Your Clock Is Behind in Chrome? Here's the Fix

Q: My clock is correct, so why does Chrome still say it is ahead?

An expired certificate and a fast clock produce the same failure. If your date and time match your phone, the certificate on that one site has most likely expired. Open two or three other secure sites; if they all load, the problem is the one site.

HP Chroembook

Chrome shows Your clock is behind (or Your clock is ahead) when your device’s date and time do not match real time. Every HTTPS certificate carries a start date and an end date, so a wrong clock makes valid certificates look expired. Set your clock to update automatically, then reload the page.

The error code on that page is NET::ERR_CERT_DATE_INVALID. It is one of the few Chrome warnings that tells you exactly what it compared, and that detail does most of the diagnosis for you.

Who this applies to

Devices: Chromebook, Windows, Mac, Linux, Android, iPhone, and iPad.
Browser: Google Chrome. Not version-specific.
Account: none needed. You do not have to be signed in to fix this.
Access: you need permission to change the date and time on the device. On a school or work Chromebook, that setting may be locked by an administrator.

Why does Chrome say your clock is behind?

Read the error page before you change anything. Chrome prints the date and time it thinks your device is set to, inside the gray explanation paragraph under the heading. Compare that with the clock on your phone. The answer is usually right there.

Your clock is genuinely wrong. The date Chrome prints is clearly off, and every secure site fails, not just one. This is the common case.
Your time zone is set by hand. The minutes are right but the hours are off by a whole number. This happens after travel, or when someone picked a zone from the list instead of leaving it on automatic.
The device cannot hold the time. The clock goes wrong again after every shutdown, often jumping to a date years in the past. An old machine with a dead coin cell battery behaves this way, and so does a laptop that sat in a drawer for months.
Only one site fails, and your clock is right. That site’s certificate expired. Chrome still blames the clock, because an expired certificate and a fast clock look identical from the browser’s side.

Chrome does not guess at random here. When a certificate date check fails, it compares your device clock against network time before deciding what to show you. If it believes the clock is the problem, you get the clock page. If it cannot tell, you get the plain Your connection is not private page with the same error code.

Fix a clock that is wrong

Work through these in order. Most people are done after step two.

Note the date and time Chrome printed, so you can tell whether your change took effect.
Turn automatic time back on. On a Chromebook, select the time at the bottom right, select Settings, then under System preferences select Time zone and choose Set automatically. The time zone control sits under System preferences, not under a heading called Date and time, which is where most people look first.
On Windows, open Settings, go to Time & language, then Date & time, and turn on both Set time automatically and Set time zone automatically. On a Mac, open System Settings, go to General, then Date & Time, and turn on Set time and date automatically followed by Set time zone automatically using your current location. Date & Time sits near the bottom of the General list, so you will probably need to scroll.
Reload the page that failed.

Fix a clock that will not sync on guest Wi-Fi

This one traps people in hotels, airports, and schools, and no amount of toggling will solve it.

Your device sets its own clock over the network. A guest network with a sign-in page blocks everything until you sign in. So the clock cannot sync, the clock stays wrong, and the sign-in page itself may fail to load over HTTPS because the clock is wrong. You are stuck in a loop.

Open a new tab and go to a plain http:// address, such as http://example.com. An address without encryption does not need a valid certificate, so the portal can grab it and show you its sign-in page.
Sign in to the network.
Wait a few seconds for the clock to correct itself, then reload the page that failed.

Fix a clock that resets every time you restart

If the time is correct until you shut down and wrong again every time you power on, the device is not keeping time while it is off. Setting it by hand will work until the next shutdown, so treat the manual fix as a way to get online, not as a repair.

Set the date and time by hand so you can reach the internet.
Turn automatic time back on, so the device corrects itself once it is connected.
Restart and check whether the time survives. If it does not, the hardware clock battery is likely dead. That is a service job, not a settings change.

When the problem is the site, not you

If your clock matches your phone and only one website throws the error, that site let its certificate lapse. Nothing you change on your device will fix it. Check the same site on your phone over mobile data to confirm, then wait for the site owner to renew.

Do not look for a way around a certificate warning on a site where you sign in or pay. The warning means the browser cannot confirm who it is talking to.

What does not fix this

Clearing cache and cookies. The failing check compares the certificate’s start and end dates against your clock. None of that lives in your browsing data, so clearing it changes nothing.
Reinstalling Chrome. The clock belongs to the operating system, not to the browser. A fresh copy of Chrome reads the same wrong time.
Incognito mode. Incognito changes what gets stored on your device. It does not change what time your device thinks it is.
Turning on a VPN. A VPN changes the route your traffic takes, not your clock. It can make things worse, because people then set their clock by hand to match the region they appear to be in.
Looking for Advanced and continuing anyway. The clock page does not offer that. Chrome treats a wrong clock as something you can repair, so it gives you an Update date and time button instead of a bypass. If you do see a proceed option, you are on the plain certificate warning, not the clock one, which means your clock is probably fine.

Frequently asked questions

My clock is correct, so why does Chrome still say it is ahead?

Because an expired certificate and a fast clock produce the same failure. If your date and time match your phone, the certificate on that one site has most likely expired. Open two or three other secure sites. If they all load, the problem is the one site.

Why is my Chromebook’s clock wrong when it sets itself?

A Chromebook sets the time once it can reach the network. On a guest network with a sign-in page, it cannot reach anything yet, so it keeps whatever time it had. Sign in to the network first, and the clock corrects itself.

Is it safe to set the date and time by hand?

Yes, as long as you set the real time. Setting a false time to slip past a warning is not safe, because it switches off a check that protects your sign-ins and payments. Set the correct time, then switch the device back to automatic.

Can a wrong clock break anything besides web pages?

It can. Signing in to your Google Account and Chrome sync both depend on time-sensitive checks, so a badly wrong clock can make sign-in fail with a different error entirely. Fixing the clock usually clears both problems at once.

Summary

This error has a short path to a fix: read the date Chrome printed, compare it with your phone, and turn automatic time back on. If the clock is right and only one site fails, the certificate on that site expired, and there is nothing to fix on your end.