For several months now, intermittently but frequently (maybe 70% of the time?) when I wake up my computer (2020 MacBook Pro, 2.3 GHz Quad-Core Intel Core i7, currently on Somona 14.7.6), it will count the time from the time when I put it to sleep. This also often happens on just closing the screen. It often corrects itself but this can take anything from 5 minutes to a couple of hours. I can force it to correct itself sooner by going to System Settings -> General -> Date & Time -> then toggle "Set time and date automatically" off then on again, but this is annoying to need to do multiple times a day (and sometimes needs multiple attempts to work). For example, I might put the mac to sleep on finishing work at 18:03 on Mon 14th, open it up at 08:55 on Tues 15th but the date / time shows as Mon 14 18:04. Half an hour later, it shows as Mon 14 18:34, then it might randomly correct itself to Tue 15 09:26. Then, suppose I break for lunch at 12:14, close the screen, open it again at 13:05, but the clock shows 12:15; time then progresses normally but lagging nearly an hour behind the real rime for another random amount of time, before eventually correcting itself again. --- Searching on this, this seems to be a not-uncommon problem with many threads dated 2023-2025, and can be temporarily fixed by a system update or deleting a (corrupted?) system file like sudo rm /var/db/timed/com.apple.timed.plist, but the issue usually returns and there seems to be uncertainty about what causes it, here's a few examples: - discussions.apple.com: Mac consistently showing wrong time after sleep > This fix seems to work for others. Run this command in the Terminal… sudo rm /var/db/timed/com.apple.timed.plist > > Reviving this thread, this issue has just returned. - reddit.com/r/applehelp/: Why isn’t the time on my Mac updating? > This is a known issue with Sonoma. The update was supposed to fix it. Are you on macos 14.5 (I'm seeing it on macOS 14.7.6 and another user reports getting it suddenly on macOS 12.7.2 so this isn't it) There's many other similar threads around 2023-25 (and some much older threads like this from 2006 system clock fails to update after waking from sleep - but that appears to be a different instance of a similar OS bug).

When traveling, I carry an old MacBook Air running Big Sur, and I use the stock macOS Calendar.app. I live in the Pacific Time Zone, and am now traveling in the Central European Time Zone. While traveling, I often view and manage home time zone appointments and dates. So that these entries appear accurately in Calendar, I turn on Time Zone Support in Calendar > Preferences, set to reflect my home time zone. Calendar then displays in my home time zone, as I wish. However, the time and date in the Mac’s Menu Bar clock then reflect the home time and date, not the time and date where I am in a different time zone. I would prefer the Menu Bar to reflect the time and date of my actual physical location, while the displayed calendar shows the time and date in my home time zone. Can this be accomplished in the stock macOS?

I find quicktime player to be very useful for scrubbing through videos, since it does so smoothly and with the touchpad scroll gesture. I am, however, deeply confused by its timecode output and I'd love an explanation if anyone has one. When cycling through the various time displays in the control bar, there's one that looks like this: As I interpret this, or as I *want* to interpret it, it's showing the time of day at which the video starts and ends (presumably relative to its creation time), followed by the frame count. The problem is, these times don't match any dates I can find related to the video file. Using the video whose control bar I screenshotted above, the file (let's call it NINJVP_S140_S001_T002.MOV) has the following dates associated with it. system dates:

$ stat -f 'accessed: %Sa%nmodified: %Sm%nchanged: %Sc%nbirth: %SB' -t '%F %T'  NINJVP_S140_S001_T002.MOV
accessed: 2025-05-29 20:34:42
modified: 2025-05-19 11:20:34
changed: 2025-05-19 11:20:34
birth: 2025-05-19 11:10:16

dates from the exif data:

$ exiftool -'*Date*' NINJVP_S140_S001_T002.MOV  | grep -v '^File'
Create Date                     : 2025:05:19 10:10:16
Modify Date                     : 2025:05:19 10:10:16
Track Create Date               : 2025:05:19 10:10:16
Track Modify Date               : 2025:05:19 10:10:16
Media Create Date               : 2025:05:19 10:10:16
Media Modify Date               : 2025:05:19 10:10:16

Neither the file dates nor the exif dates match the timecode in QT player. I feel confident that it's not a timezone thing (because of the seconds difference, if nothing else). Nor is it showing the current time, since it shows 12:33:28;24 no matter what. Can anyone tell me what this timecode actually is and where that information is coming from? And further, if there's a way to get QT player to either use the proper times from the exif metadata or to use touch to change the file dates so it shows what I want? Do quicktime files have special proprietary metadata in addition to the exif? And if so, why would that date be different from the exif date?

