How do you change your timezone?
126
I'm going to be traveling and want to change my timezone so I don't lose my streak. I've looked through all the sections in Settings, and it's not obvious. Anyone?
80 Comments
- 1522
How to change the timezone of your Duo account:
All you got do is get the app, start it with your account when you are in the new timezone and it will set it to that timezone. You can even just change the phone's/tablet's timezone setting manually and then start the app (I just tried that and it worked fine)
I just found out after my timezone changed to New Zealand time when I was there, but not back when I returned to Berlin. So after remembering that the last time I used the app was over there, it became obvious.
I hope this helps some of you, even though it comes pretty late.
So many people complain here so I couldn't believe this works, THANK YOU VERY MUCH. I just had to close the web site, open my duolingo Android app, close it, open the web site again and that's all.
- 1522
I am sorry to read that, it could be that it only works with the android version of the app.
I also have been dealing with wrong time zone for almost a year now. No way to set it right on DUO. My time and date are right on my home and work PC's. However DUO is 19 hours off when I log in from work and correct when I log in at home.
Good tip - worked for me on the web site too.
On OS X, I changed my timezone west by 5 hours, then in the Safari browser, flipped my daily target to a different setting, saved it, and checked my profile, it confirmed I now had an additional 5 hours to complete my daily target. I then flipped my daily goal back to normal, saved it, and reset my computer's time zone back to normal - I checked my Duolingo profile again and I still have 5 hours to complete my daily target.
Now I can practice my french after midnight or before midnight without losing my streak - useful for night owls like me!
Lingot for you for the useful tip!
This worked perfectly in Windows as well. It even retroactively fixed my last day. I had missed finishing my practice by about thirty seconds and thought I would have to start all over. Cheers to you!
Thank you so much. It worked for me. Do you know of a way I can change the timezone back without affecting the app? Or do I just stop using the app and stick to the PC version?
I've been unable to change it back without affecting the app.
Perhaps give feedback to say you want the ability to choose your daily target time? I've done this and the more who do the more likely we'll get it :)
I have lost streak more than 5 times because I traveled to Dallas and moved back to California. The time zone is still set to Dallas so I keep loosing streaks if I don't do it before 10! This is ridiculous!
come on guys, how could duolingo have predicted that people interested in studying foreign languages might also travel?
It even appears that signing up during daylight savings time will cause that "zone" to be used permanently.
This is ridiculous. So I made my account when I was living in Australia and now I'm back living in the UK but am constantly stuck in the +10 time zone. How difficult would it be to add a time zone option that you can only change say, once per month?
This needs to be addressed, I have the same issue. Went from GMT+2 to GMT-8 and streaks are really broken.
You can't change it unfortunately. It is based on the time zone you signed up in which means that you'll need to remember practising based on your old time zone. Perhaps you could buy a streak freeze just in case something goes wrong.
So this is actually not true. I signed up in Central time zone, no problem. A few weeks later, I traveled to Italy where i stayed (and duolingo'd) for ~3 weeks, and about half-way through my visit the timezone changed to my new location. Now I'm back in Central time zone, but its still on my timezone from Italy.
So its possible; perhaps just not possible for us to change it manually. I realize your Product team may think it a niche issue, but consider this application is probably used by many who travel and may significantly impact their user experience! Just my two cents :)
Thank you for your comments, but it is better to pass them on via the Support tab or to people with blue rings. I am only a moderator, a regular user volunteering to help out in the forums.
I signed up in a different time zone myself and the time for resetting my streak hasn't changed over the past two years. Note that the weekly/monthly leader boards are reset at the same time for everyone (I think midnight in Central European Time) while the streak is based on the time zone a user signed up in.
Good to know; i'll pass my comments on as you suggested.
> while the streak is based on the time zone a user signed up in.
Yup; I'm talking about my streak, not the leader boards. I signed up in the States, and now my streak timezone operates on Italy time (unsure what timezone) -- right now its 12:30PM my time, but streak says it will end in 4 hours (I was +7 from here, so thats right at midnight as expected).
Its just an interesting note; will be curious to see if it eventually changes back to my original timezone. I'm guessing in your case you didn't make such a drastic timezone change as I did - probably an artifact of the physical location in which they replicate data.
You are right. I signed up in the Pacific Time Zone, but my turnover is at 9:00 PDT. I missed my turnover today by 6 minutes because I forgot I had to do it early.
I'm in Pacific US time zone. I assumed I can keep my streak from 12:01 am until 24 hours later. but it doesn't work. It seems that I lose credit for work after 9:00 pm or so.
