Get the Current Timezone of a Ubuntu Machine via the Terminal

What terminal command can you use to determine the current timezone your Ubuntu machine is using?

We'll go over two methods.

Method 1 - timedatectl

You can use the timedatectl command with no other arguments:

timedatectl

This will output information about the time and date settings on your machine:

      Local time: Wed 2021-12-08 13:47:30 EST
  Universal time: Wed 2021-12-08 18:47:30 UTC
        RTC time: Wed 2021-12-08 18:47:30
       Time zone: America/New_York (EST, -0500)
 Network time on: yes
NTP synchronized: yes
RTC in local TZ: no

In the example output above, it shows that the EST timezone is being used.

Method 2 - /etc/timezone File

On Ubuntu, the timezone being used is stored in the /etc/timezone file.

You can use the cat command to read and output the contents of that file:

cat /etc/timezone

That command will output your machine's current timezone:

America/New_York

Thanks for reading and happy coding!