Ubuntu 20.04 – Change Time Zone

Ubuntu 20.04 stores the system time zone separately from the clock itself. You can change the time zone from the Settings application or from the command line with timedatectl. The selected time zone controls how Ubuntu displays local time and, when you use a named region such as America/Los_Angeles, applies the daylight-saving rules included with the system time-zone data.

This tutorial shows both methods, how to list valid Ubuntu time zones, how to set UTC, how to verify the change, and what to check if the displayed time is still incorrect.

Change Time Zone in Ubuntu 20.04 from Settings

If you use the Ubuntu desktop, you can change the time zone without running a command. The screenshots below show the Ubuntu 20.04 Settings interface.

  1. Start you PC into Ubuntu, and click on the applications icon. Application icon is present at the far end of Dock, as shown in the following screenshot.
    Ubuntu Change Timezone

  2. Click on Settings.
    Ubuntu Change Timezone

  3. In the left tab, scroll until you see Date & Time, and click on Date & Time.
    Ubuntu Change Timezone


    You will see all the options available for Date & Time, and you would see an option for Time Zone selection as well.

    Ubuntu Change Timezone


    Currently it is selected to IST (Kolkata, India).

  4. You can choose a Time Zone from the map.
    Ubuntu Change Timezone


    Let us click on Creston, Canada.

    Ubuntu Change Timezone


    The Time Zone is selected. If you are not sure where your required Time Zone is located, you can search it using the search bar Search for a city. Start typing and you will see recommendations.

    Ubuntu Change Timezone

    Click on a Time Zone to select it.

  5. Once you select a Time Zone, close the window. And you would notice that the Time Zone is updated, as highlighted in the following screenshot.
    Ubuntu Change Timezone

The new time zone takes effect immediately. You do not normally need to restart Ubuntu.

Check the Current Ubuntu 20.04 Time Zone with timedatectl

On Ubuntu 20.04, timedatectl can display the current local time, Universal Time, RTC time, configured time zone, and synchronization status. Open Terminal and run:

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timedatectl

Look for the Time zone: line. A system configured for India, for example, may show a value similar to the following.

Time zone: Asia/Kolkata (IST, +0530)

You can also print only the configured zone name:

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timedatectl show --property=Timezone --value

List Available Time Zones in Ubuntu 20.04

The timedatectl set-timezone command expects a valid time-zone name, usually in Area/City form. To see the names installed on Ubuntu, run:

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timedatectl list-timezones

The list is long. You can filter it with grep. For example, to find zones containing the word Pacific:

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timedatectl list-timezones | grep Pacific

For a U.S. Pacific time configuration that follows the Los Angeles daylight-saving rules, the usual zone name is America/Los_Angeles. Region-based names are preferable to manually entering a fixed UTC offset because the time-zone database can apply the correct standard-time and daylight-saving transitions for that region.

Set the Ubuntu 20.04 Time Zone from the Command Line

Use timedatectl set-timezone followed by the exact zone name. Administrator privileges are normally required to change the system setting.

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sudo timedatectl set-timezone Area/City

For example, to set the system to Pacific time using the Los Angeles rules:

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sudo timedatectl set-timezone America/Los_Angeles

To switch back to India Standard Time:

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sudo timedatectl set-timezone Asia/Kolkata

Then verify the result:

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timedatectl

The Ubuntu Community documentation also describes command-line time-zone configuration through the tzdata and timedatectl tools.

Set Ubuntu 20.04 Time Zone to UTC

UTC is commonly used on servers and in environments where applications run across several geographic regions. To configure Ubuntu 20.04 to use UTC:

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sudo timedatectl set-timezone UTC

Check the setting with:

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timedatectl show --property=Timezone --value
UTC

Ubuntu 20.04 Time Zone and Daylight Saving Time

You do not normally set daylight saving time separately. When Ubuntu is configured with a geographic zone such as America/Los_Angeles or Europe/London, the installed time-zone data contains the applicable transition rules. Ubuntu uses those rules when converting the system time to local time.

A zone such as Asia/Kolkata follows the rules defined for that region. If a country changes its civil-time rules later, package updates to the time-zone database may be needed for future transitions to remain correct.

Is the Ubuntu 20.04 Time Zone Change Permanent?

Yes. Changing the system time zone through Settings or timedatectl set-timezone updates the system configuration and remains in effect after logout and reboot. You do not need to rerun the command at each startup.

This is different from setting a temporary TZ environment variable for one shell or one process. A process-specific TZ value changes how that process displays time, but it does not replace Ubuntu’s system-wide time-zone setting.

Fix an Incorrect Time After Changing the Ubuntu Time Zone

If the time zone is correct but the clock is still wrong, the problem may be time synchronization rather than the time-zone setting. Check the System clock synchronized and NTP service lines in the output of timedatectl.

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timedatectl

You can ask Ubuntu to use network time synchronization with:

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sudo timedatectl set-ntp true

Also confirm that you selected the intended geographic zone. Similar city names can exist in different regions, and a fixed-offset zone may not behave like a regional zone that observes daylight saving time.

Ubuntu 20.04 Time Zone Editorial QA Checklist

  • Confirm that every command uses a valid Ubuntu 20.04 utility and that timedatectl set-timezone is shown with an IANA-style zone name.
  • Verify that GUI instructions still refer specifically to the Ubuntu 20.04 Date & Time settings shown in the existing screenshots.
  • Check that examples distinguish a regional zone such as America/Los_Angeles from a fixed UTC offset.
  • Confirm that the UTC example uses UTC and that the verification command returns the configured zone name.
  • Keep time synchronization troubleshooting separate from time-zone selection so readers do not confuse an incorrect clock with an incorrect zone.
  • Do not state that daylight saving time must be manually toggled when a geographic time zone already provides the applicable transition rules.

Ubuntu 20.04 Time Zone Change – Summary

In this Ubuntu Tutorial, we learned how to change the Time Zone in your Ubuntu PC running 20.04 LTS. You can use the desktop Settings interface or run sudo timedatectl set-timezone Area/City from Terminal. We also covered listing available zones, setting UTC, verifying the active zone, daylight-saving behavior, persistence across reboots, and checking time synchronization when the displayed clock is still incorrect.