I’ve been dealing with the date and time being wrong on my iPod Touch since I bought it. If you’re not familiar with the problem, I’ll give you a one sentence summary:
Under certain conditions (don’t know the specifics), when you sync your iPod Touch with your Windows XP computer, the time zone on the iPod defaults back to “Cupertino” and the time is randomly generated for some day back in November of 2007.
I have done a bunch of digging around on the internet to try and find a solution. Last night I took one more try and came across something in the Apple support forums: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1357347&tstart=0
Although it doesn’t present a solution, it does present the workaround of closing iTunes before every sync then relaunching it after the iPod is already attached. This is working well for me and now I can finally synchronize my iPod with my coputer without messing up the time and date. I’ll be satisfied with this for a while, but I’m expecting Apple to fix this bug.
BTW, the other option of turning off daylight savings detection did not work for me.
I have the same problem, when I connect my ipod to my computer.. my time goes crazy…. can anyone have a solutions ???
Same thing happens to me, but not every time i connect my ipod to my computer. But quite often the time changes and the time zone moves from calgary to denver. Also the time changes and the date changes.
I’ve found a way to stop this happening.
I would exit iTunes, set the correct location and format of time, set the date and time. Plug iPod Touch into PC, it would stay the same untill synced, I would open iTunes sync. Then un-plug and rinse and repeat, without closing iTunes. Seems to work for me!
If you install the newest version of Quicktime, the bug will be fixed. Works like a charm.
OK, my problem sounds a bit different.
My IPT is set to Los Angles time zone, when I try to change it to Halifax time zone it will set it, but the second I leave the settings option it resets back to Los Angles time.
This is a problem that is driving me crazy. For a while it went away, but nothing I have tried has fixed it. I tried the latest version of Quicktime and I am still experiencing the problem (glad that bigvernfoster isn’t).
I think the time zone issue is just more evidence of a bug in the system. It doesn’t seem like this is getting any resources at Apple.
For me, this page is very helpful to solve the problem, and I’ve got a hint to go forward…
I doubt this happens when the iPoD is synced at the first time iTune is launched and synced… As my engineering experience, I suspect this happens when the iPoD device or iTune doesn’t wait enough for each other to get the correct time…. maybe…
What I did tried is…
You can see Edit menu Basic Configuration(F). When you have plugged iPod touch, you can see Devices tap.
Then you can see a menu disable automatic sync.
To me, this feels more elegant(^^) than abruptly close the iTunes window…
And to me, trial with QuickTime new version didn’t work…
P.S. the strange thing is that an Apple service center staff can’t explain aything about this to me. (He told me that ‘Apple’s never heard about this issue… hmm…)
I forgot one more thing.
Thank you for your blog. I was really crazy about this because I use New York Times application and gmail with iPod, which are suddenly killed because of wrong time when they tries to check the date and get ‘today’s update.’ When this happens to New York Times application, I had to re-install them… -I think this could be the bug of New York Times…
oh… really terrible…
Apple’s never heard about this problem or they won’t admit they aren’t addressing it? I find that pretty disappointing.
My problem has some similarities to the ones described by all of you.
Maybe the details of my problem can help others (and me) to come up with a solution.
In my case, I live in Bolivia (time zone GMT -4, country with only one time zone and in which daylight savings time never applies). Everytime after I sync my iPod Touch 32 GB (new model launched in Sep 2008), it changes its time to Caracas, Venezuela (GMT -4:30).
I have Windows XP Professional operating system in my PC. In the Control Panel, in the date and time settings, I can see that the time zone is the same for Caracas, Venezuela and La Paz, Bolivia (GMT -4). I found that Venezuela has changed its GMT in Dec 2007 to GMT -4:30, and that is something I believe that Windows operating system do not have yet updated. Conclusion, maybe that is causing my problem.
Another possibility is that this problem was originated when I did the initial set up of my iPod Touch, in which I may have chosen Caracas, Venezuela time setting without being aware that Caracas, Venezuela recently had changed its time zone (which I found afterwards). I cannot find this feature in any menu in iTunes to check if this setting is set to Caracas, which may be the cause of the problem.
Hi everyone, my problem is very smilar to Fernando’s. I live in the Dominican Republic and the time zone in my iPod touch changes to Caracas everytime I sinc. I have made tests changing windows XP time zone to other countries but the problem remains. At this time it doesn’t seem to me it is a windows problem, rather an itunes bug. any more updates to this topic?
