How do I get the UTC offset for a timezone in Java?

Question

Given a timezone (America/New_York), how do I go about getting the UTC offset?

I have tried using java.util.TimeZone but had no luck. I am fine with using Joda Time as well if the solution is viable in that.

TimeZone should work, please add the code you've tried to the question, and include any exceptions, output, etc. — blm, Oct 08 '15 at 22:52

score 9 · Accepted Answer · edited May 23 '17 at 10:31

The offset for a particular time zone can vary based on the current time because of daylight savings, etc. UTC doesn't have daylight savings, but "America/New_York" will change offsets with the daylight savings switch. Therefore, the offset is a function of both the current time and the timezone. The answers here give some examples of how to get the current offset:

Java TimeZone offset

score 3 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 29 '18 at 15:45

Note: Current offset depends on

raw tz-offset
day-savings time (DST) for a CURRENT moment.

This is well described in near answer.

Useful snippets:

TimeZone.getTimeZone("Europe/Kiev").getOffset(Instant.now().toEpochMilli()); will give you integer offset in millisecons
String.format("%tz", Instant.now().atZone(ZoneId.of("Europe/Kiev"))); will give you a standardized string representation like "+0300"

How do I get the UTC offset for a timezone in Java?

2 Answers2