- 185
I do too. So have you figured out how to change the time zone you're account is in?
- 31
You have to download the app, then it'll go from your device's timezone (it also switches the web version to that timezone... so you don't have to actually use the app, can just set the time with it then delete).
Australia to Switzerland -> 12hrs, so roll-over is at midday! Please fix this duolingo, it is a real problem for trying to keep streaks.
Agreed. I've basically given up on keeping my streak. I'm going to sign up with another account in the hope that will be in the right time zone and just start again.
This seems like such an easy thing to do, why isn't it done?
Recently my "duolingo days" have come to end at 11 pm. I am not sure if that is because my real timezone (GMT) has change into the summertime timetable or if it because I acessed Duolingo in a country where the timetable is GMT+1, but it's annoying anyway, because I usually do my duolingo classes between 10 pm and midnight - and now I can miss a day in duolingo (and lose my streak) even though I train everyday in real-life streak. Boring, and, once again, so easy to fix...
It will change to whatever timezone your phone is set to if you use it on an android phone. Everyone else is out of luck. I understand that they don't want anyone to cheat, but there are ways to fix this without giving the option to the user. They should have it access your location from your phone, and then based on where you are set your timezone. That way everyone who travels, which is most people these days, won't have an issue.
For those of you who didn't have luck using the app to change your time zones—go to settings and change your daily goal!
You can change it back to what it previously was after, but changing the daily goal got Duolingo to save my new time zone when I moved 9 hours ahead. Before changing my daily goal, but after having logged into the Android app, the web version was still telling me there was 22 hours left to complete my daily goal. After changing my daily goal, it's telling me I have 13 hours left in the web version.
- 126
Any chance of that changing? Should I suggest it as a fix? It seems like it would be a super simple thing to do, but maybe people would abuse it? I dunno. That seems pretty weird. I guess for now, I just have to accept there's a good chance I may lose the streak I have going.
- 308
Definitely weird and annoying, when I come home at night from work I have to jump to the computer and I'm lucky to have only an hour minus, but I'm thinkg of abandonning this account and get a -3 gain on another, because nobody is doing lessons at 3AM.
One year later and we're still waiting. If I give you another lingot could you guys do it?
I know it's technically easy to implement. Ideally we could choose our own time for the day to roll over, or use IP geolocation. Put in a day delay so people don't cheat to extend their streaks. I don't understand what the problem is....
Gosh its so darn annoying. I don't understand why my timer is off, i didn't even travel! But it is ending my days at 10:30 at night. Which is around the time i would normally get to doing my duolingo.
My day reset around 6-8 hours after I signed up. I live in Australia, but apparently duolingo has me somewhere in the United States? Is there some way that I can get my account changed so it's at least somewhere in my country? Heck, I'll take New Zealand.
The current restriction really is too rigid. I'm stuck with my day turning over at 11:00 pm, a time when I'm usually working and productive. It would be great if users could set their own end-of-day like in Anki software. I can easily see myself doing this at 2 am before sleeping, but I would never get up and be doing this at 5 or 6 am, so all that time is just wasted.
Another possible solution would be if Duolingo used 30 hr days or something, and have them overlap to introduce a bit of flexibility.
The whole point of this site is motivation. It's quite demotivational when you're having an atypical schedule one day and psyched up to go do your lessons, only to find that you've missed your window by a few minutes.
Preach it!! I lost a nice streak because my days are ending at 11 also, which is when im most productive. Its so annoying!
- 112
Yes, I lost a 60+ day streak due to a time zone difference. It says it changes, but something was definitely amiss.
I moved to Oz and am now suffering from a midday reset. Not terrible, just slightly annoying.
I have exactly the same problem. I travel a lot and I created the profile as I was in Thailand and now that I'm back in the USA I have 12h of time difference and by duolingo my day finishes at 11am. At the same time soon I'm going to be moving to the west coast so I'll have even more time difference so there is no way to actually know when my day starts or finishes. Is it really not possible to create a option in Settings to change the timezone?
Does anyone know what exactly duolingo uses to set the time zone originally? I would have assumed my computer's timezone, but that is set to US Pacific time, and my duolingo account seems to be set to US Eastern time.
- 31
Mine's set to US Eastern time too... I'm in the UK. I signed up in the UK and haven't travelled anywhere since. My computer is set to BST and my IP address is in the UK, so I've no idea why they could think I'm in the US unless that's just the standard default.
