Detect timezone abbreviation using JavaScript

Update for 2021

moment.js is now deprecated and they suggest using Luxon in new projects instead.

You can get a timezone abbreviation with Luxon like:

import { DateTime } from 'luxon'
DateTime.local().toFormat('ZZZZ') // => for ex: "PDT"

Note: The output format depends on the set locale. For more information see this answer.

Using contents from new Date().toString()

const timeZoneAbbreviated = () => {
  const { 1: tz } = new Date().toString().match(/\((.+)\)/);

  // In Chrome browser, new Date().toString() is
  // "Thu Aug 06 2020 16:21:38 GMT+0530 (India Standard Time)"

  // In Safari browser, new Date().toString() is
  // "Thu Aug 06 2020 16:24:03 GMT+0530 (IST)"

  if (tz.includes(" ")) {
    return tz
      .split(" ")
      .map(([first]) => first)
      .join("");
  } else {
    return tz;
  }
};

console.log("Time Zone:", timeZoneAbbreviated());
// IST
// PDT
// CEST

You can use the formatToParts method of Intl.DateTimeFormat to get the short time zone abbreviation. In certain parts of the world this may return strings like "GMT+8", rather than the abbreviation of an actual time zone name.

let timeZone = new Intl.DateTimeFormat('en-us', { timeZoneName: 'short' })
  .formatToParts(new Date())
  .find(part => part.type == "timeZoneName")
  .value
console.log(timeZone)

You can use the Native Javascript date object. Just hardcode the long timezone name 'America/Los_Angeles.

var usertimezone = 'America/Los_Angeles';
var usertimezoneabbreviation = new Date().toLocaleTimeString('en-us',{timeZone: usertimezone, timeZoneName:'short'}).split(' ')[2];

console.log(usertimezoneabbreviation); //PDT

If all else fails, you can simply create your own hashtable with the long names and abbreviations.

For a crossbrowser support I recommend using YUI 3 Library:

Y.DataType.Date.format(new Date(), {format:"%Z"});

It supports strftime identifiers.

For more information: http://yuilibrary.com/yui/docs/datatype/#dates

Try this function

function getTimezoneAbbreviation(date) {
  // Convert the date into human readable
  // An example: Fri Jul 09 2021 13:07:25 GMT+0200 (Central European Summer Time)
  // As you can see there is the timezone

  date = date.toString();

  // We get the timezone matching everything the is inside the brackets/parentheses
  var timezone = date.match(/\(.+\)/g)[0];

  // We remove the brackets/parentheses
  timezone = timezone.replace("(", "").replace(")", "");

  // A new variable for the abbreviation
  var abbreviation = "";

  // We run a forEach dividing the timezone in words with split
  timezone.split(" ").forEach((word) => {

      // We insert the first letter of every word in the abbreviation variable
      abbreviation += word.split("")[0];

  });

  // And finally we return the abbreviation
  return abbreviation;
}

Try Google's Closure Class goog.i18n.DateTimeSymbols and their locale related classes.

import { tz } from 'moment-timezone';
import * as moment from 'moment';

const guess = tz.guess(true);    // "Asia/Calcutta"
const zone = tz.zone(guess);     // return Zone object 
zone.abbr(new Date().getTime())  // "IST" 
// once u pass timestamp it'll return timezone abbrevation.