It seems I found a solution by changing the date and time setting in the Control Panel to Santiago de Chile, which is also GMT-4, but cancelling the property to automatically adjust in daylight savings time (as in Santiago de Chile they change time in summer, and in Bolivia this never happens). This way, I “produced” a time zone identical to the one of Bolivia, where I live.
I know it is not the “cleanest” solution, but it can work, ie searching for a time zone that works all year the same way as your home time zone.
I called Apple about this, and a nice lady (Lilly) told me (after considerable research) to plug in my iPod Touch, open iTunes, go to Edit -> Preferences -> click on the Devices tab. Check the box “Disable automatic syncing for iPhones and iPods.” Then click Ok. Now your iPod Phone or Touch won’t sync until you tell it to – just select your device in the left-hand column and then click on Sync in the bottom right hand. Anyway, it worked for me.
I have the same issue with my 16Gb iTouch, and have found none of the mentioned solutions to work. I find it amazing that this bug hasn’t yet been fixed by Apple – its a fundamental bug, I like to use my device as a clock/alarm and paid enough money for it, but Apple seem more concerned with new product development than bug fixing. Maybe they see it a s Windows XP related issue, therefore low priority!?
Good luck to all trying to fix
I have the same problem. The time zone always set to LA, USA after I off my ipod touch and re-open it.
I have try above method and even hard reset my itouch, but none of them worked.
Apple should corret this bug fast. I have problem of using the alarm and clock.
A bit regret to choose itouch.
Same deal.. sync Ipod Touch and you get a free time warp trip to GMT! I say it those dang Brits mucking around!
If you read above, I had informed having found a solution, but I have changed my computer (but still using Windows XP Professional operating system), and it does not work anymore. My iPod Touch synces setting time zone to Caracas, Venezuela, which is different since 2007 to Bolivia time where I live.
I see we can’t even find how the bug works, as all people reporting here have reported a different (wrong) time zone to which their iPods are syncing. Maybe finding out how the bug works, we may find the solution to this. I also have an iPod Classic 120 GB, but this error does not happen with it.
Has anyone tried to report this problem to Apple Support? Or even when personally visiting an Apple shop? There may be people there who might help. Apple takes pride for having very efficient customer support services.
I’m having the same problem as Fernando. I live in Trinidad & Tobago (time zone GMT -4, we have no daylight savings time) and each time I sync my iPod Touch the time goes to Caracas, Venezuela (GMT -4:30).
I had the first version of the 32gb iPod Touch and I had the same problem then. I spoke to an Apple Rep at an Apple Store in Vegas in April about it and he told me that he had never heard of the problem but I should try a reset. The reset didnt work.
I now have the 2nd version of the 32gb Touch and I still have the time sync problem. I tried Fernando’s solution (changing the time in Windows XP to Bolivia) but no luck.
This is a really annoying (and confusing) problem that Apple doesn’t care about in a really expensive product.
take a look at rick’s solution, dated November 3rd. worked for me.
An update to my above post. The solution from Apple didn’t stick (turning off automatic sync in iTunes) so I called Apple again (I have a case number) and talked with Douglas. He said he had never heard of this problem. He thinks there is a virus either on the iPod or the computer (PC). He had me do a “Restore” from iTunes. After that VERY LONG procedure, the iPod behaved exactly the same as before.
The best I have found is what was originally posted. Connect the iPod before starting iTunes. In my case, when iTunes starts up, it immediately sets the time on the iPod to the time on the PC, and sets my time zone to Cupertino, which is where Apple lives and is the same as my time zone.
The Tech wanted me to completely remove iTunes from my PC and reinstall it. He gave me this link to help do it correctly: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1923?viewlocale=en_US. I haven’t done that yet.
At least iTunes is not setting my iPod Touch to a mysterious time two months ago, usually September 11 (that is a bit suspicious – maybe it IS a virus after all).
I see that the solution above would work for US West Coast users, but not for everyone else. Also, the above solution of connecting the iPod before starting iTunes (even adapting it to the different time zone I live in) did not work for me.
As partial conclusion of all this, it seems that the iPod Touch synchronization routine looks for the time settings (or more precisely, the international settings, not necessarily the time settings) in the operating system of the computer. Working under Windows XP, the time settings are not perfectly defined for every time zone around the world, so the process simplifies that by setting time approximating to nearby time zones. Caracas has been mentioned as default time zone for people living in the Caribbean (Dominican Republic and Trinidad & Tobago) and Bolivia, Cupertino has been mentioned by people living in the US West Coast.
For the time being, I gave up: my syncing procedure now always ends by manually adjusting the time zone from Caracas, Venezuela to La Paz, Bolivia.
