Timezone overlap tool for remote teams

How to use this timezone overlap tool

A good timezone overlap tool answers one question quickly: when are we all actually free? Meridian is a free timezone overlap tool for remote teams that keeps every city locked to the same UTC moment while you drag. That means you are not converting PST to GMT in your head, then London, then Tokyo — you are comparing one shared slot. For city-pair playbooks, see our guides on US–UK timezone overlap and Asia–Europe meeting times.

Step-by-step

1. Open the planner and keep the default cities, or search for partners (for example Los Angeles for PST/PDT and London for GMT/BST).
2. Set work hours that match your team culture (many teams use 09:00–18:00; customer support may need wider windows).
3. Drag any city bar or the marker. All rows update together so dates and local times stay honest across midnight boundaries.
4. Watch the green overlap band. It highlights hours that fall inside every selected city’s work window.
5. Press Now to jump to the current UTC time, or copy the invite / share link when you find a workable slot.

Practical tips for remote teams

• Start with three cities. Four is useful for global product teams; six is the maximum and often creates no overlap.
• If Asia and US West have no shared work hours, schedule async updates and keep live calls for Asia–Europe or Europe–US pairs.
• Always include the date in invites. “Tuesday 10:00” is ambiguous when one city is already on Wednesday.
• Recheck around daylight saving transitions in March/April and October/November for US and Europe.

Cross-timezone meetings for remote teams

Cross-timezone meetings fail when people convert clocks privately and paste conflicting local times. A shared planner keeps the conversation on one UTC instant, then shows each city’s local date and time — including “+1 day” cases that email threads often miss. Use the interactive planner above, then follow the step-by-step guide when onboarding teammates.

For US–UK calls, pairing Los Angeles and London is the classic PST to GMT path — see the full US–UK timezone overlap guide. For Asia–Europe collaboration, Taipei or Tokyo with Berlin/London usually yields a clearer overlap than forcing a US West slot — details in Asia–Europe meeting times. Also read daylight saving rules or the FAQ.

PST to GMT converter (and PDT / BST)

Need a fast PST to GMT converter? Add Los Angeles and London in the planner, drag to your proposed hour, and read both local clocks for the same moment. In daylight months the West Coast may show PDT (UTC−7) and the UK may show BST (UTC+1) — Meridian still keeps them aligned because both rows share one UTC minute.

This is more reliable than memorizing “PST is eight hours behind GMT,” which breaks during daylight saving transitions. See UTC, GMT, PST, and daylight saving for definitions, or return to cross-timezone meeting tips for team workflows.

UTC, GMT, PST, and daylight saving

UTC (Coordinated Universal Time) is the reference clock for global scheduling. Meridian treats the selected meeting as a UTC minute, then projects it into each city. GMT (Greenwich Mean Time) aligns with UTC in winter for the UK; in summer the UK uses BST (British Summer Time, UTC+1).

PST (Pacific Standard Time, UTC−8) and PDT (Pacific Daylight Time, UTC−7) cover Los Angeles and much of the US West Coast. Searching “PST” or “Los Angeles” in Meridian adds that zone so a PST to GMT converter workflow is just two rows on the same timeline.

Daylight saving time exists because some regions shift clocks seasonally to stretch evening daylight. Not every country observes it — for example Taiwan, Japan, and China stay on fixed offsets, while the US, UK, and much of the EU change twice a year. Using IANA zones such as America/Los_Angeles or Europe/London is safer than hard-coding “UTC−8”, because the library can apply the correct historical and future offset.

Meridian is intentionally client-side: calculations run in your browser with Luxon. That keeps the tool fast, private for tool inputs, and easy to share via URL parameters for cities and the selected UTC minute.

Frequently asked questions