How to Enable the World Clock and Secondary Time Zones in Google Calendar

If you regularly collaborate with remote teams, schedule meetings with international clients, or have family living overseas, calculating time zone differences in your head can quickly become exhausting. Did they mean 3:00 PM Eastern Time or Pacific Time? Is London five hours ahead or six hours ahead right now? Instead of constantly opening a new tab to Google the current time in Tokyo, you can configure Google Calendar to display a permanent World Clock and secondary time zones directly on your scheduling grid.

How to Enable the World Clock

The World Clock feature places a small, unobtrusive list of global times directly on the left-hand sidebar of your Calendar, right below the mini-calendar date picker.

1. Open Google Calendar in your desktop web browser.
2. Click the Gear icon (Settings menu) in the top right corner of the screen, then click Settings.
3. In the left-hand navigation menu, click on World clock.
4. Check the box next to Show world clock.
5. Click the Add time zone button that appears below it.
6. Select the city or time zone you want to monitor (e.g., London, Tokyo, Pacific Time) from the dropdown list. You can add as many different time zones as you need by clicking the button repeatedly.

Once configured, return to your main Calendar view. You will now see the current time for every selected region permanently displayed on the left sidebar.

How to Add a Secondary Time Zone to the Grid

While the World Clock is great for quick glances, it doesn’t help you visualize exactly when an event occurs on the actual calendar grid. For deeper integration, you should enable a secondary time zone. This feature adds a second column of hours to the left edge of your calendar view, allowing you to instantly see that your 9:00 AM meeting aligns perfectly with their 2:00 PM.

1. Go back to the Settings menu (Gear icon > Settings).
2. In the left-hand navigation menu, click on Time zone (located just under Language and region).
3. Check the box next to Display secondary time zone.
4. A new dropdown menu will appear labeled “Secondary time zone.” Click it and select the specific region you want to track.
5. (Optional) To keep the columns organized, type a short abbreviation into the “Label” boxes (e.g., type “EST” for your primary zone and “GMT” for the secondary zone).

Return to your main Calendar and switch to the Day or Week view. Look at the extreme left edge of the screen where the hour markers are listed (8 AM, 9 AM, etc.). You will now see two distinct columns of times running parallel to each other, allowing you to schedule cross-country or international meetings flawlessly without any mental math.