The discussion revolves around an issue with date and location display in Discourse, where the timezone setting appears inconsistent across devices. patrickemin initially observed that using [date=2025-09-20 timezone="America/Fortaleza"] displayed locations like Cayenne and Paris instead of Fortaleza. The issue was traced to a default timezone setting of Europe/Paris, which affected the display. patrickemin noted that the problem seemed to vary between mobile and desktop, with Fortaleza appearing correctly after a test. tobiaseigen suggested that the inconsistency might be due to browser cache or settings and highlighted a broader UX concern: Discourse currently uses a limited set of timezones, which may not reflect the user’s actual location. tobiaseigen proposed improvements, such as allowing users to input their location for automatic timezone detection and prompting users to update their timezone when it differs from their current location. patrickemin supported these suggestions, emphasizing the importance of accurate location data for users in different regions.
Hi, how come when I use this date and location code:
[date=2025-09-20 timezone="America/Fortaleza"]
The result when I click the date in my post is this one giving me the date and location for two cities, Cayenne (French Guyana) and Paris (France), none of them are Fortaleza (Brazil) where I live?
I managed to find out my setting
discourse local dates default timezones
is set to Europe/Paris so that explains the date and location code displaying Paris (and that is fine since most of my members are in France), but for Cayenne I have that in my profile so it should use Fortaleza?
Oh wait ! It gives me Fortaleza on mobile and Cayenne on Desktop.
Were you able to resolve your issue?
Did you refresh your web browser on mobile after changing the setting on desktop, so you see the same time zone for both devices?
I did a new test and it gives me now the correct info on both Desktop and mobile. Not clear why It was Cayenne before and now Fortaleza.
Glad you solved your issue! I am not sure what to do with this topic.. I guess there is feedback in here about the usability of how time zones are configured? Are you able to replicate the Cayenne problem?
For the time being I cannot replicate the issue but the root cause I do not know, I guess that might be a browser setting and/or cache issue… No I cannot replicate the Cayenne problem, I must say Cayenne and Fortaleza are in the same timezone… But they are 1800km appart… And not in the same country, thus the location has its importance.
I just slipped this across to Contribute > UX because I am realizing you are sharing feedback here about a limitation we have in Discourse with the way time zones work.
I myself shift location frequently between Berlin and Seattle. When I am in Berlin and select Use Current Timezone in my preferences it selects Europe/Berlin, but when I am in Seattle it selects America/Los_Angeles. This is because there are a limited number of available timezones to choose from. It’s always been this way.
A UX improvement would be to allow the user to enter in/select their own location and then for Discourse to map it to the time zone automatically. This is how it works in most operating systems, for example.
I also think it would be helpful for Discourse to prompt the user to change the timezone when the timezone configured is different from the current timezone, without having to go to their user preferences and find the setting.
Yes good ideas for improvement.
