There is a (hidden) world clock in windows

Every so now and then, you might have to set up meetings with people from somewhere else on our little planet. It is already complex most of the times if you have to do this within a single time zone, but it gets even more complex when you have step outside one time zone. In the beginning, I counted the difference to my local time zone and figured out a moment that potentially suited everyone involved in their own local situation (not too late, nor too early in the day).

I have known for a while now that you can add up to 2 additional "Clocks" to the windows taskbar clock and this has helped me already a few times. The "issue" with this setup is that you can add "only" 2 and I always found it quite limitative... If you want to find out more about it, just scroll down to the heading "Additional Clocks Feature" where I outlined how you can add those 2 clocks in different time zones.

But first I want to discuss something that I discovered last week when looking at a screenshot that was posted by @WindowsInsider on twitter (the screenshot was about virtual desktops in windows, but triggered me nevertheless since it showed something that I hadn't seen before):

Alarms & Clock App

The cool (new) thing that I found out earlier this week, is that Windows now has an "Alarms & Clock" app that provides you with

• Timers
• Alarms
• Stopwatches
• and of course a (decent) world clock!:

You can find it by searching for it in the start menu (start typing "clock"). When opened, click world clock and you should see something like this (where only your current location is highlighted):

Adding other locations can be done by clicking the "Add new city" button in the bottom right corner of the window. This is shown in the image below:

And this is how I have configured it on my machine:

Disclaimer: I took some screenshots earlier this week and since then the UI has already changed (meaning that I had to recreate my screenshots). What I want to say is that the layout can change later on and I will most likely not create new screenshots then 😃

Additionally, there is also a small "compare" button (next to the "add cities" button). This one allows you to compare (in a nice table) the different cities that you have chosen, not only for this moment, but for any date and time! I find this really neat!

One cool feature that I think might be useful, is a (sort of) planning assistant that lets you choose the cities (representing the people you want to meet with) and that it provides you with the optimal timeframe where you can organize a meeting. That optimal timeframe can respect preferences (such as working hours)....

Additional clocks feature

If you want, however, to stick with the "old way of working", then this is perfectly fine too. For completeness, this is how you add these clocks too your clock in the windows taskbar:

Go to settings (click start > type "settings" (or whatever it is in your display language)), when you click on the result, you should see something like this:

as you can see, there is a search window in the middle of the screen and in that window, I already typed "date". That is because you need to navigate to the "date & time" settings, where you have to take one more step. In the right of the screen that you should have in front of you, there should be a list of "related settings" and one of the items should be "Add clocks for different time zones". This can be seen in the image below

When you click this one, then you should see a new window that appears and where you can activate (or deactivate) those 2 additional clocks (and where you can choose one or 2 time zones to be shown additionally)

The result would be something like this:

conclusion

To conclude: I hope that this really helps you to get more out of your time zone exercises in the future! (I'm sure that I will!)

T