My MacBook Pro (13-inch, 2016, Four Thunderbolt 3 Ports, 16GB) running Big Sur 11.1 won't keep accurate time. It's regularly up to a minute off. I verified this using: * https://time.gov * Comparison with my iPhone * sudo sntp -d time.apple.com I've tried sntp -sS time.apple.com, and it doesn't adjust the time. I'd expect it to step to the right time, given we're (way!) more than 50ms off. I've tried turning off automatic time sync in the system preferences, then setting the time right by hand, then turning automatic sync back on and _it puts the clock back to the wrong time!_ I've tried killing timed - it's restarted and the time remains wrong. I've tried removing /var/db/timed/com.apple.timed.plist and then restarting timed. It recreates the file and the time remains wrong. Reading this question , I checked the contents of the plist file, but mine doesn't appear to have any store of the current offset:

# plutil -p com.apple.timed.plist
{
  "BootUUID" => ""
  "HostUUID" => ""
  "RTCResetCount" => 0
  "TMLastNtpFetchAttempt" => 5331203.310338818
  "TMLastRtcTime" => 5331203.336288487
  "TMSystemTimeSet" => 0
  "TMTimeSynthesizer" => {length = 499, bytes = 0x62706c69 73743030 d4010203 04050607 ... 00000000 00000179 }
  "TMVersionKey" => 17
}

No mention of TMLastSystemTime or TMTimeError. I'm at my wits end with this. It's a real problem because it often prevents me using 1Password-generated TOTP codes because the drift is so bad. Any ideas, please?

I have this table in Numbers: In the first column I want to calculate the differences between the timestamps in the third column. The first four entries in the first column are fine. I just subtract the previous row from the current row (e.g., =C3-C2), but that doesn't work when going past midnight between row 4 and 5. If I use the same formula as above I get a negative value because 01:31 is less than 23:12. I tried adding 24h or 1d etc to that calculation, but it returned unexpected results. If I used DUR2HOURS, as seen in the screenshot, I can add 24 and get a valid result but instead the number format in the cell is, as you can see, screwed up. I have tried changing the cells format from automatic to time or duration, but it just, automatically, reverts to automatic. Adding 24 is stupid because it requires me to manually do that for every midnight in the table. **How do I handle midnight as well as fix the format of the time difference in the first column?** The end goal is to plot the values in the second column (12,3 etc) against the their "relative" timestamp. That is, 12,3 starts at zero on the x-axis, the first 12,7 at 3h 41m on the x-axis, the second 12,7 at 4h 08m (3h41m + 27m) on the x-axis etc. In other words, the distance on the x-axis is irregular.

Picked up a 2012 MacBook Pro. Tried to boot from an external drive (backup drive from my other computer). Plugged in the drive, booted the computer and two hours later I'm still waiting for the process to finish! The boot process seems normal at first, but as the progress bar gets completely full, the progress becomes non-linear... and not in a good way. The last 1% takes 99% of the time. The process does eventually complete and I can log in and operate normally. The external drive is a 1TB SSD and cables and connections are USB3. Any insight into what's happening?

After the recent daylight saving time change, my macOS (Sonoma v14.1.1) clock no longer shows correct date and time. When I enable "Set date and time automatically" it reverts to January 22, 2023 and a wrong time. Therefore, I would like to manually synchronise my computer's clock with a time server. I would like to use Oxford's University time servers. I use sntp command.

sudo sntp -sS ntp1.ox.ac.uk

The command produces five sets of the following output:

sntp: Exchange failed: Timeout
sntp_exchange {
        result: 6 (Timeout)
        header: 00 (li:0 vn:0 mode:0)
       stratum: 00 (0)
          poll: 00 (1)
     precision: 00 (1.000000e+00)
         delay: 0000.0000 (0.000000000)
    dispersion: 0000.0000 (0.000000000)
           ref: 00000000 ("    ")
         t_ref: 00000000.00000000 (0.000000000)
            t1: E8F7357E.A265F0F5 (3908515198.634367999)
            t2: 00000000.00000000 (0.000000000)
            t3: 00000000.00000000 (0.000000000)
            t4: 00000000.00000000 (0.000000000)
        offset: FFFFFFFF8B846540.AECD078580000000 (-1954257599.317183971)
         delay: FFFFFFFF1708CA81.5D9A0F0B00000000 (-3908515198.634367943)
          mean: 0000000000000000.0000000000000000 (0.000000000)
         error: 0000000000000000.0000000000000000 (0.000000000)
          addr: 129.67.1.164
}

and exits with the following error message:

sntp: Clock select failed

My NTP server configuration is located in /private/etc/ntp.conf:

server  ntp0.ox.ac.uk
server  ntp1.ox.ac.uk
server  ntp2.ox.ac.uk
server  ntp3.ox.ac.uk

My questions are: 1) How do I make sure that the sntp command uses the nth.conf file above? At the moment I have to supply the NTP server address manually to the sntp command. 2) What do I need to change for the sntp command to succeed and set the time?

