A world clock widget for your iPhone home and lock screen
The best version of a world clock is one you never open — because the question it answers takes two seconds and opening an app takes longer than that.
Checking the time somewhere else is a two-second question asked many times a day. Unlocking a phone, finding an app and waiting for it to load is a ten-second answer.
That mismatch is the entire argument for widgets, and it applies to world clocks more than to almost anything else.
What iOS gives you
| Placement | Sizes | Good for |
|---|---|---|
| Home Screen | Small, medium, large | Several cities; a map |
| Lock Screen | Circular, rectangular, inline | One or two key facts, no unlock needed |
| StandBy (iOS 17+) | Landscape while charging | A bedside or desk clock |
The Lock Screen ones are the most useful for this and the most overlooked. They are visible on a raise-to-wake without unlocking, which brings the cost of checking down to about a second.
Choosing what goes in each size
Small. Two or three cities, or one city large. Resist the urge to fit more — a small widget with six rows is unreadable and you will stop looking at it.
Medium. Four or five cities comfortably, or a map. This is the size most people want on a home screen.
Large. A world map with a day/night terminator works well here, because it uses the area for something a list cannot do — showing at a glance who is in daylight.
Lock Screen rectangular. One or two cities. This is the highest-frequency surface you have; put the single place you check most on it.
What a good one shows
Beyond the time itself:
- The date, or at least whether it is today, tomorrow or yesterday there. Across a wide gap this is the half people forget.
- Day or night, ideally computed from real coordinates rather than guessed from the hour — the guess is wrong at high latitudes in summer.
- The offset, for when you need to do arithmetic rather than just glance.
Refresh: what to expect
iOS decides when widgets update and throttles them to protect battery. A widget is not a live clock — it is a periodically refreshed snapshot, and a few minutes of lag is normal system behaviour rather than a bug.
For a world clock this rarely matters. You are asking "is it the middle of their night," not timing a race. Opening the parent app refreshes its widgets immediately if you need the exact minute.
Adding one
Touch and hold an empty area of the Home Screen until the icons jiggle, tap + at the top, search for the app, then choose a widget and a size.
For the Lock Screen, touch and hold the Lock Screen, tap Customise, choose Lock Screen, then tap a widget slot.
Related: World clock · What the iPhone's built-in world clock can't do
Timezone: World Clock Widget
A world clock, converter and live day/night map for iPhone — 325 cities, offline, no account.
Figures on this page are computed from the IANA time zone database. Last generated 2026-08-18.