Cannot manually set the time zone

I'm not able to manually set the time zone for my MacBook Pro (16" M1) running macOS Ventura 13.1.


I've tried turning off Location services and rebooting, but that hasn't helped. The Time zone setting remains disabled, when according to Apple's support forums, it should now show a "Set" button.


Is this a bug? Any ideas on how to work around this? I would need it to test some development work for different time zones.


MacBook Pro Apple Silicon

Posted on Jan 11, 2023 02:30 AM

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Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Posted on Jan 23, 2023 07:38 AM

I had the same problem and solved it:


1) Created a root user with a password like this page: How to enable the root user or change the root password on Mac - Apple Support.


2) Then logged in as root and changed the timezone like this page: https://macosx-faq.com/how-to-change-date-time-terminal/


3) Then logged in my own account and checked the timezone which was the right way set.


4) Then disabled the root user as the first page explained.


Good luck!


7 replies
Question marked as Top-ranking reply

Jan 23, 2023 07:38 AM in response to salty77

I had the same problem and solved it:


1) Created a root user with a password like this page: How to enable the root user or change the root password on Mac - Apple Support.


2) Then logged in as root and changed the timezone like this page: https://macosx-faq.com/how-to-change-date-time-terminal/


3) Then logged in my own account and checked the timezone which was the right way set.


4) Then disabled the root user as the first page explained.


Good luck!


Jan 11, 2023 02:42 AM in response to salty77

As a follow up, I was able to successfully set the time zone via the command line. However, despite successfully changing the time zone, I received this error:


$: sudo systemsetup -settimezone Asia/Jakarta
2023-01-11 10:34:36.354 systemsetup[5499:27414] ### Error:-99 File:/AppleInternal/Library/BuildRoots/2a53ee2d-6754-11ed-a659-7ef33c48bc85/Library/Caches/com.apple.xbs/Sources/Admin/InternetServices.m Line:379

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Cannot manually set the time zone

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