How to share a time without confusing another timezone
When to send an offset link, when to send a clock time plus zone, and when only UTC will do.
Sharing
Three different things people share
An offset link such as /3-hours-ago repeats a question: “what was it three hours before your now?” Two people opening it do not see the same HH:MM. That is correct for “what was I doing three hours ago” and wrong for “the outage started at this instant.”
A local clock time plus a zone name (“14:05 America/Chicago”) is one civil time. UTC is one instant. Pick which of those you actually need before you paste a URL.
Use an offset link
Share /1-day-ago when you want someone to run the same lookback against their own day. Share /15-minutes-ago when the point is the method, not a frozen log line.
Use a frozen timestamp
For incidents, deploys, and anything that will be reread next week, write the datetime with offset: 2026-09-01T14:05:00-05:00, or the UTC equivalent. You can still attach the offset link as a convenience, not as the record.
The UTC grid under each result is there so you can copy a comparable hour for a teammate. It is not a named IANA zone. If they live in America/Chicago, say that name.
Questions
Why does my coworker see a different time on the same link?
Because the link encodes the offset, not the instant. Their device clock and timezone are the input. Send UTC if you need one number.