How to Use the Planner

Everything you need to coordinate across timezones

Getting Started

When you first open WorldClock, you'll see a clean interface with a search box at the top and a timeline below. The planner automatically detects your current timezone and adds it as your first location. From there, you can start adding cities from around the world.

Here's how to get going:

Adding Locations: Click the search box that says "Place or timezone" and start typing any city name. As you type, you'll see suggestions appear. Click on the city you want, and it'll be added to your timeline. You can add as many cities as you need.

Picking a Date: Right next to the search box, you'll see today's date. Click it to open a date picker where you can choose any date in the future. This is helpful when you're planning meetings ahead of time.

Choosing Your Time Range: Above the timeline, you'll notice buttons for "9-5", "AM", "PM", and "Custom". These let you focus on specific hours. Select "9-5" for typical business hours, or click "Custom" to set your own hours.

Understanding the Timeline

The timeline is where the magic happens. Once you've added your cities, you'll see a grid showing the hours of the day across multiple dates. Each row represents one of your locations, and each cell shows an hour of the day.

The colors tell you everything at a glance:

Teal/Cyan cells: These are the sweet spots. They're hours that fall within your chosen time range (whether that's 9-5, AM, PM, or your custom hours). When you see a column where all cities are teal, that's an ideal meeting time for everyone.
Gray cells: These hours are outside your selected range. They might work if you're flexible, but they're not in your preferred window.
Orange highlighted cells: This is the currently selected time slot. You'll see it when you click on a time to schedule your meeting.

Each row also shows the current time in that city with a live clock that updates every second, so you always know what time it is right now for each location.

Scheduling a Meeting

Once you've found a good time slot on the timeline, click on it. This opens up the meeting scheduler below the timeline where you can enter all your event details.

Event Title: Give your meeting a name. Something like "Team Standup" or "Q4 Planning Session" works great. You'll also see a duration selector (defaults to 1 hour) where you can quickly set how long the meeting will be.

Start and End Times: These are automatically filled based on which time slot you clicked on the timeline. But you can manually adjust them if needed. The times show in your local timezone by default.

Review the Schedule: Above the event details, you'll see what time the meeting will be for each city you've added. This helps you spot any issues - like if someone would need to join at 3 AM.

The planner is smart about showing you potential issues. If a meeting time falls outside typical business hours (before 9 AM or after 6 PM) for any participant, you'll see a warning. This doesn't mean you can't schedule it there - sometimes early morning or evening meetings are necessary - but it's good to be aware of it.

Sharing Your Meeting

After you've set up your meeting details, you'll see four sharing options at the bottom: Calendar, Email, Social, and Copy Link. Each one is designed for different ways people like to share meetings.

Calendar: This lets you add the meeting directly to your calendar app. Click it and choose from Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar, or download an .ics file that works with any calendar app. The event includes the meeting times for all participants, so everyone knows when to join.

Email: Opens your email client with a pre-written message that includes the meeting details and times for all locations. You can edit the message before sending it to your team.

Social: Share via messaging apps like WhatsApp, Telegram, Messenger, LinkedIn, or Reddit. Great for quick coordination with remote teams. The message includes the event link so people can see it in their own timezone.

Copy Link: Copies a unique URL to your clipboard that you can paste anywhere. Anyone with the link can see the meeting details and what time it'll be in each location.

On mobile phones, you might see a single "Share" button instead. This uses your phone's native share menu, which makes it easy to send the meeting through any app you have installed.

Exploring Countries and Timezones

Beyond the meeting planner, WorldClock has two other pages that make it easy to explore cities around the world: Countries and Timezones. You can find links to these in the footer of the main page.

Countries Page

The Countries page shows you all the countries in our database, along with how many cities and timezones each one has. It's a great way to browse by country if you know which country your team members are in but aren't sure about specific cities.

You can search for any country using the search box, and when you click on a country, you'll see all its cities with live clocks showing the current time in each one. The cities are organized with a search feature too, so if you're looking at a country like the United States or India with hundreds of cities, you can quickly find the one you need.

Timezones Page

The Timezones page lists all the different timezones around the world. This is helpful if you know someone's timezone (like "America/New_York" or "Asia/Tokyo") but want to see all the cities in that timezone.

Each timezone shows how many cities share it and how many countries it spans. When you click on a timezone, you'll see every city in that zone with their current local times, along with details like their state or region. It's particularly useful for understanding timezone boundaries - did you know that parts of Indiana and Michigan have different timezones even though they're neighboring states?

Both pages work great on mobile and desktop, and they're handy when you're just exploring or trying to understand global time differences better.

Other Helpful Features

Auto-detect Timezone

Automatically adds your current location when you first visit

Real-time Updates

Clocks update every second to show accurate time

Smart Search

Find cities quickly with intelligent autocomplete

Mobile Optimized

Works seamlessly on all devices

Tips for Better Planning

Here are a few things we've learned from people who use WorldClock regularly:

Look for columns where everything's teal: When you see a time slot where all the cities show teal cells, that means it's within everyone's preferred hours. These are usually your best meeting times because nobody has to wake up early or stay late.

Use the date buttons to scroll through the week: Above the timeline, you'll see buttons for upcoming dates. Click through them to see if there's a better day where more hours overlap for everyone.

Try different time ranges: If you're struggling to find good overlap with "9-5", try switching to "AM" or "PM" to see more options. Sometimes an 8 AM meeting for one person and 5 PM for another works better than trying to fit everything in the middle of the day.

Remove cities easily: See that little × next to each city name? Click it to remove a city from your timeline. Handy when you add the wrong one or when someone drops out of the meeting.

The timeline scrolls: If you have many cities added, you can scroll down to see them all. On mobile, you can also swipe left and right to see different hours.

Ready to start planning?

Go to Planner