Will iPhone Automatically ‘Fall Back’ by an Hour for DST?

BY Andy

Published 5 Nov 2017

Daylight Saving Time 2017

It’s that time of the year when you have to set the clocks back by an hour as Daylight Saving Time comes to an end in the U.S. At 2 a.m. local time on Sunday, November 5th, daylight saving time (DST) will end.

The mornings will get brighter and the evenings darker and those living in participating states of the United States will get an extra hour of sleep. I wonder why we still go through the hassle of changing our clocks twice a year when it doesn’t save us energy or money, according to experts.

If you’re a new iPhone, iPad, iPod touch or Mac user, and are wondering if your device will automatically fall back an hour, then the short answer is “Yes”, your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch will automatically fall back an hour on their own as long as you have correctly set the timezone (General > Date & Time > Time Zone). So your iPhone clock will automatically move back from 2:00 am to 1:00 am later today.

If you’re a long time iOS user then I won’t be surprised you’re worried about the timezone change as there have been bugs in iOS that has resulted in all sorts of issues. The good news is that Apple has fixed most daylight savings related bugs so you should ideally not have an issue this year.

If you’re concerned about iOS 11 or iOS 11.1 introducing bugs, then it should be a little reassuring to note that there were no major issues reported for the daylight savings time change event last week in the U.K and other regions.

In case, your iPhone, iPad or iPod touch did not move back by an hour automatically, then you need to check the following:

  • Ensure that Location Services for “Setting Time Zone” has been enabled (Settings -> Privacy -> Location Services -> System Services > Setting Time Zone). You may have disabled it to improve battery life. If it was not enabled, then enable it and reboot your device.
  • Your iOS device is on iOS 5 or later.

Let me know if your device automatically moved back by an hour correctly.

Note: Some places in the U.S. don’t observe daylight saving time. Those include Hawaii, most of Arizona, Puerto Rico, the Virgin Islands, American Samoa, Guam and the Northern Marianas. The daylight saving time ended in the U.K. and most European countries took place last week, October 25 and in case of countries like Australia and New Zealand day, daylight saving started on October 1.