it to improve battery life. If it was not enabled, then enable it and reboot your device.
- Your iOS device is on iOS 5 or later.
- You iOS device is not in airplane mode. If it was in Airplane mode, turn it off and reboot your device.
If your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch hasn’t moved forward by an hour even though the “Setting Time Zone” is enabled then rebooting the device usually helps in resolving the issue.
Let me know if your device automatically moved forward by an hour correctly later today.
Note: Some places in the U.S. don’t observe DST. Those include Hawaii, most of Arizona, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas. DST in the UK and most European countries will start on March 29. In case of Australia and New Zealand, the clock actually moves back by an hour on April 5th.
