Meeting Planner
Find the working-hours overlap across cities at a glance and pick a time that works for everyone
Best Meeting Times
- Tokyo22:00
- London14:00
- New York09:00
- Tokyo23:00
- London15:00
- New York10:00
- Tokyo00:00next day
- London16:00
- New York11:00
24-Hour Overlap Board
Local time · UTC
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About this tool
The Meeting Planner helps distributed teams find a meeting time that is reasonable for everyone, no matter how many time zones they span. Add the cities you want to compare and the tool lays out each city's local time on a 24-hour grid, colour-coded by working hours (green), fringe hours (yellow), evening off-time (grey) and sleep (deep navy). A column where the colours line up is a slot that suits everyone. The Best Meeting Times panel then automatically picks the windows where the most people are awake and in business hours. Daylight saving transitions are applied automatically from the timezone database, and cities whose local date differs get a previous-day (−1) or next-day (+1) badge. Everything is computed in your browser — nothing is sent to a server.
How to use
- 1 Add the cities you want to compare using "Add city" (a few major cities are included by default).
- 2 Pick the date of your meeting (it matters because times shift around daylight-saving boundaries).
- 3 Read the 24-hour grid to see each city's local time and colour (green = working hours). Scroll horizontally to view all hours.
- 4 Check Best Meeting Times for the slots that suit everyone, then copy the share link to send to your attendees.
How it works
For each city, every instant from UTC 00:00 to 23:00 of the chosen day is converted to local time using that city's IANA time zone. Because the conversion uses the Intl date API, daylight-saving and standard-time switches are handled automatically according to the rules for that date and region. Each local hour is classified into one of four categories: 9–17 = working hours, 7–9 and 17–19 = fringe hours, 23–7 = sleep, and everything else (19–23) = off. For each UTC hour the tool sums a per-city score (working = 2, fringe = 1, otherwise 0) across all cities, and the highest-scoring hours become the Best Meeting Times. A badge shows −1 when the local date is the day before the selected date and +1 when it is the day after.
Frequently Asked Questions
What do the cell colours mean?
Each colour represents the category of that city's local hour. Green is working hours (9:00 up to 17:00), yellow is fringe hours (7–9 and 17–19) when people may still be reachable, grey is evening off-time (19–23), and deep navy is sleep (23:00 to 7:00). The more green that lines up in a column, the better that time is for everyone.
Does it account for daylight saving time (DST)?
Yes. Each city's local time is computed using the IANA time zone database, so whether DST applies on that specific date is reflected automatically. London, for example, shows as UTC+1 (BST) in summer and UTC+0 (GMT) in winter. That is exactly why choosing the correct meeting date matters.
What do the "+1" and "−1" badges mean?
For some cities a given UTC instant is already the next calendar day locally, or still the previous day. +1 means the local date is the day after the date you selected, and −1 means the day before. They prevent the classic confusion when scheduling meetings that straddle midnight.
How does the shareable URL work?
As soon as you choose cities and a date, that state is reflected in the URL (?cities=tokyo,london&date=YYYY-MM-DD). Press "Copy link" and send it to your attendees — they will open the exact same board with the same cities and date. Just paste it into an email or chat to share the plan.
How many cities can I add?
There is no hard limit, but 3–5 cities are the most readable and practical. The more cities you add, the narrower the window where everyone is in working hours. If no overlap exists, consider the fringe hours (yellow) as meeting candidates too.
Related tools & uses
Cross-border work revolves around time. Use the World Clock to see the current time in each city, the Time Zone Converter for a one-to-one offset, the Sun & Moon Calculator to know daylight at the other end, and the Unix Timestamp Converter for precise date math. Together they make scheduling with anyone, anywhere, smooth.