San Francisco Time Now

What this page shows

So you want to know what time it is in San Francisco right now. Maybe you have a call with someone in the Bay Area, a flight to catch, a launch or keynote to follow, or someone to reach before their evening is over. That is what the clock at the top of this page is for. It shows the current time in San Francisco and ticks forward every second, so there is nothing for you to work out by hand.

Wherever in the world you are reading this from, the clock tracks San Francisco and keeps itself right on its own, even across the days when the clocks change. Whether the city is on its winter or its summer setting at the time, the clock shows the correct local time.

San Francisco changes its clocks twice a year

Here is the part worth knowing about San Francisco time. The city does not stay on the same clock all year. It uses Pacific Standard Time, PST, through the winter, and moves an hour ahead to Pacific Daylight Time, PDT, for the summer.

So there are two settings behind San Francisco time:

• PST, Pacific Standard Time. Eight hours behind UTC, written UTC minus 8. The winter setting, from early November to early March.
• PDT, Pacific Daylight Time. Seven hours behind UTC, written UTC minus 7. The summer setting, from early March to early November.

The clock above follows whichever one is in force, so you do not have to track it yourself. The section further down spells out the dates if you ever need to work it out for a particular day.

What time zone San Francisco is in

San Francisco runs on Pacific Time, the zone of the US West Coast, eight hours behind UTC in winter and seven hours behind in summer. It keeps the same clock as Los Angeles, Seattle, and the rest of the coast.

San Francisco is the clock Silicon Valley keeps, and that gives Pacific Time an outsized place in the technology world. When a major product launch or keynote is set for 10 in the morning Pacific, that is the time quoted around the globe, and a great deal of the industry, from the city down through the valley, runs its calendar on this zone. It is part of why Pacific Time turns up in so many international tech and business schedules.

How to tell if San Francisco is on PST or PDT right now

San Francisco changes its clocks on two Sundays a year, and the dates are set in US law, the Uniform Time Act, last amended by the Energy Policy Act of 2005. They are different from the European dates, landing a little wider on each side:

• Spring forward. On the second Sunday of March, at 2 in the morning, the clocks jump ahead one hour. PST becomes PDT, and the city goes from UTC minus 8 to UTC minus 7.
• Fall back. On the first Sunday of November, at 2 in the morning, the clocks drop back one hour. PDT becomes PST again, at UTC minus 8.

So the rule is short. From the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November, San Francisco is on PDT. The rest of the year, early November round to early March, it is on PST. Place today between those two Sundays and you have your answer.

Time difference from San Francisco to other cities

The cities that share North America's daylight saving schedule stay a fixed distance from San Francisco all year, while the ones on different schedules can shift by an hour at the edges of the seasons. Here is the quick reference, assuming it is 12 noon in San Francisco.

A few quick examples

Let us run a few, so you can see how this works.

Say it is 12 noon in San Francisco. New York is three hours ahead all year, so 3 in the afternoon on the East Coast. In the winter, London is eight hours ahead, making it 8 in the evening there, while UTC is eight hours ahead at 8 in the evening as well.

Now a call to London, which has one small catch. The US and the UK both change their clocks, but not on the same dates, so for a couple of short windows in spring and autumn the usual eight hour gap briefly shifts by an hour. For anything that has to land exactly in those weeks, trust the live clock over the rule of thumb.

And one for Asia, which is the real challenge. Tokyo is seventeen hours ahead of San Francisco in winter, so 12 noon here is 5 in the morning the next day in Tokyo. There is no shared working hour at all, so calls between the Bay Area and Japan land in the early morning or late evening for one side.

A couple of things about San Francisco time

San Francisco sits at about 38 degrees north, so the length of the day swings a moderate amount across the year. Around midsummer there are roughly fourteen and three quarter hours between sunrise and sunset, and around midwinter still about nine and a half, a gentler spread than the cities further north.

On the clock-against-sun question, San Francisco sits a little west of the meridian Pacific Standard Time is built on, so the sun reaches its highest about ten minutes after 12 noon by the clock in winter, and an hour later in summer on PDT. The city's famous summer fog can make the daylight feel shorter than the numbers suggest, but the offset itself is a close one.

Other places on the same time

Plenty of places keep the same time as San Francisco on Pacific Time. Here are a few to jump to:

• Los Angeles time now
• Seattle time now
• California time now

And if it is the time zone itself you are reading up on rather than the city, the standard side is at PST Time Now, and the global reference it is measured from at UTC Time Now.

Questions people ask

What time is it in San Francisco right now?

The clock near the top of this page is the answer, and it updates every second. Just remember that the city changes its clocks, so it shows PST through the winter and PDT through the summer, switching over on its own. Either way, the time shown is the correct San Francisco time.

Is San Francisco on PST or PDT right now?

Go by the dates. San Francisco is on PDT from the second Sunday of March to the first Sunday of November. The rest of the year, from early November round to early March, it is on PST. Find where today falls between those two Sundays and you will know.

Is San Francisco the same time as Los Angeles?

Yes, exactly. Both are on Pacific Time, so San Francisco and Los Angeles always read the same clock, down to the second, summer and winter alike.

What time zone is San Francisco in?

Pacific Time, eight hours behind UTC in winter and seven hours behind in summer. It is the same zone as Los Angeles, Seattle, and the rest of the US West Coast.

How many hours behind New York is San Francisco?

Three hours behind, all year. Both change their clocks on the same dates, so the three hour gap between the coasts never changes.

What is the IANA name for San Francisco time?

It is America/Los_Angeles in the IANA time zone database, the time data your phone and your computer use. The whole US Pacific zone runs on this identifier, and it is what drives the live clock on this page.

References

1. Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA). Time Zone Database (the tz database), home of the America/Los_Angeles identifier. https://www.iana.org/time-zones
2. U.S. Code, Title 15, Section 260a: the Uniform Time Act of 1966, as amended by the Energy Policy Act of 2005, which sets the daylight saving dates. Office of the Law Revision Counsel. https://uscode.house.gov/view.xhtml?req=granuleid:USC-prelim-title15-section260a
3. U.S. Department of Transportation, Standard Time Zone Boundaries under 49 CFR Part 71. https://www.transportation.gov/regulations/time-act
4. National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Time and Frequency Division, the source of official time for the United States. https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division