I like to propose that you please change the string “GMT” to “UTC” in the GUI, or omit it entirely, because I am no British person nor do I live in the U.K. I live in Western Eurasia, the German speaking part, and feel really offended when seeing this GMT string. While using software for more than 40 years, I never ever encountered this in software I am using. Please consider this change, as I guess the majority of people would appreciate this small but important change.
Not a Brit either and could not care less. This sounds a lot like the argument about date and the BC/AD debacle because it a reference to christianity.
Think Before the Calendar and After the Date.
GMT means General Master Time or does that make you think of slavery?
I’m a bit suprised when I found that GNOME by default doesn’t show timezone information on status bar, how did Tails managed to do that? And it shows GMT while in GNOME Settings the system timezone is configured as UTC?
Also, though not for the same reason as the main thread, I also think it should be changed to UTC since UTC has effectively succeeded GMT in most countries.
I use UTC myself but, now that nationality and the convention has come up, maybe GMT is better since it is relative to the geographic location Greenwich. Everything is plus/minus to UTC but where is UTC located? Greenwich UK. The U in UTC stands for universal but I think of universal as the whole universe. The ETs will be upset when they get here. Maybe ITC would be better where the I means international.
Before this thread that thought never crossed my mind. I checked my Windows machines and they just show my time. No zone. The Linux machines doing community computing are the same. The one running Snowflake has 2 times. The second one is UTC without the label. The logs are UTC.
You’re correct, you know, about UTC. What caught my attention was that it was made a nationality and geographic thing. “I’m not a Brit and don’t live in the UK”. The reasoning should be about using standards so everyone will understand.
It reminds me of another thread here, which was shut down, about the 3 date formats: YYYYMMDD, MMDDYYYY, DDMMYYYY
The latter two are ambiguous 132 days of the year unless you speak them or fully write them out.
I use YYYYMMDD, UTC, and say 23:00 instead of 11 PM which upsets some people.
you need to get out more - the string 'GMT" is used by over a hundred locales in over a hundred timezone formats .. I’m not going to enumerate them for you - but here’s one: Atlantic/Reykjavik timezone which is used in Tor Browser - so it’s built into software you use .. you need to open your eyes
I understand about stuff like Atlantic/Reykjavik and others. I see nothing about timezones in the Tor browser. I use the Windows version. Looked into Windows and Ubuntu and neither show GMT. I thought we were talking about what is displayed on the task bar.
Not taking sides here, just curious that I missed it.
its the timezone tor browser provides for web sites, rather that your system one. so JS will always get that timezone and depending on formatting, it will see GMT or Greenwich Mean Time. Internally, i.e for non web-accessible, it should be using the system time, e.g. for logs, timestamps, extensions, etc.
Yes, GMT, which I know what it means, offends me, as I am no Brit nor do I live in the U.K.
UTC is the successor of GMT, as shown in my previous URLs and Tails should use it as well, or omit the GMT string entirely.
It really would be best to remove the GMT string, as users who will install Tails too, get confused by GMT, because UTC is the successor and GMT is not displayed in any software people use. Also, when doing international online meetings, with time planners, UTC is common ground and the preferred choice when coordinating meetings and not GMT.
Ah yes Tor supplies the same zone for all users for anonymity. Did not know it sent GMT.
I tested 2 sites on the web. This is what I received. Interesting.
TKS for that reply.
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Wed, 18 Mar 2026 14:41:21 GMT
date: Wed, 18 Mar 2026 15:01:28 GMT
server: Apache/2.4.58 (Ubuntu)
At least they could search “GMT” and see what it means. If you remove the GMT without adding UTC, users without basic knowledge of timezones would think their computer/system is broken and try to adjust the time to their local time, thus making some website unaccessible due to TLS errors, and in worst cases, making themselves fingerprintable by having a wrong local clock.
You lived in a place where local timezone is UTC+0 for too long, you can’t imagine how people living in other places may get confuse over timezone.
This discussion could become endless if you insist in GMT and I have to tell you again that GMT is not needed. I strongly assume that GMT is a leftover from the U.S. Navy programmers, due to maritime preferences, prior the code base went to torproject.org. UTC is used everywhere and also in modern programming languages, like Go or Rust, which arti is based on, uses UTC and not GMT. Unix Epoch Time in your computer uses also UTC +0000, right?
Maybe ITC would be better where the I means international.