Finally, I would like to know if someone using Windows Vista has this same problem. If Vista users don’t have it, I believe that it is not likely that Apple would invest resources to solve the bug.
Today I went into the Apple store and talked to a technical support guy about this. He had not heard of the problem either. I explained the situation to him and he took my iPod Touch and analyzed it on his Mac computer.
His take on this: The problem doesn’t occur when connecting my iPod to the Mac. So he thinks there is a bug in the Windows version of iTunes. He will report this to Apple, and he said he hopes the next version of iTunes will fix the problem.
As far as changing the time zone, he thinks that since Windows doesn’t allow you to specify a particular city, it will sync the iPod to the nearest standard time zone. Also part of the bug.
BTW, I use Windows Vista.
I use windows vista, and my time zone stays correct, but the time is wrong, and the date is December 31st, 1964. Odd. I hope this gets fixed.
I think it’s funny that Apple wants to blame this on a virus. It seems pretty “Apple-like” to think that someone would want to write a PC virus that would do nothing more than change the time on your iPod.
I too am running Vista and I get the same behavior that Ash does above (although it didn’t start impacting me until after I had updated iTunes). If I make sure that iTunes isn’t started until after I connect my iPod, it works fine. It’s just a pain and I too wish that Apple would address this issue!
I noticed something weird. If I go into “Settings–> General–>Date & Time” and change the time zone there manually to the correct zone (in my case La Paz, Bolivia), when I hit the home button and follow the same steps leading me back to “Date & Time” I see that the iPod has automatically set it’s time zone back to the wrong one (Caracas). Odd.
My Touch just started this problem after a trip to Phoenix. I had changed my time zone in the General settings from Atlanta to Denver. Now I’m back in Atlanta, and I’ve tried about 25 times to change time zone back to Atlanta. As soon as I leave the setting, it reverts back to Denver. My experience with Apple support is, they always tell you they’ve never heard of whatever problem you present… Even though users are complaining about it all over the web. They live in their own happy little world, blaming everything on PCs and making users do complete resets to fix anything.
Well I’m going to update to the 2.2 firmware. Let’s see if that helps.
I already updated to the 2.2 firmware last weekend, and it did not help.
Experienced this problem since I bought my 2nd-gen iTouch three weeks ago, updated to 2.2 firmware, issue persists.
The time zone is always correct, but the time jumps anywhere from a week to two months back. Very annoying.
Also, even if I close iTunes before connecting my touch, the time is still thrown off. Very frustrating.
My workaround: Close and relaunch iTunes if it was running at midnight.
I live in Los Angeles area and I get the time sync errors when I synchronize my iPod Touch 1st gen with Windows iTunes.
It only occurs if iTunes was running at midnight when the date changed.
If I sync during the same iTunes session that ran past midnight then the time is incorrect.
If iTunes has not run past midnight then the time sync works correctly.
I’ve read other blogs/support forums that indicate this problem goes back at least to years (there were many posts in 2006). Apple is most certainly aware of this problem – there’s no chance in he** that they “haven’t heard about this one before” or that it might be a “Windows Virus.” They simply have no answer for this, which is truly amazing. It’s a simple time synchonization problem that thousands of computer programs handle routinely every day. That means that the iTunes code has a bug so deep that to fix it would require some meaningful and significant architecture changes. Otherwise, a bug this prevalent and obvious would have been fixed by now. Shame on Apple – they don’t know what time it is.
Same deal. 16 gig iPod Touch, all the latest versions of quicktime/firmware. Windows Vista. Time zone changed from Salt Lake City to Denver. Has changed to September 11, 2008 in the past, but not always. Fix this problem Apple or I’m taking it back for a new one with a print-out of this blog.
This might work. http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1587835&tstart=0 The guys says you need to delete the ipod backup. Do this by:
In iTunes
edit
preferences
device
Delete Backup
close iTunes
open iTunes
Sync
This worked for me as far as the date and time goes. It synced with my laptop. However, it reverted me to Denver’s time zone again. That’s a much smaller problem.
Unfortunately, this solution did not work for me.
Actually, the time in my iPod Touch 32 Gb goes wrong when I connect to the USB port, not when I sync it.
Just a few seconds that I connect it, and the time zone changes to Caracas.
If I sync it several times, once that I adjusted back the correct time and as long as it is connected to the USB port, the time zone does not change again incorrectly.
Same experience as Fernando.
The solution didn’t work for me either.
