You’re staring at your phone, and the clock is just... wrong. Maybe you crossed a time zone and your iPhone decided it preferred New York time while you’re clearly standing in a drizzly London street. Or perhaps you’re trying to pull a fast one on a mobile game that rewards you for waiting twenty-four hours, and you want to "time travel" to get those rewards early. Whatever the reason, knowing how to change date and time in iphone isn't just about tapping a few buttons; it’s about understanding why Apple sometimes makes it surprisingly difficult to do so.
It should be simple. It’s a clock. But because your iPhone uses time for everything from encrypting your iMessages to verifying website security certificates, messing with the internal clock can actually break your phone’s ability to browse the web.
The Standard Path: How to Change Date and Time in iPhone manually
Most people just need to find the right menu. It’s buried deeper than it used to be in older versions of iOS. You have to open Settings, then scroll down to General. Inside General, there’s a dedicated section for Date & Time.
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By default, your iPhone is likely set to Set Automatically. This is Apple’s way of saying, "Trust us, we know where you are." It uses your GPS location and Wi-Fi data to ping NTP (Network Time Protocol) servers. When you toggle that switch off, a new date and blue-text time appear below. You tap those, and a calendar wheel pops up. You scroll, you pick, you’re done. Easy, right?
Not always.
Sometimes that "Set Automatically" toggle is greyed out. You tap it, and nothing happens. It’s frozen. This usually happens because of Screen Time restrictions or a corporate management profile installed by your employer. If you’ve got "Share Across Devices" turned on for Screen Time, a change on your iPad could lock the clock on your iPhone. It’s a weirdly interconnected web.
When the "Set Automatically" Toggle Is Greyed Out
If you can't slide that toggle, don't panic. Your phone isn't broken. Usually, it's a privacy or restriction setting.
Go back to the main Settings menu and hit Screen Time. Look for Content & Privacy Restrictions. If this is on, your iPhone might be protecting the time settings to prevent kids (or you!) from bypassing app limits. Another sneaky culprit is Location Services. If the phone doesn't have permission to check "System Customization" or "Setting Time Zone" under System Services, it might get confused and lock the manual override.
To fix this, go to Settings > Privacy & Security > Location Services > System Services (at the very bottom). Make sure Setting Time Zone is toggled on. If the phone doesn’t know where it is, it struggles to let you tell it what time it is. It sounds counterintuitive, but that's how the iOS architecture is built.
Why Accuracy Actually Matters for Your Apps
We live in a world of "Time-Based One-Time Passwords" (TOTP). If you use apps like Google Authenticator, Authy, or Microsoft Authenticator, your iPhone's time must be perfectly synced with the global atomic clock. Even being off by sixty seconds can cause your login codes to fail.
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You’ll try to log into your bank, type in the code, and get an "Invalid Code" error. You'll blame the bank. You'll reset your password. You'll get frustrated. In reality, the issue was just that you changed your iPhone time to get extra lives in Candy Crush and forgot to change it back.
The internet relies on SSL/TLS certificates. These are security handshakes between your phone and a website. These certificates have very specific "not before" and "not after" dates. If your iPhone thinks the year is 2015, it will look at a 2026 security certificate and think, "This is from the future, it must be a scam," and block you from the site entirely.
Dealing with Time Zone Glitches
Travelers have it the worst. You land in Tokyo, and your phone insists it's still dinner time in Chicago.
If your time zone isn't updating, check the Time Zone field right under the automatic toggle. Sometimes, the phone gets "stuck" on a specific city. You can manually type in a city name—try searching for the closest major hub. Keep in mind that "Date & Time" and "Language & Region" are two different things in iOS. If your calendar looks weird (like it's showing the year 2569), you might accidentally have the Buddhist Calendar selected in your Region settings rather than the Gregorian one.
The "Time Travel" Trick for Gamers
Let’s be honest. Half the people searching for how to change date and time in iphone are just trying to skip a wait timer in a game.
It works—sometimes.
- Close the game completely (swipe up from the app switcher).
- Turn off Set Automatically.
- Move the date forward.
- Open the game and claim your rewards.
- Crucial step: Close the game again before turning "Set Automatically" back on.
If you don't close the game before reverting the time, the game might realize you cheated and give you a "negative" timer. I’ve seen people end up with a "Time until next reward: 45,000 hours" message because the game engine got confused by the sudden jump backward in time.
Actionable Troubleshooting Steps
If you’ve followed the menus and things still aren’t right, try these specific moves:
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- Force Restart: Not just off and on. Volume up, Volume down, then hold the side button until the Apple logo appears. This clears the temporary cache of the "timed" daemon that manages system clock sync.
- Update iOS: Apple frequently pushes patches for GPS and daylight savings time bugs. If you're on an old version of iOS 17 or 18, your time zone database might simply be out of date.
- Reset Network Settings: If the phone can't talk to the time servers, it can't sync. This will wipe your saved Wi-Fi passwords, so use it as a last resort, but it often fixes the greyed-out toggle issue.
- Check for Profiles: Go to Settings > General > VPN & Device Management. If there is a work profile there, your IT department might be forcing the time to stay synced to prevent "time-clocking" fraud.
The iPhone is a precision instrument. While it gives you the "manual" option, it really, really wants to be in control of the clock. If you do change it manually, just remember to flip it back to automatic as soon as you're done. Your apps, your browser, and your 2FA codes will thank you.
To verify your time is perfectly synced after making changes, you can visit a site like time.is. It will tell you exactly how many seconds your iPhone’s internal clock is ahead or behind the atomic standard. If you're more than 0.5 seconds off, hit that "Set Automatically" toggle again to force a refresh.