Meeting Planner
Plan a meeting across time zones. Compare everyone's working hours on an hour-by-hour grid, pick a slot and download it as an .ics calendar file.
Participants
The first participant's time zone sets the day shown in the grid. Working hours are local; an end time earlier than the start means a night shift.
Hour-by-hour grid
Each column is the same moment for everyone. Click a column (or a button in the Available row) to pick that slot. +1 / −1 marks the next or previous day.
working hours outside working hours night (22:00–07:00) +1 / −1: next or previous day
Selected slot
How to use the meeting planner
- Choose the Meeting date. The Today button resets it to today.
- Under Participants, enter each person or team: an optional Name, a City or time zone (for example “Paris”, “Montreal” or
Asia/Singapore), and their local working hours in Work starts and Work ends. Use Add a participant for more rows (up to 12) and Remove to delete one. - Read the Hour-by-hour grid. Each row is a participant and each column is the same moment for everyone, shown in each person’s local time. Green cells are inside working hours, grey cells are at night, and a small +1 or −1 means the next or previous day.
- The Available row counts how many people are in working hours for each slot. Columns where everyone is available are highlighted, and the sentence under the grid lists those time ranges.
- Click a column, or its button in the Available row, to pick that slot. The Selected slot box then lists the meeting in every participant’s time zone and in UTC. Use Copy to paste it into an email or chat, or give the event a title and click Download .ics to add it to your calendar.
The Grid step (1 hour, 30 minutes or 15 minutes) sets the size of each column, and Meeting length sets how long the meeting lasts in the selected slot and in the calendar file. Tick Weekend days are days off to exclude weekends (the Weekend setting chooses them: Saturday – Sunday by default, Friday – Saturday in most Arab countries…), which matters when a Monday morning in Tokyo is still Sunday evening in California.
How the overlap is calculated
The first participant’s time zone sets the day shown in the grid: the columns run from midnight to midnight in that zone. For each slot, the tool converts the moment into every participant’s zone with the time zone database built into your browser. A participant counts as available only if the whole slot fits inside their working hours, so with a one-hour step, someone working 9:00 to 17:00 is available from the 9:00 column to the 16:00 column.
Working hours are local and can cross midnight: enter 22:00 to 06:00 for a night shift. Daylight saving time is handled automatically. On the day clocks change, the grid has 23 or 25 columns, and during the weeks when North America and Europe switch on different dates, the overlap moves by an hour, as it does in reality.
The .ics calendar file
The downloaded file follows the iCalendar standard (RFC 5545) and stores the start and end in UTC, so Outlook, Google Calendar, Apple Calendar and Thunderbird all place it at the right local time for whoever imports it. The description contains the same per-zone list as the Selected slot box. The file is generated in your browser; nothing is uploaded.
Tips for fair meetings across time zones
- Between Europe and North America, the overlap is usually the European afternoon and the North American morning.
- With participants in Asia, Europe and the Americas, there is often no slot that fits everyone. Rotate the inconvenient time between teams instead of always asking the same people to join late.
- Half-hour zones such as India (UTC+05:30) work better with the 30-minute step.
Frequently asked questions
Why is there no slot where everyone is available?
Working days on three continents often don’t overlap at all. The sentence under the grid then tells you how many participants the best slots suit, so you can choose who joins outside their usual hours.
Does the tool handle daylight saving time?
Yes. Every cell is calculated from the IANA time zone rules for that exact date, including the weeks when the US and Europe are only five hours apart instead of six.
Can working hours cross midnight?
Yes. If Work ends is earlier than Work starts, the hours are treated as a night shift that ends the next day.
Which calendar apps can open the .ics file?
Any app that supports iCalendar: Google Calendar, Outlook, Apple Calendar, Thunderbird and most phone calendars. The times are stored in UTC and shown in the local time of whoever imports the event.
Are my participants saved?
The participant list is saved in your browser’s local storage so it is there next time. It is never sent to a server.
Related tools
- Time Zone Converter Convert a date and time from one time zone to several others at once, with daylight saving time handled automatically. Search any IANA time zone or city.
- World Clock See the current time in several cities at once, with each city's UTC offset, daylight saving time status and whether it is day or night there.
- Date Difference Calculator Count the days between two dates, and see the difference in weeks, months, years, weekdays and hours. Handles leap years and month ends correctly.