macOS detects location but doesn't Set Time Zone Automatically

Question

Recently my automatic timezone update stopped working. (i.e. it used to work but now it doesn't)

The Troubling thing is that my Mac detects the correct location (e.g. Golden, CO), but it doesn't use this to update the timezone despite Set my timezone automatically using current location being checked. See screenshot.

Does anyone know how to fix this?

This issue now occurs with every network I have tried: work, home, airports, hotels, etc. and, I have already tried the usual set of fixes such as toggling auto timezone off and on, closing system preferences, rebooting, and repairing permissions.

OS: OS X 10.9.5 (13F1112)

System: MacBook Pro Retina, 13-in mid-2014

Answer 1

This just happened to me on High Sierra. Kept trying to change so that the Mac's location would automatically update the timezone. The Mac could detect where is was (both using the Maps application and the red pin in System Preferences / Date & Time / Time Zone showed the correct location) but the time zone was 'stuck' in the place where I was last week. This continued through reboots and toggling all the options in Date & Time.

Here was the fix for me. In Bash (ie, launch Terminal):

$ cd /etc
$ ls -l localt*

It should be a link to the IANA timezone database like so (assuming this Mac is near LA):

lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  45 Aug 30 17:32 localtime -> /var/db/timezone/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles

If it is not:

1. Turn off the automatic time zone in System Preferences / Date & Time / Time Zone
2. In Terminal sudo rm /etc/localtime to remove the incorrect link
3. Reboot (localtime will be recreated)
4. Restart automatic time zone in System Preferences / Date & Time / Time Zone

That worked for me after Googling and pulling hair for a few minutes. YMMV.

Answer 2

Apparently at least a few others have had this problem. See [ https://discussions.apple.com/thread/7126456 ]. The only solution found to work in that discussion is to:

Solution: Re-install the OS. (Yikes!)

Other attempts in that discussion, including a few beyond those I mention above, didn't work. A new OS install seems rather drastic/painful, so for now I will stick with the

Work around: Switch to manual timezone control.

Hopefully Apple will push a fix soon for Mavericks users, though perhaps all of the focus is on Yosemite and (soon) El Cap.

Any simpler solutions still welcome!

Answer 3

Here is another work around:

1. Launch the command line terminal (Launchpad-->Terminal)

2. Run the following command:

   sudo ntpdate -u time.apple.com (It will ask for your password)

That's it! Your clock is now updated with Apple's time server

Answer 4

After updating to Mojave some location functions were not working despite being enabled i.e. the precise location in setting the time zone and anty location being reported in 'Find My Mac'

The problem was fixed by following advice to reset accessibility in Terminal (taken from here):

tccutil reset Accessibility

Doing so fixed the precise location feature for setting the timezone and enabled the location of my computer to be determined in 'Find My Mac' in iCloud (and in 'Find My iPhone' app in iOS) instantly.

Answer 5

@drewk's answer worked for me with the addendum that you must have location services turned on and, under the System Services menu, have the Setting Time Zone option ticked:

Answer 6

I came here because I had the same issue except on Big Sur (11.3.1) and while @drewk's answer is near-perfect, I was able to skip the reboot by doing the following:

1. sudo rm /etc/localtime
2. sudo ln -is /var/db/timezone/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime

Also, this doesn't seem to address the problem permanently until Apple rolls out a fix .... however, it does allow one to create an easy alias and carry on. Something like

function update_time_zone() {
    sudo rm /etc/localtime
    sudo ln -is /var/db/timezone/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles /etc/localtime
}

PS. Big Sur doesn't seem to have ntpdate as mentioned in this answer

Answer 7

Short answer:

1. Make sure that the permission for setting the time zone using location services is enabled (see @Dark Star1's answer)
2. Golden, CO uses Mountain Time, so check what permissions the time zone info file for Mountain Time has using ls -l /var/db/timezone/zoneinfo/US/Mountain (it should be 0644 or -rw-r--r--)
3. If permissions are not 0644, set them to 0644 using sudo chmod 0644 /var/db/timezone/zoneinfo/US/Mountain
4. Go back into System Preferences --> Date & Time and toggle 'Set time zone automatically using current location' off then on again. The timezone should be updated successfully now.

