Change your time zone

  • Tier: Free, Premium, Ultimate
  • Offering: GitLab Self-Managed

Users can set their time zone in their profile. New users do not have a default time zone and must explicitly set it before it displays on their profile. On GitLab.com, the default time zone is UTC.

The default time zone in GitLab is UTC, but you can change it to your liking.

To update the time zone of your GitLab instance:

  1. The specified time zone must be in tz format. You can use the timedatectl command to see the available time zones:

    timedatectl list-timezones

  2. Change the time zone, for example to America/New_York.

  1. Edit /etc/gitlab/gitlab.rb:

    gitlab_rails['time_zone'] = 'America/New_York'

  2. Save the file, then reconfigure and restart GitLab:

    sudo gitlab-ctl reconfigure
sudo gitlab-ctl restart

  1. Export the Helm values:

    helm get values gitlab > gitlab_values.yaml

  2. Edit gitlab_values.yaml:

    global:
  time_zone: 'America/New_York'

  3. Save the file and apply the new values:

    helm upgrade -f gitlab_values.yaml gitlab gitlab/gitlab

  1. Edit docker-compose.yml:

    version: "3.6"
services:
  gitlab:
    environment:
      GITLAB_OMNIBUS_CONFIG: |
        gitlab_rails['time_zone'] = 'America/New_York'

  2. Save the file and restart GitLab:

    docker compose up -d

  1. Edit /home/git/gitlab/config/gitlab.yml:

    production: &base
  gitlab:
    time_zone: 'America/New_York'

  2. Save the file and restart GitLab:

    # For systems running systemd
sudo systemctl restart gitlab.target

# For systems running SysV init
sudo service gitlab restart