I was having this problem and couldnt figure it out but came across a solution that seems to be working great now. The problem seems to be a bug with old backups (possibly from an old ipod or something?). The solution was to go into itunes (without you ipod/iphone attached) and go into the preferences menu. Select the Device tab and they’re was a backup in the list from the screwy time period. Delete the back up and restart itunes (I tried it without restarting Itunes and it just created another screwy backup and did it again).
After I did that I was able to sync again and a new back up (with the right time) was made and I was all set from there.
Did not work either. I deleted that backup (which by the way was not so old and it is updated every time I sync the iPod) and restarted iTunes, then I connected the iPod and in about seconds, as always, the time was changed again to the Caracas wrong time zone. (My iTunes is set so that the iPod does not sync immediately after it is connected to the USB port).
My solution seems to work -
1. Go into Settings on the Touch
2. Go into Mail, Contacts, Calendars
3. At the bottom of the mail, Contacts, Calendars page turn off ‘Time Zone Support’
This solved my problem immediately. All sync calendars with Outlook now work perfectly.
Good luck
no luck with the new solution, I even reset my iPod and cleared all the backups still nothing
Strange that it worked for me and not for you Bob
I have a 16GB Touch 2G
I am using Outlook 2007 on an XP system
add me to the list. Another windows user with an itouch that can’t tell time. My backup times start out fine then you can see the date iTunes says it was made it way out of wack and always in the past in an incorrect timezone and year. I tried a lot of these fixes and they seem to only be temporary and not fixes but sort of work arounds that just lessen the problem. Fix it apple!
I am running Outlook 2003 on a Windows Vista machine, with a 8GB iPod Touch. I have everything on this forum but still no luck.
Same prob’s – I use Windows Vista…my time won’t set and my ipod reverts me back to Denver time. Doesn’t matter if I change the settings in Mail, Contacts, Calenders. That setting will stay the city I set it at but my time and time zone (calgary, ab) the General tab/Date & Timewon’t set. It seems to revert itself when my ipod is turned off for extended periods. I haven’t empirically noticed if syncing throws it off though.
This is ridiculous
P.S – I just found an official Apple blog from 2007 that discusses these issues so in one form or another, Apple should be aware this is a common, long stemming issue
OK, now I am really confused, I just was having some trouble with my iPod , every time i hooked it up it increased the time by one hour. And I just wanted my alarm to work so I could wake up in the morning, so I was about to reset the thing hoping that it would work but what I did was set it to the right time zone +date and time, with it hooked up to my laptop (see specs on recent posts) and then I sync it hoping that it at least matches up with my pc time. But it doesn’t change. I go back into setting expecting to see it changed back to LA time zone, but for once it stayed in Halifax time zone. I have no clue what I did, but the second I found out it stayed for once in the past 6 months I thought I would let you guys know, and try doing what I did. Goodluck
It seems that if you put your computer on sleep/hibernate, it resets the time zone to Capertino and the time. So if you do this on your computer, simply unplug your touch, exit itunes, reopen itunes, and plug your touch back in. This was the problem with mine and it changed the time back to my computer time instantly. Hopefully this will fix the problem for some of you.
Same problem on my 16GB Touch with latest firmware and iTunes versions. I’ve tried everything suggested here with no success. As someone stated, the time changes the instant I plug the Touch into the USB port – if iTunes is running. The only suggestion that works for me is to close iTunes before plugging in the Touch and the problem has not reoccurred since, but we shouldn’t have to do that!
Now tonight suddenly no third-party apps will run on the Touch. They all start-up before immediately flicking back to the main menu. What’s that about? I’ve rebooted (reset?) it with the two-button solute but no difference.
This is my first Apple product and after years taking stick from Apple believers about my “rubbish” Microsoft systems, well maybe they all need to look in their own backyard before mouthing off at the opposition…
I’ve had the same problem with 3rd party apps failing to start on my 16GB Touch. I’m not sure what’s causing it yet, but I’ve found one fix that seems to work thus far. I download any new app to my touch from the app store then power it off and back on and the 3rd party apps work again.
I’m not sure if it’s a specific app causing my problem or not.
Thanks Rick. After I posting my rant I googled the third-party app issue and found the same solution as you suggested. And it worked perfectly. What did we do before the Internet to solve these things?!? Thanks.
ipod touch 32gb, software 2.2, brand new out of the box, win xp sp3. Correct time on pc.
I have still have the time reset issue as well. Deleting the backup and selecting no auto sync did not solve the problem. The work around of making sure itunes isn’t running before plugging in the ipod touch works, but isn’t a solution.
Has anyone filed a bug report? Does anyone have a radar number?
Thanks.