iPhone stolen on different continent, how to change timezone in Apple Watch when home?

[Ompopo]

So my father’s iPhone got stolen on his last day of vacation while in south America. At the time he was travelling to the city where the airport was located and there was no way to delay the flight/rebook.

He now sent me a message from one of his stops on the trip home wondering how to change the time on his Apple Watch (series 6). He is currently in the same time zone as London so his watch is 4-5 hours behind his current location. This is of course annoying trying to follow up his next flight. He’ll also be in a different time zone again when he arrives at home tomorrow.

So is there any way for him to set the time of his watch when his iPhone is stolen/lost/missing/no longer available? He has his iPad Pro with him if that can help or be used.

I’ve been trying to Google it but can’t find an answer so I guess not, but I need to ask and try to help him.

 

[MLVC]

Won't it connect to the known wifi network back home though?

 

[Ompopo]

Won't it connect to the known wifi network back home though?

Good question 🤔 I have no idea. Dad won’t be home before late tonight so can’t check before then.

 

[mk313]

I don't know of any way to change the timezone, but he could maybe add a world time zone complication to his watch face to at least give him the current local time

 

[russell_314]

There’s no way to manually change the time on the Apple Watch without the connected iPhone.

There’s a setting to move the time ahead ahead, but I’ve never use that one and it only goes for like an hour. That’s just for people who procrastinate and want their watch to be a little bit fast.

 

[Ompopo]

Won't it connect to the known wifi network back home though?

Just wanted to say in case anyone else later experiences the same situation with loosing their phone.

When dad got home in the end and sometime during the first hour the watch updated its time zone automatically.

So like others wrote, when it connects to a WiFi network that is saved from earlier the watch seems to update it’s own time zone even if the watch is not within reach.

Can also mention that my father have the Wifi model without an eSIM. Might be that a cellular model with eSIM would have updated itself while travelling home as well, but we have no way to check ourselves.

Thanks for all the replies we got 😄👍

 

[MLVC]

Just wanted to say in case anyone else later experiences the same situation with loosing their phone.

When dad got home in the end and sometime during the first hour the watch updated its time zone automatically.

So like others wrote, when it connects to a WiFi network that is saved from earlier the watch seems to update it’s own time zone even if the watch is not within reach.

Can also mention that my father have the Wifi model without an eSIM. Might be that a cellular model with eSIM would have updated itself while travelling home as well, but we have no way to check ourselves.

Thanks for all the replies we got 😄👍

The latter (eSIM) would only work in the home country for now. Data roaming for the watch is coming in a later update.