I think I'm going to have to try downloading the app just to see if it will fix it.
I also created an account in Pacific Standard Time (I'm in California) but my account seems to be stuck in Eastern Time. It's 10.30PM here in California yet my Daily Goal says "22 Hours" left. Doesn't make sense.
I traveled to another time zone and my account seems to have switched over to it even though I got back home almost a week ago. I desperately want to be on my actual time zone but there doesn't seem to be any way to force it. I've emailed support and tweeted @duolingo but to no avail. Super frustrating.
This is a big problem for me as well. My day resets at 5 p.m.! The only way to keep a streak is by doing lessons twice a day, in the morning and the evening. Otherwise, I come home from work and the streak is gone! I emailed the support about 6 months ago but haven't heard back still.
Disappointed to see that after one year the issue has still not been addressed! "8:18PM - 15 hours left"
I signed up for my account in Seattle, but somehow the timezone is still off...it says that 9 pm is the end of the day. Is this normal? I thought it would end at 12 am
I would like my day to end at around 3AM, because that's the only time I'm really likely to be asleep, or not practicing a language. Now I have weird spikes on my chart where I have days of 0 points followed by days of 110.
I guess the reason why they might not have added it, only reason that makes sense to me, is so nobody cheats by constantly changing their timezones to keep their streak. Eg: a person in Australia or India change their timezone to U.S at last second so they have a couple extra hours to finish their streak... that's the only logical explanation I can think of.
It's not really difficult to determine the place and with it the timezone in which you're using duolingo automatically. They could implement it in the background so the user doesn't even need to set the timezone manually. Or did you set up a timezone when you created your account? How would you cheat then? I guess the reason is, that they didn't think about it in the beginning and now it's hard to change because of bad software design. As only a small group of users experience this issue, they just ignore it and focus on new features. As we don't pay any money for this service, we can't really complain about it. However I agree, that this bug is very frustrating.
I definitively agree that we can't complain about it since it's free and your idea about it automatically detecting it is actually perfect!
I just noticed this when we on the West Coast changed to Daylight Saving Time.
Sorry to hear about you guys moving to different countries and having to keep the old time zone. Yikes!
Yes... I just lost my streak wager despite having studied every day, because of this.
Even though I live in the Pacific Northwest USA, my time zone appears to have been set on east coast time, so that my streak gets taken away if I am working on Duolingo after 9:00 pm
Hello, what can I do for to change my timezone or to do something that will set the time of my day streak at midnight? Because my day in duolingo turning over at 9 a.m. It's very uncomfortable.
- 1522
You can get the app. When you log in with it, it will set the timezone to your device's timezone. I think that is the only possibility at the moment
Thanks
I started off with the app and don't remember being asked to set this up at the beginning so I can only guess at that time (2013) it wasn't very obvious. It certainly didn't set it to my devices' time zone! I tried deleting the app and reinstalling but it keeps your settings! My frustration is that I simply have no idea what time zone I am in and no way of finding out, so I haven't as yet been able to work out what time it is midnight. It would be a huge improvement for me if you could see what time zone you are set to even if it is never possible to change it.
- 1522
When you are on the website you can set a daily xp goal (just go for the 1 xp per day). When you do, it will tell you how many hours you got left to reach the goal/ to midnight
Therein lies the problem, I use the app, exclusively, and there is nothing about the timezone, hours left etc on there at all. You can set up my daily goal which I have done, perhaps the hours left could be added to the app too?
- 1522
@siobhanbeck you are right, there isn't! And there isn't even a way to see if you are on a streak, except the pop up when you start the app. I think they don't show you how much time you have left, because it should be midnight of your device. I just did another test by changing my phone's timezone in the settings and then starting the Duo app which did change how much time I got left to reach my daily goal (as I could see on the website).
Hello, this has also been a problem for me, except I lost my daily streak without even changing timezones… but I have been using it every day. Anyway, can anyone tell me how to see when "midnight" is for me? Thanks, I'm a new user and this is very confusing.
If you have given yourself a daily goal it will tell you how many hours you have left to complete the goal. From that, you can calculate what time your Duolingo day finishes. The Duolingo time system works co-cooperatively with your computer/tablet's clock. The only way to change your timezone is when you create your account on a tablet, there is a timezone setting. Unfortunately, this cannot be accessed after making your account.
Wish I knew how to change my timezone as well. Just lost a decently long streak because of it :(
Same here! Moved from central Europe to Western Canada. Time zone stuck with Western Europe, which means my Duolingo day ends in the early afternoon.
