Guides · Processes & System

Set a time zone in Bun

Set the default time zone of a Bun process with the TZ environment variable, programmatically or on the command line.

Bun supports programmatically setting a default time zone for the lifetime of the bun process. Set the TZ environment variable to a valid time zone identifier.

When running a file with bun, the time zone defaults to your system's configured local time zone.

When running tests with bun test, Bun sets the time zone to UTC to make tests more deterministic.

process.ts

process.env.TZ = "America/New_York";

You can also set TZ on the command line when running a Bun command.

TZ=America/New_York bun run dev

Once TZ is set, every Date instance uses that time zone.

process.ts

new Date().getHours(); // => 18

process.env.TZ = "America/New_York";

new Date().getHours(); // => 21