Everyone's local time in one side panel
What the Timehint side panel shows for each person and place you save, how to add them, and how it differs from a world clock.
On this page
A world clock tells you what time it is in a city. That's a different question from the one you actually have, which is what time it is for the person whose message you're reading. Timehint is a multiple time zone Chrome extension built around people: save the ones you work with, and their live local times sit in a side panel beside whatever tab you're on.
Opening the panel
Click the Timehint icon in your browser toolbar and the panel opens on the right, beside the page you're on: Gmail, a document, a video call, anything. It stays there while you move between tabs, and a × in its header closes it. It needs Chrome or Brave on desktop, version 114 or later, because that's where the browser's side panel exists.
At the top is your own clock, live, with your time zone. Everything below it is your cast: the people and places you've saved.
What a row tells you
Each row answers more than "what time is it there?":
- Who and where: the person's name and city.
- How far ahead or behind they are, including half-hour zones, such as "9½ h ahead".
- Time of day: Early morning, Morning, Afternoon, Evening or Late night, so you can tell at a glance whether this is a sensible moment to reach them.
- Their local time, with the zone's abbreviation or GMT offset.
The time-of-day label is the part people end up relying on. "11:00 PM" needs a beat of thought; "Late night" doesn't.
One glance, three colleagues
You're in New York and it's 10:00 AM on Monday, September 14, 2026. The panel reads:
| Person | Their local time | Offset |
|---|---|---|
| Lukas, Berlin | 4:00 PM | 6 h ahead |
| Priya, Bengaluru | 7:30 PM | 9½ h ahead |
| Kenji, Tokyo | 11:00 PM | 13 h ahead |
That's three different decisions from one screen. Lukas has a working afternoon left, so a question to him gets an answer today. Priya is past the end of her day but not asleep; it can wait until tomorrow. Kenji is out of reach until your evening. None of that needed arithmetic, and none of it needed you to remember which of them observes daylight saving time.
Adding people
Choose Add contact and fill in three fields: a name, an email address and a time zone. The email address is what links a contact to their messages in Gmail, which is how the sender chip knows whose time to show.
The time zone field takes whatever you happen to know:
| You type | It matches |
|---|---|
| Mumbai | Asia/Kolkata |
| IST | India Standard Time |
| Indian Standard Time | Asia/Kolkata |
| Asia/Kolkata | Asia/Kolkata |
A hint under the field confirms the match and shows the current time there, so you can sanity-check a zone before you save it. If a colleague writes from two addresses, save both, each as its own contact.
You can also save people without opening the panel at all: when one of them emails you, the Add timezone prompt in Gmail does it in two clicks.
Adding places
Places are cities you care about without a person attached: a client's head office, the city hosting next month's conference, the home town of a team you're about to join. Type a city into Search contacts or a city and add it from the results, or press ⌘K (Ctrl+K on Windows) while the panel is focused to open the same palette with recent and suggested cities.
That shortcut works inside the panel, not across the browser, so it never competes with a shortcut on the page behind it.
Places search falls back to the full list of time zones your browser knows, so somewhere like Tashkent is reachable even if it isn't in the suggested cities. There's no limit on how many people or places you save.
Keeping the list readable
Once you're past a dozen rows, three controls matter:
- Pin to top keeps the people you check constantly above everyone else.
- Hide takes a row out of the list without deleting it; a note tells you how many are hidden, and searching brings them back.
- Sort by Manual, Time or Name. Sorting by time groups your day into "people who are awake" and "people who aren't", which is usually what you're really asking.
People are listed before places, so a city never pushes a colleague off the top of the list.
When you're the one who moved
A panel of local times is only right if your own is. When your computer's clock moves to a zone with a different offset (you've landed somewhere, or changed your system settings), Timehint notices and asks, rather than switching underneath you:
Your computer's clock is on Singapore time.
You choose Switch to Singapore or Keep London. Keeping your home zone means every offset in the panel stays measured from home, which is what you want on a short trip where your colleagues' hours haven't changed. Switching means the panel, the timeline and the Gmail chips all move with you. The prompt appears in the panel and in Gmail, and it waits for an answer instead of assuming one.
The step-by-step version is in when you travel.
What it isn't
- It isn't a world clock app. The list is built from the people you work with, not from a set of famous cities, and it exists next to the tab you're working in rather than in a separate window.
- It's desktop only. Chrome and Brave, version 114 or later. Other Chromium browsers may work but aren't tested.
- Without an account, it belongs to one browser profile. Contacts live in the profile you installed Timehint in. Sign in to the optional free account to sync them to your other browsers. You can also download a copy from Settings; this version can't import one back.
- Working hours are one setting, not one per person. It applies to everyone in your cast, and it drives the timeline and overlap windows.
Frequently asked questions
There's no limit. The practical one is your own attention: past a couple of dozen rows, pin the handful you check daily and hide the rest.
The panel opens beside any tab, so your cast and the timeline are always a click away. Timehint's in-page features work in Gmail on the web (the sender chip, Add timezone and Use their time) and in Google Calendar (each saved guest's local time on an event).
A person has a name, an email address and a time zone, and that address is what connects them to their messages in Gmail. A place is just a city with a clock. Use people for colleagues and clients, and places for offices, events or cities you follow without emailing anyone there.
Your computer's clock settings, read once when you first run Timehint and confirmed by you. No location permission is involved. If you move, you can change it in Settings, and Timehint offers to switch when it notices your clock has moved to a different offset.
No. It's there when you want it. The Gmail features work whether the panel is open or closed.
They're kept as a contact, but they can't be placed on a clock, so they don't get a row with a time. The panel says so: a line notes that someone isn't shown until a zone is set, and clicking it opens the field to fill in. The same rule explains why a contact with no zone gets no chip in Gmail.
Not unless you sign in. They're kept in the browser profile you installed Timehint in. If you sign in to the optional free account, they're also backed up to it so they sync across your browsers. See what Timehint stores.
Next: find meeting times across time zones, or the step-by-step version in the guide.