Get the Time Zone Name or Abbreviation using JavaScript

# Table of Contents

1. Get the Time Zone Name using JavaScript
2. Get the Time Zone Abbreviation using JavaScript

# Get the Time Zone Name using JavaScript

Use the Intl.DateTimeFormat() method to get the time zone name.

The resolvedOptions method returns a new object, on which you can access the timeZone property to get the name of the time zone.

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// 👇️ "Europe/Sofia"
console.log(Intl.DateTimeFormat().resolvedOptions().timeZone);

// 👇️ Eastern European Standard Time (en-US locale)
console.log(
  new Date()
    .toLocaleDateString('en-US', {
      day: '2-digit',
      timeZoneName: 'long',
    })
    .slice(4),
);

// 👇️ Osteuropaeische Normalzeit (de-DE locale)
console.log(
  new Date()
    .toLocaleDateString('de-DE', {
      day: '2-digit',
      timeZoneName: 'long',
    })
    .slice(4),
);

// 👇️ get time zone offset -120 means timezone offset is UTC+02
const offset = new Date().getTimezoneOffset();
console.log(offset); // 👉️ -120

The Intl.DateTimeFormat() method returns an object that enables language-sensitive date and time formatting.

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// 👇️ "Europe/Sofia"
console.log(Intl.DateTimeFormat().resolvedOptions().timeZone);

The resolvedOptions method returns an object, which has a timeZone property, which represents the visitor's default time zone.

If you need the time zone name in a long, localized form, e.g. Pacific Standard Time, use the toLocaleDateString() method instead.

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// 👇️ Eastern European Standard Time (en-US locale)
console.log(
  new Date()
    .toLocaleDateString('en-US', {
      day: '2-digit',
      timeZoneName: 'long',
    })
    .slice(4),
);

// 👇️ Osteuropaeische Normalzeit (de-DE locale)
console.log(
  new Date()
    .toLocaleDateString('de-DE', {
      day: '2-digit',
      timeZoneName: 'long',
    })
    .slice(4),
);

The 2 arguments we passed to the method are:

1. locales - a string with a BCP 47 language tag or an array of such strings. You can use any of the available locales, e.g. es-MX for Mexico or en-CA for Canada. If you need more information about this parameter, check out the MDN docs.
2. options object, where we set the day and timeZoneName properties. Read more about the options object in the MDN docs.

The timeZoneName property represents the localized time zone name and can be set to a value of long or short.

# Get the Time Zone Abbreviation using JavaScript

The toLocaleDateString method can be passed an options object where the timeZoneName property can be set to short to get the time zone abbreviation.

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// 👇️ GMT+3
console.log(
  new Date()
    .toLocaleDateString('en-US', {
      day: '2-digit',
      timeZoneName: 'short',
    })
    .slice(4),
);

// 👇️ OEZ
console.log(
  new Date()
    .toLocaleDateString('de-DE', {
      day: '2-digit',
      timeZoneName: 'short',
    })
    .slice(4),
);

We also set the day property to 2-digit, which we used to slice off the date part from the string and only return the time zone name.

If you need to get the time zone offset, use the getTimezoneOffset() method.

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// 👇️ get timezone offset -120 means time zone offset is UTC+02
const offset = new Date().getTimezoneOffset();
console.log(offset); // 👉️ -120

The getTimezoneOffset() method returns the difference, in minutes, between a date (evaluated in UTC) and the same date evaluated in the visitor's local time zone.

If you get a value like -120, then the time zone offset is UTC+02.

Similarly, for a value of -60, the time zone offset is UTC+01.

# Additional Resources

You can learn more about the related topics by checking out the following tutorials:

• How to initialize JavaScript Date to a Particular Time Zone
• How to Create a Date without Timezone in JavaScript
• Convert a Date to another Time Zone using JavaScript
• How to set the default timezone in Node.js