Keep up-to-date with the RSS feediPhone calendar craziness – When does your week start?
EDIT: I’ve noticed this post getting a lot of hits lately – if you find it useful please, please DIGG it 
Thanks
This is something I’ve only just spotted, probably because I’m actually stating to use a calendar for the first time ever !
If you fire up the calendar on your iPhone, what is the first day of the week? Is it a Sunday, or a Monday?
I currently have iCal set to start a week on a Sunday, as that’s how my work does things, so it just makes sense. That’s all well and good, everything’s laid out just as it should be – until I use my iPhone.
For some unbeknown reason, the guys in Cupertino saw fit to start the days of the week on a Monday. That’s all well and good if that’s how you work, but a complete pain in the posterior if you don’t. The best bit? You can’t directly change it !
After a spot of Googling (is that even a word?!) it turns out there is a way to change the starting day for a week, but it’s not ideal.
If you have a gander under Settings->General->International you’ll see you can change the ‘Region Format’ to whatever you like. Change it to United States, you get a week starting with Sunday. Change it to UK and you get a week starting with Monday ! WHY!? How dificult would it have been to either a) give us a simple option like in iCal, or b) make it sync such options when it pulls all your details through from your desktop calendar software?
So it looks like I have a choice. Either I have my weeks starting when they shouldn’t, or have all my measurements, times etc show up as US ones. Thanks Apple. Nice one !
Rant over.
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Comments
Comment from Eric
Time: October 9, 2008, 11:46 pm
My pay week is Monday to Sunday and was unhappy the calendar was Sunday to Sat until I read your post. Thank you thank you!!!. As far as the comment from CY, after setting the Regiona to UK, go back to Settings then TIme and you can change the clock from 24hr back to 12hr. It will not change the calendar day of week
Comment from Steve
Time: January 14, 2009, 8:07 pm
Very helpful post!
Comment from John
Time: January 30, 2009, 9:33 pm
Yeah it’s all wrong. I’m Irish where the week starts on Monday but in the iPhone it has it starting on Sunday. If I change to the uk it fixes the calender. It screws up the time, googles default page etc. Would it be so hard to get it right or to give people the option to change it?
Comment from Kurt
Time: February 4, 2009, 2:46 pm
Why on god’s green earth don’t they let you set elements of the localisation the way you want it? If I want Thursday to be the start of the week (I don’t, but let’s say I did), then I really ought to be able to do that. It’s all well and good for usability geeks to say “oh, the outliers will just get over it” because grouping by country is simpler. But there’s no admissible reason that people shouldn’t be given the freedom to choose what is exactly right for them. Baaaah, I say Apple is wrong on this point.
Comment from RobStar
Time: March 2, 2009, 4:07 pm
Thanks! I’ve been looking for this solution for months now via iPhone settings, iTunes, MobileMe, iCal, friends and anyone else who would listen!
Robert
Comment from Oli
Time: March 2, 2009, 4:10 pm
@RobStar – Another satisfied customer ! Please remember to Digg this post if you found it helpful !
Comment from Jon
Time: June 24, 2009, 2:16 pm
it’s ironic that i’m used to starting the week on a sunday (it looks neater – each side of the week has a holiday), but i grew up in SA and now in Oz…
Comment from Kari
Time: September 14, 2009, 3:25 pm
If you change the setting to Australia or New Zealand. It’s better than UK. Google still goes to UK searches but the phone number format matches the US just minus the punctunation.
Comment from Coffeeblack
Time: October 28, 2009, 6:14 pm
the way I work, my week starts with Sunday, and my work caldenr is set that way, and I wanted my iphone to be set that way, you have no ideal how long I have looked to change this, and it was so easy! thanking you for posting!!!!
Comment from Dazed and confused
Time: November 17, 2009, 1:55 pm
For me the obvious solution is for the iphone to mimic however I have i cal set up. This should be simple enough. I’m also in Ireland so I want my settings to be Irish but I want the week to start on Monday. Why? well because a lot of my diary entries span the whole weekend and it looks messy with Sunday on the next line down. I prefer to have my working days and weekends in 2 groups on the same line. Anyone know the best way to give apple feedback and do they listen?
Comment from Tulio
Time: January 10, 2010, 9:28 pm
I’ve found a workarround for this on another forum… After searching around, I found a fix for this, because it bugged me too! On your iphone, go to Settings/General/International/Region Format and select “UK”. Exit Settings, then go back and select “United States”. That should fix the calendar situation. Interestingly, it also changed my “Weather” icon from 23C to 73F!
Comment from Audrey
Time: April 3, 2010, 6:24 am
Thanks so much for this…I had my week starting on Sunday (live in Memphis) and then I was adding international keyboards and chose UK as region format…did not realize that would change the calendar. Been bugging me all day how to change it back. Thanks y’all.
Comment from Alejandro Marten
Time: April 29, 2010, 1:57 am
Try setting the internationalization to Hong Kong. This way you’ll get Sunday and Metric System
Comment from Makan Singh
Time: July 5, 2010, 11:56 am
I have spent months trying to work this out getting fustrated everytime i attempted it. Cant believe it so simple yet impossiable to know thats the way you change the begining of the week. Apple aren’t all that user friendly after all!!!! Thanks for the tip though
Comment from Charles J McDonald
Time: July 8, 2010, 6:41 pm
I’m using Australia: that gives me the Monday Calender and unformatted phone numbers. (New Zealand starts the week on a Sunday, apparently.) Both come with 12h time so I went into Date & Time and flipped the clock to 24h. (Oh, sure, they remembered to give that it’s own setting…)
Oliver is a 20-something tech enthusiast with too many items on his wish-list and not nearly enough money!
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Comment from CY
Time: August 22, 2008, 1:47 am
I like my week to start on Monday. Then I’m from the UK. But the UK setting on the Iphone gets you a 24 hour clock, which is European (like the Belgium setting) but not British. So for the old style time, and a week starting Monday, you need to do the India setting.