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Android's time zone change notification might not leave you guessing anymore
January 8, 2026
- Android 16 QPR2 recently got the option to inform you when your phone’s clock automatically adjusts to a new time zone.
- With a future update, your Android device may also tell you the exact time your clock has moved.
- This will save time trying to figure out the time difference yourself.
With Android 16 QPR2, which rolled out last month, Google introduced alerts every time your phone automatically switches to a new timezone. However, the feature doesn’t tell you exactly how many hours or minutes your clocks shifted, which can make you take an extra step to look it up on Google if you’re unaware of the exact time difference or want to figure out the time where your journey originated. But Google now appears to have reconsidered and might soon fill that vacuum.
In a future Android update, Google could add a way for you to know exactly how much your device’s clock has been adjusted. In the latest Android Canary build, we found the following references to this addition:
<string name="time_zone_offset_change_notification_title">Clock change</string>
<string name="time_zone_offset_change_notification_body_backward">Clocks moved backward %1$s. You're now in %2$s (%3$s).</string>
<string name="time_zone_offset_change_notification_body_forward">Clocks moved forward %1$s. You're now in %2$s (%3$s).</string>Although we couldn’t trigger the notification or see how it would appear visually, these hints give us an idea of what the notification would contain.
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For instance, if you travel from London to New York City, there’s a five-hour difference. Your Android device would notify you of the exact difference, and the notification could say something like
Clocks moved backward 5 hours. You’re now in Eastern Standard Time (GMT-5).
There’s a possibility that the exact phrasing of the sentence changes closer to rollout, but the essence is likely to remain the same. Since the original alert feature took roughly five months from being released in Android Canary to being more widely available with Android 16 QPR2, we can’t say Google will implement this immediately. We’ll ensure notifying you when the feature is closer to becoming a reality.
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