Overlap For Mac

While time zones are easy to understand in theory, they’re not intuitively clear when planning things. You usually have to do a bit of math to make sure everything is synced, and it gets frustrating if you have to do it regularly.

Overlap is a very clever app that seeks to present this information visually, in a way that’s easy to understand at first glance. It’s particularly useful for companies that have employees in multiple time zones and still need them to work together.

Once you’ve added all the time zones you want to track, as well as employees’ work hours, you will see a list of current times in all locations, sorted based on their position on the time zone map. Those in green are currently available, while those in dark blue are off the clock.

As each location’s starting hours approach, the color will slowly shift to green, giving you a clear indicator of when they’ll be ready for work. Of course, these colors are influenced by your defined work hours and the flexibility you configure.

If you only have one friend or employee in a particular location, you could even change its label to their name to make the list easier to navigate.

The alternative visualization method, essentially a graph of availability, is particularly fun to play around with. It shows you when the largest number of people will be present, allowing you to better schedule meetings or other activities.

In both visualization modes, you can move through time using touch gestures or your mouse. It’s clear that the app was designed for the former control method, as using a mouse is kind of awkward, and you also get an unnecessary selection box in the main view when holding down the mouse button.

You can select which calendars you would like to work with, and the app can display today’s events at the top of the main window. These could be relevant for tasks and scheduling, such as regional holidays or birthdays.

Overlap is a very useful app for time zone management, and it works particularly well on iOS and iPadOS. On Mac, it can feel a bit weird if you don’t have a trackpad, as it’s clear the app was thought out with touch controls in mind.