How Long Until 12:00 PM?
12 PM — noon, the middle of the day
Time remaining until 12:00 today:
12:00 PM Around the World
When it is 12:00 PM in New York (EDT) today, the clocks elsewhere read:
Daylight saving time is applied for today's date, so these offsets change when clocks go forward or back. For other dates use the time zone converter.
What 12:00 PM Actually Means
12:00 PM falls exactly on the hour — the slot most appointments, shifts and deadlines are scheduled around.
12:00 PM is noon: the moment the sun is closest to its highest point in the sky for your local solar time. In clock time, it's the transition from AM to PM, the universal lunch hour across most of the world, and a common anchor for deadlines ("by noon Friday") that want to avoid midnight's ambiguity.
Noon is also when many weekly work schedule cutoffs happen in the US, when the first afternoon news broadcasts begin, and when most school cafeterias start their lunch service. In Mediterranean Europe and Latin America, noon is the start of a 1–3 hour midday break that still exists in many small-town businesses.
Technically, "12:00 PM" is confusing for the same reason midnight is: PM means post meridiem (after noon), so noon itself isn't really PM. Some style guides recommend writing "12:00 noon" or "12:00 midday" to remove the ambiguity, and timetables in aviation and rail usually use 12:00 with no AM/PM label.
Why People Count Down to 12:00 PM
- Universal lunch-hour start in most workplaces
- "By noon" deadline — the most common unambiguous deadline phrasing
- Weekly work schedule cutoff in many US companies
- Start of afternoon news broadcasts
- School cafeteria lunch service
Is 12:00 PM Noon or Midnight?
12:00 PM is noon — midday, written 12:00 on a 24-hour clock. The AM/PM labels are confusing at exactly 12 because noon is neither before nor after itself; the convention used in the US and most English-speaking countries is 12 PM = noon and 12 AM = midnight.
Noon is the default for lunch breaks, "by midday" deadlines, and many check-out times, so it is worth writing "12 noon" when there is any chance of confusion.
- lunch breaks and midday handovers
- "by noon" deadlines and check-out times
- morning-to-afternoon schedule cut-offs
Did you know?
Before railway-enforced standard time in the 1880s, every town set its clocks to local solar noon — which meant noon in Boston happened about 12 minutes earlier than noon in New York. Time zones were invented specifically to fix this chaos.
Time Reference
How Long Is It From … to 12:00 PM?
The gap from common start times to 12:00 PM, counting forward (past midnight where needed) — handy for shift lengths, travel times and sleep.
Other Popular Hours
Frequently Asked Questions
When this page was loaded it was 5 hours and 27 minutes until 12:00 PM today in New York time. The live countdown at the top of the page recalculates from your own device clock every second, so it is always exact for your time zone.
12:00 PM is 12:00 on a 24-hour clock and 1200 hours in military time. It is 720 minutes after midnight, 50.0% of the way through the day.
12:00 PM is noon — the middle of the day. In everyday English, morning runs from about 5 AM until noon, afternoon from noon until about 5 PM, evening from about 5 PM until 9 PM, and night after that.
12:00 PM EDT (New York) is 9:00 AM in Los Angeles, 11:00 AM in Chicago, 4:00 PM in London, 1:00 AM in Tokyo (next day). The table on this page lists more cities, and it updates to your own time zone when the page loads.