protonscr

Steam overlay shows wrong system time

steamclosed overlayDistro Family: Arch
ValveSoftware/steam-for-linux#10057 · opened 2023-09-11 by iodream · updated 2025-06-19 · 10 comments · github
Iiodream 2023-09-11 github

Your system information

  • Steam client version (build number or date): 1694456926

  • Distribution (e.g. Ubuntu): Arch linux

  • Opted into Steam client beta?: Yes

  • Have you checked for system updates?: Yes

  • Steam Logs: steam-logs.tar.gz

  • GPU: Intel

Please describe your issue in as much detail as possible:

Steam Overlay shows wrong computer time. Local time shown by system(both desktop gui and date in terminal) is 12th september 01:19 while Steam overlay shows 11th september 22:19. As far as i can remember this started happening relatively recently and it used to be correct.

image

Kkisak-valve maintainer 2023-09-11 github

Hello @iodream, what timezone is the system configured to use? Maybe timedatectl in a terminal would have that.

Iiodream 2023-09-11 github
[iod ~]$ timedatectl 
               Local time: вт 2023-09-12 01:56:04 EEST
           Universal time: пн 2023-09-11 22:56:04 UTC
                 RTC time: пн 2023-09-11 22:56:04
                Time zone: Europe/Kyiv (EEST, +0300)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: active
          RTC in local TZ: no

sudo hwclock --show
2023-09-12 01:59:12.811140+03:00
Ppacifi5t 2023-10-04 github

I have the same problem, here's timedatectl output:

               Local time: Thu 2023-10-05 01:52:56 EEST
           Universal time: Wed 2023-10-04 22:52:56 UTC
                 RTC time: Wed 2023-10-04 22:52:56
                Time zone: Europe/Kyiv (EEST, +0300)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: active
          RTC in local TZ: no

PPostnozet 2023-11-25 github

Temporary fix:

sudo timedatectl set-timezone Europe/Kiev

But this bug must be fixed on Steam side

Iiodream 2024-03-23 github

I have not seen this bug for a long time now.

Latest Steam beta 1711147596

Ppacifi5t 2024-03-24 github

Yes, the bug seems to be fixed.

Stable client 1709846872

PPostnozet 2024-03-26 github

Can confirm, bug has been fixed

Kkisak-valve maintainer 2024-05-03 github

Closing per the last couple comments.

Aarcherallstars 2024-05-28 github

This issue is still occurring to me as of 1716584667. It seems the fix is only applicable for the system running systemd (where timedatectl is available).

I am running Steam in a rootless Distrobox container (Podman) where systemd is not available, unless I use an init container. This is the only issue I am facing.

I would like to use the Flatpak version as well, but I find it still riddles with many issues.

Jjn64 2025-06-19 github

Still happening on regular Steam client 1747701111 on Fedora 41, not flatpak, not containerised.

$ timedatectl 
               Local time: Thu 2025-06-19 14:27:15 +08
           Universal time: Thu 2025-06-19 06:27:15 UTC
                 RTC time: Thu 2025-06-19 06:27:15
                Time zone: Asia/Singapore (+08, +0800)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: active
          RTC in local TZ: no
$ ls -l /etc/localtime
lrwxrwxrwx. 1 root root 36 Jul  2  2022 /etc/localtime -> ../usr/share/zoneinfo/Asia/Singapore
$ cat /etc/adjtime 
0.0 0 0.0
0
UTC

Both in-game overlay and Big Picture Mode show 06:27 (UTC) instead of 14:27.

All Steam logs use the correct local time.

Nothing extracted yet.