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12-Hour ↔ 24-Hour Clock

Convert any time between 12-hour (AM/PM) and 24-hour notation.

  • 12 hour
  • 24 hour
  • am pm
  • military time
  • clock

About 12-Hour ↔ 24-Hour Clock

Most of the English-speaking world uses the 12-hour AM/PM clock for everyday conversation, while pilots, militaries, healthcare, transport, programmers, and most of continental Europe use the 24-hour clock. Converting between them is straightforward in principle — add or subtract 12 — but the edge cases trip people up: midnight is 12:00 AM (not 00:00 AM), noon is 12:00 PM, and "12 AM tomorrow" can mean tonight or actually tomorrow depending on who you ask.

This converter handles both directions side by side, keeping the two formats live-synced so you can edit either one and watch the other follow. A quick-reference table underneath shows the conversions people get wrong most often — midnight, noon, and the early-hours range.

How to use

Edit the hour, minute, or AM/PM selector in the 12-hour panel, or the hour and minute in the 24-hour panel — whichever format you're starting from. The other panel updates instantly, and both display the result in big monospace digits.

Click "Use current time" to populate both panels with the current local time, useful for a quick sanity check on the conversion direction. Each panel has its own copy button to grab the value in that format. The URL updates with the current time so you can link straight to a specific conversion.

Frequently asked questions

  • Is "12:00 AM" midnight or noon?

    Midnight. 12:00 AM is the start of the day (equivalent to 00:00 in 24-hour notation), and 12:00 PM is noon (12:00 in 24-hour notation). This is the most common source of confusion with the 12-hour clock, which is why the quick-reference table includes both points.

  • What is "military time"?

    Military time is the 24-hour clock, often written without the colon — "1545" instead of "15:45". This converter shows the colon-separated form, but the conversion is the same: just remove the colon if your context expects four digits.

  • How do I write 6 in the evening in 24-hour notation?

    As 18:00. The 24-hour clock counts hours from midnight, so any PM time from 1:00 PM onward is the 12-hour hour plus 12. 12 PM stays as 12:00 (noon); 1 PM becomes 13:00; 6 PM becomes 18:00; 11 PM becomes 23:00.

  • Why does the 12-hour panel let me type any minute but the AM/PM is a dropdown?

    Because the hour input only accepts values from 1 to 12 — there is no 0 in 12-hour notation. The AM/PM selector is the discrete switch that distinguishes 9:00 in the morning from 9:00 at night. Together they cover the full 24-hour range.

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