MacOS (14.6.1) believes it's in Japan and stubbornly refuses to change that. Here's a screenshot: Problem is, that the Time zone setting is disabled, hence it can't be changed. Question now is, how to force a different timezone? Any advise is welcome. Thank you.

My Mac mini M1 mit Sonoma 14.3.1 **shows wrong date and time**: - 10th of April [correct date: 13th of April] - 22:52 [correct time: 00:24] System set do auto time settings with correct time Zone. Restart didn't change anything. Time server set to default. If I switch to Manual, the system uses the new date/time. As soon as I switch back to auto, the system immediatly shows the wrong date and time. **Any hints?** Additionally,I right now remember, that the system shows for some weeks (?) **0:00 on the login screen** just after system boot.

This is possible on basically all mainstream computer operating systems, like macOS, Windows 10, Ubuntu. For example in macOS, I have these two settings ( and ) separately. Similar settings exist in Windows 10 system settings, too. However, on iPhone, there is only one option that handles both, or at least it seems like how it works, which is called "". Basically, I want my time to be synced automatically so it is accurate as possible. At the same time, I want to be able to manually configure it to a time zone that is NOT on my current location. There might be a lot of situations where this is useful and it is possible on all computer/laptop operating systems. If there is no solution to this due to iOS system settings limitation, is there any workaround? E.g. using some other way or even app to sync time automatically or on-need? One ugly workaround that *might* work is to manually toggle the above setting on and off again. iOS remembers the manual time zone setup when I do this, so it is not terribly complex. However, I still want to see if there is a more elegant way to achieve it, like in the computer systems. PS: Turning location service off for "System Services / Setting Time Zone" does NOT work. The phone still gets local time zone when the above option is turned on. I do not know how it works -- maybe it gets time zone info from my carrier or using my IP address, etc.

I have noticed that there can be a few seconds after reopening the lid of my Macbook that the time just started again from the moment that the laptop was put to sleep - e.g. 1:30AM. It is not _stuck_ : the seconds do start to increment. But then within a few seconds the time does get updated. Well except for this time. The time according to my laptop is *still* in the 1:30AM (plus about ten minutes) timeframe. Note that the Date and Time option to "Set time and date automatically" is set: Yes it would be possible to use date to update the clock, but why is this happening and is there a fix? **Update** The date / time did finally change now, it took about twenty minutes.

My Mac is configured for the **Australia** region. I have one Mac running Sonoma 14.4 that displays my time in the menubar as: Mon 25 Mar 4:30 PM I have another Mac running Sonoma 14.3.1 that shows it as: Mon 25 Mar 4:30 pm Note the difference between PM and pm. Are there setting anywhere that I can use to standardise this display? I doubt that it's due to the different OS version, but I'd be interested to see whether other users have this discrepancy. Here's the settings screen for 14.4, which is identical to 14.3.1 except for the upper/lower PM: 

"Announce the time" not working in macOS monterey 12.5.1 - I have ADHD and relied on this feature alot to stop me "losing time". I can see the settings and options and they are enabled but I cannot even "play" the voice when setting it up in "customise voice" even when all the voice options are downloaded and any of one of them selected (have tried them all). The voice doesn't announce the time at all anymore since the update. Please help?

Since a few days my MacBook Air 2020 shows the wrong date when set to "Set date and time automatically". This is regardless of the chosen NTP server. When time set manually, querying a NTP server from the command line returns: $ sudo sntp -sS pool.ntp.org -9.789671 +/- 0.018845 pool.ntp.org 95.81.173.74 Which does not show date and time, but also no major offset. The offset is consistent at 5 months, 2 days, 3 hours and 10 minutes. - Tried time.apple.com and pool.ntp.org. No luck. - Tried different time zones. No luck. - Tried VPN to fake a different physical location. No luck. - Changed WiFi networks, including using my phone as hotspot. No luck. - NVRAM reset didn't help. No luck. **Fix** It somehow got fixed when I installed sntp (part of the ntp package) via Homebrew and ran it after running sudo touch /var/db/ntp-kod sudo chown root:wheel /var/db/ntp-kod Note: I don't know if the installation of sntp via Homebrew is needed as macOS also has its own version.

