2028 time change dates for Hawaii
Hawaii does not observe Daylight Saving Time
Hawaii has not changed its clocks since 1967. Being close to the equator, its daylight hours barely vary through the year, so DST offers no benefit.
Hawaii stays on HST for the whole year.
Countdown to the next change
Technology and Time Changes in 2028
Phones, computers and anything else that syncs with an internet time server handle the transition on their own. What still catches people out in Hawaii is the long tail of devices that don't: car dashboards, ovens and microwaves, wall clocks, older thermostats, and cheap alarm clocks with a DST setting hard-coded to a schedule that has since changed.
For anyone running servers, the transitions are a recurring source of bugs — duplicated or missing local timestamps around the changeover, cron jobs that fire twice or not at all, and stale operating system timezone databases. Storing timestamps in UTC and keeping the tzdata package current avoids almost all of it.
Background
- Russia experimented with permanent summer time from 2011 to 2014 before settling on permanent standard time.
- Roughly 70 countries use some form of DST, but they are concentrated in Europe and North America. Most of Africa and Asia do not.
- The spring transition is associated with a measurable short-term rise in heart attacks and fatal traffic crashes, an effect researchers attribute to the lost hour of sleep rather than the clock itself.
Tips for Hawaii
Use the extra evening daylight in summer for outdoor activities and vitamin D.
Consider the time change when scheduling meetings with people in other time zones.
Set your clocks before going to bed to avoid confusion in the morning.
Check and replace smoke detector batteries when changing clocks - it's a good reminder!
Frequently asked questions
When do the clocks change in Hawaii in 2028?
They do not. Hawaii does not observe Daylight Saving Time.
Which way do the clocks go?
"Spring forward, fall back" is the usual mnemonic: forward one hour in spring, back one hour in autumn.
Do I have to change anything myself?
Phones, computers and anything that syncs over the internet update on their own. Car clocks, ovens, microwaves and older wall clocks generally do not.
Is Daylight Saving Time being scrapped?
It has been proposed in many places and adopted in few. The European Parliament voted in 2019 to end mandatory clock changes and the change has stalled; in the United States the Sunshine Protection Act has repeatedly passed the Senate without becoming law. Most of the world that changes its clocks is still changing them.