Why this works:

macOS uses tzlinkd to manage timezone changes (not time changes, that's different).

Filtering in Console.app for errors in tzlinkd then toggling 'Set time zone automatically using current location' in system settings showed me this error (I am in Zurich but have been travelling so the timezone was different. It updated automatically all through my travels though):

tzlink failed; "/var/db/timezone/zoneinfo/Europe/Zurich" has access permissions 100755

So I googled for this error and found that the source for tzlinkd expects permissions to be 0644 for time zone info files. Indeed, all time zone files in all subfolders in /var/db/timezone/zoneinfo had permissions 0644... except Europe/Zurich, which was 0755. So I changed it to 0644 using:

sudo chmod 0644 Zurich

and toggled 'Set time zone automatically using current location'. Console.app no longer showed errors for tzlinkd, and the timezone was updated correctly.

Answer 8

As of today, I run Mojave, Mavericks and Lion: Mavericks and Lion are on the internal drive while Mojave is on the external one. I used to have problems in Mavericks and Lion at different points in time. The solution below takes into account the fact you don't use proxies but that is to be judged on per-user basis.

For Mavericks and Lion I used to have Spotlight disabled for a long time enabling it only for the macOS I'm working currently in. I don't have an explanation of why it hit Mavericks and Lion but not Mojave but I suspect it's due to the incorrect indexing of metadata across all of the bootable partitions.

I turned on Spotlight for every partition I boot into turning it off for the other two. I do it every time I re-boot to one of the 3 partitions. After that Mavericks was able to establish connection with geolocation services and the function is rock solid since then.

Try running metadata processes by re-indexing your drive and make sure it's the only bootable partition or, if it's not, that Spotlight is turned only for the current bootable partition.

Update 12 Jan 2021

I use Squid proxy in Mavericks and Lion on port 3128 which translates insecure http queries to secure ones using the most recent TLS generation, and Spotlight is enabled in both. I have no geolocation problems and to disable Spotlight indexing every time I change a partition I put a special hidden file in the root folder of the file system.

ALTERNATIVE SOLUTION #2

I suddenly started to have this problem in Lion, which along the course of 7 years I use it never showed it but managed to reproduce and solve. To make long story short: if the problem can't be cured by re-indexing the volume the chances are it could arise from a corrupted database cache file in one of lower system-level folders owned by a process named "locationd". The specific file I'm referring to is a database file cache.db. In Lion, there's a folder at the path /private/var/folders/zz/zyxvpxvq6csfxvn_n00000sm00006d/C. Inside the folder, you'll find clients.plist file that contains information about every process and application granted access to the geolocation services and several db files, cache.db included.

The problem is that macOS doesn't update it properly if you uninstall an application that had previously used your Mac's geographical position. In the GUI level, you see this as a blank icon of the uninstalled application in Security&Privacy settings of System Preferences. Modifying just the plist by deleting corresponding values doesn't result in the auto-update of the aforementioned cache.db file but causes the OS to lose tracks of the location, hence the "Your location is currently undetermined" message when you're in the "Time Zone" section of the "Date&Time" settings pane.

The solution is to delete the cache.db file too and re-boot (the reboot is important). After that it may take some time for the system to rebuild the cache.db file but now your location becomes detectable and the red pin is positioned correctly. It now lets applications use your location seamlessly.

Beware that all above pertains to Lion. In the newer releases, the location of locationd files and folders may be different and so can be the database file names and their count inside the containing folder with a high probability: e.g., as of Mojave, the folder in question is at /private/var/db/locationd/ and inside there're hidden files with the dat prefix in place of cache.db. Run the following command to find the clients.plist file.

sudo find -Ex /private/var -name *clients\.plist

The output points to the enclosing folder that you can open to look inside for cache.db.