Time of day is off by about 1 min 20 seconds

[mk313]

Has anyone else noticed that their Mac's time is off? I noticed a few months ago that my reminders on my phone come in a few seconds after my Mac. Over time it's grown to be a more significant time gap. I checked my Mac & it's synced to time.apple.com but the time is off. If I google for the current time, it matches my phones (one AT&T & one Sprint) exactly, but my mac is 1 minutes and 20 seconds earlier than that. As I write this, it says 10:16 AM on both phones, but the Mac is showing 10:17 AM.

I've tried restarting my laptop, but that didn't help anything.

 

[chown33]

Try temporarily unchecking (turning off) the Mac's sync to time.apple.com. Then turn it on again. I used to occasionally see things drift out of sync, and that's what I did to correct it.

You could also try picking a different server than time.apple.com in the pref pane. I don't know if that's a feature in the OS you're using.

Finally, you can check against another source: NIST's time.gov.

 

[mk313]

Try temporarily unchecking (turning off) the Mac's sync to time.apple.com. Then turn it on again. I used to occasionally see things drift out of sync, and that's what I did to correct it.

You could also try picking a different server than time.apple.com in the pref pane. I don't know if that's a feature in the OS you're using.

Finally, you can check against another source: NIST's time.gov.

Thanks, turning it of & then back on didn't help, but switching to another server did. I didn't even realize that there were other options in the preferences panel.

 

[chown33]

Thanks, turning it of & then back on didn't help, but switching to another server did. I didn't even realize that there were other options in the preferences panel.

I'm a bit surprised that time.apple.com didn't work, because before I wrote my earlier reply, I tried that server on 3 different Mac OS versions, and it worked on all of them. So did the other servers in the prefpane, and they all synced to within a second or so of time.gov.

The only explanation I can think of is that time.apple.com was unreachable by your Mac for some reason, so it was never actually syncing. That would also be consistent with the slow-drift symptom. Maybe there's something in the system log of Console.app, but you'd probably have to search for the keyword "time" or "date" to unearth it.

 

[mk313]

I'm a bit surprised that time.apple.com didn't work, because before I wrote my earlier reply, I tried that server on 3 different Mac OS versions, and it worked on all of them. So did the other servers in the prefpane, and they all synced to within a second or so of time.gov.

The only explanation I can think of is that time.apple.com was unreachable by your Mac for some reason, so it was never actually syncing. That would also be consistent with the slow-drift symptom. Maybe there's something in the system log of Console.app, but you'd probably have to search for the keyword "time" or "date" to unearth it.

Yah, I'm sure that's why happened. I wouldn't be surprised if, now that it's syncing again, if I moved back to time.apple.com if it started working again. Who knows what was going on, but Isomething was keeping it from updating. I'm using the European option (I forget what it was called, but still an apple server) and it's working great. If time.apple.com wasn't working on a large scale, I'm sure it would have been big news. Thanks again for the tip. I didn't even realize that there were other options to sync to. If it starts to drift again, I'll with it back to time.apple.com, but for now, the issue is resolved.

 

[DeltaMac]

Time drifts off slowly, when there's no connection to the time server (for whatever reason)
I occasionally check that the network time server is actually reachable by turning the time server choice OFF, then changing the time manually to a completely wrong time and date, then turn the time server back on. Should sync back to correct time and date in a few seconds, and should be correct at that point.

 

[mk313]

Time drifts off slowly, when there's no connection to the time server (for whatever reason)
I occasionally check that the network time server is actually reachable by turning the time server choice OFF, then changing the time manually to a completely wrong time and date, then turn the time server back on. Should sync back to correct time and date in a few seconds, and should be correct at that point.

That's a great way to do it. I didn't think of changing the time. Then it's obvious if the time is correct or not. Next time it drifts, i'll employ that tactic.

 

[NoBoMac]

Late to the game.

Saw this one day last week (did not time it to see exact difference). But since then, clocks seem to be in-sync. In the camp that there might have been something off re: Apple's time servers. iPhones are getting time sync from cell towers, so, why seeing different Mac vs iPhone.

 

[mk313]

Late to the game.

Saw this one day last week (did not time it to see exact difference). But since then, clocks seem to be in-sync. In the camp that there might have been something off re: Apple's time servers. iPhones are getting time sync from cell towers, so, why seeing different Mac vs iPhone.

Thanks for the reply. It's nice to see that others were seeing the same thing. I agree, if that's the case, it sounds like something was off on Apple's end. Thanks for the feedback.