In short: you add each teammate by their city or location, and Atlas pins them on a world map showing their current local time. A shaded band marks each person's working hours. Where every band overlaps is the window when the whole team is awake, and Atlas suggests that overlap as your meeting time.
Most timezone tools give you a list of clocks. Atlas gives you a map. The difference matters: people live in places, and seeing where someone is makes their day instantly legible. This guide walks through adding people, then reading what the map is telling you.
How do you add people and cities?
You add someone by their location. Type a city or a person tied to a city, and Atlas drops a pin at that spot on the world map. From that pin it knows the time zone, so it can show the person's current local time without any manual offset on your part.
There are two ways to think about what you add:
- People. A named teammate pinned at their city. Good for a recurring group you schedule with often.
- Cities. A place on its own, with no name attached. Useful when you just want to keep an eye on an office or a market.
You can add as many as you need and gather them into groups, so one team, office or project has its own view. New to the app entirely? Start with getting started with Atlas, then come back here to read the map.
How do you read the world map?
Each person sits at their real location, which gives you geography and time in one glance: a pin in Sydney is plainly hours ahead of one in San Francisco, and the map makes that gap feel obvious rather than abstract. Three things to look for:
- The pin and local time. Every person shows their current local time next to their pin, kept live so you always see the real "now" for them.
- The shaded working hours. Each person has a band marking their working day in their own time. This is the difference between "technically awake" and "actually available".
- The overlap. When you look across everyone, the stretch where all the shaded bands line up is the part of the day the whole group shares.
| What you see | What it tells you |
|---|---|
| Pin on the map | Where the person is, and their time zone |
| Local time label | The exact time it is for them right now |
| Shaded band | Their working hours, in their own local time |
| Where bands overlap | The window the whole team is awake and working |
The fastest way to judge a meeting is to ignore the numbers and look at where the shaded bands meet. If they barely touch, the team has a narrow window; if they don't touch at all, someone is being asked to join outside their day.
How does Atlas pick the meeting time?
Once your people are pinned, you don't have to eyeball the overlap yourself. Atlas finds the best overlapping window across everyone's working hours and suggests it. When you accept, one tap adds the meeting to your calendar in each person's correct local time, with daylight saving handled, so nobody has to translate anything.
If you only need a quick answer, Quick Check lets you summon Atlas from anywhere with a keyboard shortcut to check a time or drop a meeting in, without leaving what you were doing. The whole app is keyboard-first, with light and dark modes, and it keeps everything on your Mac: no account, nothing sent anywhere.
What to add first
Start with the people you actually schedule with. Add three or four colleagues, group them, and watch where the shaded bands meet. That single view, who is awake, who is winding down, and the slice of day you share, is the reason Atlas uses a map instead of a list.
Frequently asked
How do I add a teammate to Atlas?
What do the shaded bands on the map mean?
Does Atlas suggest the best meeting time?
Do I need an account to use Atlas?
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