Vincent Durmont

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October 29, 2014

Create a UTC dashboard clock widget on your mac

Since I moved to the US, I'm constantly checking the time it is around the world: sometimes in France to contact my friends, sometimes in New York where some coworkers are, etc. The thing I need the most is the UTC time. All our database and deployment timestamps are UTC and I don't really enjoy the mental gymnastics I have to perform to get the right time :)

My dashboard clock widgets

The Mac dashboard doesn't provide a UTC clock widget so I decided to create one!

Open a Terminal on your Mac and go to the dashboard widgets directory:

cd /Library/Widgets

Locate the "World Clock" widget and explore the package:

cd World\ Clock.wdgt

Open the javascript file with your favorite editor:

subl WorldClock.js

Locate the "Europe" line (should be around line 48) and add an entry for GMT/UTC:

    ...
    var Europe = [
      {city:'GMT/UTC', offset:0, timezone:'UTC', id:"2647937"},
      {city:'Amsterdam', offset:120, timezone:'Europe/Amsterdam', id:"2759794"},
    ...

Save the file and open the dashboard. Add a clock widget and you should now have the option for a GMT/UTC city :)

UTC clock widget option