Timezone filter

The Timezone filter shows dates and times in each reader's own timezone. A teacher in Tokyo writes "the briefing starts at 10:00"; a student in London reads "1:00 AM", with the timezone shown beside it. It is for courses whose students and teachers live in different timezones.

The dates and times are inserted with the companion editor plugin, Timezone date and time for TinyMCE.

Installation

Install the plugin from the Moodle plugins directory, or download the ZIP file and follow Installing plugins. The files go in the folder filter/timezone. The plugin supports Moodle 5.0 to 5.3.

Then go to Site administration > Plugins > Filters > Manage filters and set Timezone to On (see Managing filters). Install Timezone date and time for TinyMCE too, so that authors can insert dates and times.

How it works

The page as a reader in Tokyo sees it.

The same page as a reader in London sees it.

When an author inserts a date and time with the editor plugin, the text records the moment and the timezone it was written in, and shows it with that timezone, for example 2026-11-12 10:00 (Asia/Tokyo).

The filter changes that text, for each reader, into the reader's own timezone, using the reader's timezone setting in their profile. The timezone is always shown beside the date and time, so readers know which time they are looking at.

If the filter is turned off, readers see the original text, which still includes the author's timezone. The time is never ambiguous.

Settings

The Date/time format setting, with an example of each format.

In Site administration > Plugins > Filters > Timezone:

• Date/time format: how the converted date and time are written. Each option is one of the date and time formats of the site's language pack, shown with an example, so a Japanese reader sees a Japanese date format and an English reader an English one. The default is strftimedatetime.

Known limitations

• When Moodle cleans the HTML of the content, the filter cannot convert the time, and readers see the original text with the author's timezone. This happens while a user is viewing the site with Log in as, and on sites where the administrator has turned on Content cleaning everywhere (forceclean).

Capabilities

The plugin adds no capabilities.

Privacy

The plugin stores no personal data. It uses the timezone in each reader's profile.

See also

• Timezone date and time for TinyMCE
• Filters
• Managing filters
• Location settings