How to Change Your Time Zone in Slack (Desktop and Mobile)

To change your time zone in Slack on desktop, click your profile picture in the sidebar, choose Preferences, select Language & region, untick Set time zone automatically, and pick a zone from the drop-down under Time zone. To have Slack follow your computer when you travel, tick Set time zone automatically. To keep the zone you picked, untick it. On iPhone and Android, Slack's preferences only have the automatic switch, which makes Slack follow the phone's time zone.

We changed the time zone in our own Slack workspace on 3 October 2026, checked what moved, and set it back. The screenshots below are from that test.

How to change your time zone in Slack on desktop

• Click your profile picture in the sidebar.
• Select Preferences from the menu.
• Choose Language & region.
• Untick Set time zone automatically. While it is ticked, the time zone drop-down is greyed out and cannot be opened, which is why many people find "no drop-down menu".
• Pick a zone from the Time zone drop-down.


The change saves as soon as you pick a zone; there is no Save button. In our test, the API returned the new zone a few seconds later: users.info changed from Asia/Seoul to Pacific/Auckland, labelled "New Zealand Daylight Time" with an offset of 46,800 seconds (UTC+13). The drop-down itself had said "(UTC+12:00) Auckland, Wellington". The labels show each zone's standard offset, not the daylight saving offset in force today, so do not worry if the number looks an hour off.

Ticking Set time zone automatically again switched us straight back to Asia/Seoul, the zone of the computer, without picking anything. The steps are the same in the Mac, Windows and Linux apps and in Slack in a browser.

How to change your Slack time zone on iPhone and Android

iPhone and iPad: tap your profile picture at the top of the screen, tap Preferences, and under Language & Region select Time. Toggle Set Time Zone Automatically on or off.

Android: tap your profile picture, tap Preferences, and toggle Set time zone automatically on or off.

The mobile apps have no drop-down of zones. With automatic on, Slack uses the phone's zone. To show a specific zone from your phone, set that zone in the phone's own settings first, then turn Slack's automatic setting off so it stays.

Slack time zone wrong or keeps changing?

It keeps switching. Set time zone automatically is on, and one of your devices reports a different zone, for example a laptop set to update its zone by location, or a phone that just landed somewhere. Untick automatic and pick your zone by hand.

It is still the old zone after a trip. Automatic is off, so Slack kept the zone you chose. Pick the new one, or turn automatic on.

Slack's time does not match your device. Slack's help says to fix the time in your device settings, then come back to Slack and check that the zone in Preferences matches. To see which zone your computer uses, run one of these:

# macOS: the zone file the system uses
readlink /etc/localtime

# Windows (Command Prompt or PowerShell)
tzutil /g

# Linux with systemd
timedatectl show --property=Timezone

On our MacBook Pro in Seoul, readlink /etc/localtime printed /var/db/timezone/zoneinfo/Asia/Seoul. If that zone is wrong, fix it in the system settings first; Slack's automatic setting will then follow it.

What changes when you change your Slack time zone

With Slack set to Auckland and the Mac still on Seoul time, the two parts of Slack that show time disagreed:

The 12-hour or 24-hour format is a separate setting: Preferences, Messages & media, Show times with 24-hour clock.

To plan meetings across zones, add your team to our Slack timezone converter, which shows the hours everyone overlaps. For messages that should arrive in someone else's morning, see how to delay and schedule Slack messages.

Can you hide your local time in Slack?

No. On 8 October 2026 we opened all 15 tabs of Slack's Preferences in our own workspace, including Language & region and Privacy & visibility. None has a switch that hides the local time on your profile. Language & region holds only the language, the time zone, the keyboard layout and spellcheck; Privacy & visibility covers Slack Connect search, contact sharing and people you hid.

So the only control is the zone itself. Coworkers see the current time in whatever zone you set, so with Set time zone automatically off, the profile shows the zone you picked, not where you are.

FAQ

Can I change my Slack time zone on my phone?

Only the automatic switch. Set the zone on the phone itself, or pick one in the desktop app.