Show UTC offset in time widget

Jesal

It would be nice if the time widget that appears when “time in X” is typed showed the UTC offset. It’s a small thing, but it would save me a little bit of time. DuckDuckGo and Google currently do this.

kirkmc

If you're looking for the time in a specific location, what does it matter if you see the UTC offset? You are asking for the current time in that location. When you add in things like daylight saving time, UTC makes things more complicated.

Jesal

kirkmc

A few reasons

It's useful for a few things in my specific area of software development
The UTC offset instantly shows how some location's time relates to others, which is often what's actually relevant

I find that UTC makes things less complicated when it comes to DST.

kirkmc

Jesal If what you want is UTC, then you might just ask for the time in UTC. But if you just want to know the time, UTC means you must also know whether or not DST is in effect in the target area. That's adding another variable.

Jesal

kirkmc

One advantage of displaying the UTC offset is that DST doesn’t matter. For example, if a colleague looked up the time at my location in summer, they would see EDT (UTC-4), and in winter they would see EST (UTC-5). The UTC offset is enough that they don’t need to know anything about DST.