# Write times your recipient can't misread > Convert time zones while writing an email in Gmail: type 5pm IST and Timehint offers your recipient's time, flags a date change, and edits only on a click. Source: https://timehint.app/write-times-in-gmail Converting a time in your head is where the mistakes creep in, especially when the answer lands on a different day. Timehint lets you convert time zones while writing an email without leaving the draft: type a time with a zone in it, and if that zone isn't your recipient's, a chip offers theirs. Your words don't change unless you click. ## The chip in your compose window Priya works in Bengaluru and has saved Kenji in Tokyo. She writes: > Can we meet at 5pm IST tomorrow? A chip appears under the draft: **5pm IST is 8:30pm JST for Kenji** · **Use their time** · × Click **Use their time** and "5pm IST" becomes "8:30pm JST" in the draft. Click × and the draft stays exactly as she typed it. Their time is labeled with the zone's abbreviation or a GMT offset, so depending on the contact the same chip may read "8:30pm GMT+9". Both are unambiguous, which is the point: a time with a zone attached can be checked by the person reading it. ## When the answer lands on another day Cross-midnight conversions are the ones that cost people meetings, so the chip says so out loud. Sarah in New York writes to Kenji: > Can we talk at 4pm ET? The chip reads **4pm ET is 5:00am JST next day for Kenji**. Without "next day", 5:00 AM looks like an early start on the same date rather than the following morning. One caveat worth reading twice: **Use their time** replaces the time, not the sentence around it. If your draft says "tomorrow at 4pm ET" and the conversion crosses midnight, the word "tomorrow" is now a day out. Fix the words yourself, or write the date instead. ## What it changes, and what it doesn't - **Nothing changes until you click.** The chip is an offer. Closing it leaves the draft untouched. - **Only the time you wrote is replaced.** Surrounding words, dates and the rest of the sentence are yours. - **It works on the last time you typed,** which is nearly always the one you're still thinking about, and it re-checks as you keep typing, so a chip you closed can come back when the draft changes. - **It uses today's offsets.** For a meeting on a date after a clock change, check the result against [the timeline](https://timehint.app/meeting-overlap), which resolves each day separately. ## When it stays quiet The feature is deliberately narrow, because a draft is a bad place to be wrong. No chip appears when: - the recipient isn't saved with a time zone, so there's nothing to convert to; - your saved recipients are in different time zones: there is no single right answer, and a guess would be worse than nothing; - the time you wrote has no zone at all ("let's meet at 5"), because only you know which 5 you meant; - the time you wrote is already your recipient's. ## One time, three readers The reason a converted time is worth a click is that the same six characters mean three different moments. Priya's "5pm IST", written in Bengaluru on Monday, September 14, 2026, reaches her colleagues like this: | Recipient | Their local time | |---|---| | Kenji, Tokyo | 8:30 PM, same day | | Amara, London | 12:30 PM, same day | | Sarah, New York | 7:30 AM, same day | Kenji reads it after dinner, Sarah before her first meeting. Both of them can work it out; the question is whether they will, and whether they'll do it correctly on a date when one of the three zones has changed its clocks. Writing the recipient's own time removes the step. ## What to write when the chip stays quiet For a message going to several zones at once, no tool can pick one right answer, so the writing has to carry it. Three habits cover almost every case: - **Name the zone you wrote in,** every time. "4:00 PM ET" can be checked; "4:00 PM" can't. - **Add the date** when the meeting is more than a day away, because the conversion may land on a different one. - **Give one alternative** for the furthest recipient: "Monday 4:00 PM ET, which is 9:00 PM in London and 1:30 AM Tuesday in Bengaluru." Two zones is helpful; five is a wall of numbers. ## Times in the messages you receive The other half of the job happens on the mail arriving. When a message you're reading contains a time written with a zone, Timehint leaves the original text alone and adds your time after it. Sarah writes "Call at 5pm EST" in September; in Bengaluru you read: > Call at 5pm EST (2:30 AM IST +1 day) The "+1 day" is doing real work there: a 5 PM call on the US East Coast is the small hours of the next morning in India, and that's a call you decline rather than accept by accident. The badge is colored by what the hour means on your own clock, and hovering over it explains the reading. The exact color thresholds are in [the guide](https://timehint.app/how-to-use#inline-times). Three rules keep this honest. Times already in your own zone aren't touched. Times with no zone aren't converted. And the conversion uses the message's date, so a time written in a summer month is read in summer time. ## Writing a time well, with or without an extension An extension helps most when the habit underneath is already good. Two rules carry the load: write the time with its zone every time, and write the date with it when the meeting is more than a day out. "Thursday, December 3, 4:00 PM ET (9:00 PM GMT)" survives being forwarded, quoted and read in another country a week later; "4pm Thursday" doesn't. The longer treatment (which abbreviations to avoid, how to write two zones without clutter, and what to put in a signature) is in [how to write time zones in an email](https://timehint.app/blog/how-to-write-time-zones-in-email). ## Frequently asked questions ### Does Timehint change my email without asking? No. It shows a chip with the converted time, and the draft only changes when you click **Use their time**. Closing the chip leaves your text alone. ### What happens if I'm writing to several people in different time zones? The chip stays quiet. There's no single correct conversion for a group spread across zones, so Timehint offers nothing rather than something misleading. Naming the zone you wrote in is the best you can do there, and it's usually enough. ### Does it convert times in the emails I receive as well? Yes. A time written with a zone in a message you open gets your local time beside it, with "+1 day" or "−1 day" when the date differs for you. This is on by default and has no switch in this version. ### Why did the chip vanish while I was typing? It follows the last time in your draft and re-checks as you write. Rewrite the sentence, delete the time or type a second one, and the offer is recalculated, which also means a chip you closed can come back when the draft changes again. ### Can I convert a time for someone I haven't saved? Not in the compose window: the conversion needs a recipient saved with a time zone, because that zone is the answer. Add them first from the side panel or from the [**Add timezone** prompt](https://timehint.app/add-timezone) on one of their messages. For a one-off, the [side panel](https://timehint.app/side-panel) shows any city you add. ### Does it work outside Gmail? No. Conversions in the message body and in compose happen in Gmail on the web, in Chrome or Brave on desktop. The [side panel](https://timehint.app/side-panel) opens beside any tab, but Timehint doesn't change other websites. ### Which formats does it recognize? Times written the way people write them: "5pm IST", "17:00 CET", "1700 hrs IST", "noon in Singapore", "3pm Pacific Time", "5pm in Mumbai" and "UTC+5:30", among others. See [how Timehint reads times and time zones](https://timehint.app/how-it-works). Next: [the sender's local time in Gmail](https://timehint.app/gmail-sender-time), or [all Timehint features](https://timehint.app/features).