I have a 13-inch, 2019 MacBook Air. The time keeps changing back 15 days every time the computer sleeps, when I log back in, or when a restart happens. I have set the clock to sync automatically but the time keeps jumping back 15 days from today. I have done a PRAM/SMC reset already but it does not seem to help. Any ideas on how to fix this? Currently, I am on Sonoma 14.1.1 Even if I put in the date without the sync i.e. manually with the time sync off, it will still move back to the old time every time it wakes up.

In the macOS terminal, when I do ls -l SomeFile.txt it shows most of the file's properties including its last modification timestamp. However in Finder, besides the 'Date Modified' there is also the 'Date Added' for each file, i.e. the timestamp when the file was added to the particular folder where it's in. Is there a way to read or display this within the shell? Also as far as I understood this Added Date is different than the file's creation date? Is there also a way to get its creation timestamp? Lastly, macOS also keeps track of when a file was last accessed (read), can I get that timestamp from the shell as well? So for example: 1. I create a new file on December 1st. 2. I modify the file on December 2nd. 3. I open (read) the file on December 3rd. 4. I move the file to a different folder on December 4th. I'm looking for one or more shell commands to get these four particular timestamps.

I'm running Ventura 13.4 on an M2 MacBook Air. I run the FT8 and FT4 digital modes for ham radio. FT8/4 requires fairly accurate time synchronization. It seems that macOS gets out of sync when waking up from sleep. (See [Time.apple.com sync](https://discussions.apple.com/thread/254749768)) . The solution for better time synchronization is to run chrony, or better, the GUI version, chronyControl. (See [Accurate time keeping on an Apple Mac running macOS Big Sur for FT8, FT4 and WSPR](https://qso365.co.uk/2021/04/accurate-time-keeping-on-an-apple-mac-running-macos-big-sur-for-ft8-ft4-and-wspr/)) This has been working well for me, very well. My clock is very accurate. However, I'm still having time-shift issues. Notice that the [time.is](https://time.is/) website says my time is +-0.001 seconds. But look at the left-hand side, the third column is my time shift compared to others, the rest of the world is about 0.8 seconds off. ![Screenshot of two windows: the left window shows timings for FT8/FT4 while the right window is the current time according to the website time.is ][1] Since it is unlikely that the rest of the world is wrong, I must be wrong. Other hams have steered me to the likely culprit: I have an audio latency issue. The audio setup is simple and fixing it is unlikely. So I'd like to be able to bump my system clock by fractions of a second. (Clearly, I'll have to disable chronyControl when I do this!) Any sort of shell script to read the time and set the time would probably not work well since it would take a fraction of a second to run. I need a better way to do this. How can I bump my system clock by a specified amount?

The macOS ps gives the TIME like this:

UID   PID  PPID   C STIME   TTY           TIME CMD
    0 50769 80598   0  9:09pm ttys000    0:00.00 egrep 96222|PID
  666 96222 95653   0 10:09pm ttys006    0:00.01 /bin/bash ./count_numbers_octal.sh
  666 96226 96222   0 10:09pm ttys006  224:07.09 od -o
  666 96227 96222   0 10:09pm ttys006  613:25.59 cut -c1

The manual page of ps explains it like this:

The time the command started.  If the command started less than 24
hours ago, the start time is displayed using the “%l:ps.1p” format
described in strftime(3).  If the command started less than 7 days
ago, the start time is displayed using the “%a6.15p” format.
Otherwise, the start time is displayed using the “%e%b%y” format.

What exactly does that mean? I've looked at strftime(3), and it isn't clear to me if it is [seconds].[milliseconds] or [seconds].[tenth of seconds] or something else.

I have thousands of JPG images from a GoPro timelapse recorded in 5 minute increments throughout the day. I need to grab just the 12PM images, but i have to scroll down so far to get to the next file. Is there a way within Finder/Spotlight/Terminal/Easy Find or other app to search for a file not only by specific date but the specific time. See the image below for an example of my finder window. I don't want to have to scroll through so many images to grab just the 12PM file. And just to reiterate, I have thousands of images from a 1 year time lapse in various folders all organized.

I take a medication that needs 30mn to be assimilated by my body before eating anything in the morning. I log it every morning in the Health app to not forget it as it is quite important. I was wondering if there is a way with Shortcuts or other to automatically create a 30mn timer when completing the health app logging? Setting it manually is quite tidious.