---
title: TimeZone
framework: foundation
role: symbol
role_heading: Structure
path: foundation/timezone
---

# TimeZone

Information about standard time conventions associated with a specific geopolitical region.

## Declaration

```swift
struct TimeZone
```

## Overview

Overview TimeZone defines the behavior of a time zone. Time zone values represent geopolitical regions. Consequently, these values have names for these regions. Time zone values also represent a temporal offset, either plus or minus, from Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) and an abbreviation (such as PST for Pacific Standard Time). TimeZone provides two static functions to get time zone values: current and autoupdatingCurrent. The autoupdatingCurrent time zone automatically tracks updates made by the user. Note that time zone database entries such as “America/Los_Angeles” are IDs, not names. An example of a time zone name is “Pacific Daylight Time”. Although many TimeZone functions include the word “name”, they refer to IDs. Cocoa does not provide any API to change the time zone of the computer, or of other applications.

## Topics

### Getting the Current Time Zone

- [autoupdatingCurrent](foundation/timezone/autoupdatingcurrent.md)
- [current](foundation/timezone/current.md)

### Creating a Time Zone

- [init(secondsFromGMT:)](foundation/timezone/init(secondsfromgmt:).md)
- [knownTimeZoneIdentifiers](foundation/timezone/knowntimezoneidentifiers.md)
- [abbreviationDictionary](foundation/timezone/abbreviationdictionary.md)

### Getting Time Zone Information

- [identifier](foundation/timezone/identifier.md)
- [abbreviation(for:)](foundation/timezone/abbreviation(for:).md)
- [secondsFromGMT(for:)](foundation/timezone/secondsfromgmt(for:).md)
- [timeZoneDataVersion](foundation/timezone/timezonedataversion.md)

### Working with Daylight Savings

- [isDaylightSavingTime(for:)](foundation/timezone/isdaylightsavingtime(for:).md)
- [daylightSavingTimeOffset(for:)](foundation/timezone/daylightsavingtimeoffset(for:).md)
- [nextDaylightSavingTimeTransition](foundation/timezone/nextdaylightsavingtimetransition.md)
- [nextDaylightSavingTimeTransition(after:)](foundation/timezone/nextdaylightsavingtimetransition(after:).md)

### Describing Time Zones

- [localizedName(for:locale:)](foundation/timezone/localizedname(for:locale:).md)

### Working with notification messages

- [TimeZone.SystemTimeZoneDidChangeMessage](foundation/timezone/systemtimezonedidchangemessage.md)

### Using Reference Types

- [NSTimeZone](foundation/nstimezone.md)

### Initializers

- [init(abbreviation:)](foundation/timezone/init(abbreviation:).md)
- [init(identifier:)](foundation/timezone/init(identifier:).md)

### Type Aliases

- [TimeZone.NameStyle](foundation/timezone/namestyle.md)

### Type Properties

- [gmt](foundation/timezone/gmt.md)

## Relationships

### Conforms To

- [Copyable](swift/copyable.md)
- [CustomDebugStringConvertible](swift/customdebugstringconvertible.md)
- [CustomReflectable](swift/customreflectable.md)
- [CustomStringConvertible](swift/customstringconvertible.md)
- [Decodable](swift/decodable.md)
- [Encodable](swift/encodable.md)
- [Equatable](swift/equatable.md)
- [Escapable](swift/escapable.md)
- [Hashable](swift/hashable.md)
- [ReferenceConvertible](foundation/referenceconvertible.md)
- [Sendable](swift/sendable.md)
- [SendableMetatype](swift/sendablemetatype.md)

## See Also

### Calendrical Calculations

- [DateComponents](foundation/datecomponents.md)
- [Calendar](foundation/calendar.md)