Troubleshooting

Get help resolving common issues and technical problems.

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Desktop timer application error – Clock is off

Hubstaff is designed to operate based on your system’s real-time clock and time zone settings. To ensure accurate tracking, we strongly recommend enabling NTP (Network Time Protocol) on your device. Most operating systems support automatic time synchronization with a time server.

Why this matters
If your computer’s clock is incorrect, Hubstaff will display an error such as “Client Status: Your computer’s clock is off.” This means your system time differs from the correct time by a noticeable margin.

Hubstaff determines this mismatch by comparing:

  • The server’s accurate UTC (Coordinated Universal Time)
  • Your system’s configured time zone and offset

If your clock differs by more than ±2 minutes (120 seconds), Hubstaff will prevent activity tracking until the issue is resolved.

Once the user’s computer is set to the correct time, Hubstaff will track without problems.

The way the check works is that we send up a time stamp in GMT ( which is based on the user’s configured TZ / DST info) if that time is off from the server’s view of GMT by more than some margin (+/- 120 seconds), then we send back the “clock off” error to the desktop client.

The way you can verify your time zone is correct is by going to one of the global clock sites and checking that the time the website says that your time zone should be is the time you have your computer’s clock set to, and that your time zone matches the time zone you chose to look at.

Win 11

We recommend that you always let the computer adjust your time to sync with the internet.  You can do this on Windows by navigating to Settings > Time & language > Date & time > Set time automatically.

macOS

Step 1

Click on the System Settings icon.

osx system settings

Step 2

Navigate to General > Date & time.

osx system settings general date and time

Step 3

Choose to set your time and date automatically and choose your current region.

osx set date and time automatically

Step 4

Select your current time zone, or enable automatic time zone detection based on your location.

osx set time zone location

Linux

Step 1

Click on the clock in the upper right-hand corner. Then click on “Time & Date settings”.

Step 2

Select your current location on the map, then make sure the time is set “Automatically from the Internet”.

The desktop client operates using UTC and reads the raw system time from the OS, not the time adjusted by the selected time zone. All timestamps sent to the server are in UTC. If a user changes time zones and the system clock becomes inaccurate (e.g., off by several hours), the server will reject the data due to the mismatch. There is no time zone restriction. As long as the system clock is accurate within ±2 minutes—ideally via automatic time sync—the client will function correctly regardless of the selected time zone.
When moving locations, macOS will correct/sync the time zone almost instantly. Windows may take days, and Linux is somewhere in between.

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