How to Set the Time and Date on Your Rolex Watch

One of the most fundamental things about operating your Rolex watch is to make sure you accurately set the time. While those who have long-time experience with wearing watches will find this natural, for first-time owners and newcomers to the brand (and sometimes wearing watches in general), there are some nuances to it that can be frustrating.

In general, Rolex is a very consistent brand; their watches are made to be as intuitive as possible when switching between models like the Datejust, Day-Date, and Daytona.

Some of the consistent factors among all models is the ability to screw down the crown to protect from water intrusion into the case. When screwed down, the crown will be roughly flush with the case and will not move.

Unscrewing the crown

Unscrewing the crown, the first position that the crown will go into is winding. The spring within the crown will push it into this state with no need to pull it out at all. In this mode, turning the crown clockwise will add power into the watch and supplement its automatic winding capacity. Turning it counterclockwise will not do anything, but will also not cause any damage.

Winding your watch

A note about winding: the vast majority of Rolex watches are automatic winding enabled and have safeguards in place to prevent damage from overwinding. With these watches, you need not worry about giving it too much power or causing issues with manual winding. The only exception is with manually wound watches, which tend to be older models and this limitation should be made clear at the time of purchase. So if you are wearing a newer model of Rolex, wind the watch without fear and it is actually recommended to do so when picking up from a complete stop!

Getting past winding mode, then the functionality diverges depending on your model of watch. We’ll look at these different types one by one so you can choose what applies to your watch.

Non-Date Models

The simplest models of watch only have one additional setting mode. Pulling the crown outward, you should feel it click into setting mode. With non-date displays, setting simply means putting the hands in the correct position and pressing the crown back in and screwing it down.  Without date, there is no need to worry about AM or PM.

Date with Quick-Set

Moving up in complexity, there is the simple date display for which the Datejust is named. The operation is similar to non-date movements, but with two main differences.

First, there is an extra setting mode on the crown. Pulling the crown out one position, you will reach date setting mode. Depending on the age and model of your watch, you may need to turn clockwise or counterclockwise to advance the date–just try one, and if it doesn’t move, then try the other. For reference, most modern watches advance in the clockwise direction, but many older ones (such as the 16000 models of Datejust with acrylic crystals) turn the other direction.

Pulling the crown out one more position will go to hand setting mode. This works the same as the non-date models, but just takes into account one more detail you need to consider with a date watch: which 12 is noon, and which is midnight.

To make this process easy, advance the date until it displays the day before the current one. For example, if today is the 5th, set it to the 4th, then go into hand setting mode and advance the hands until the date changes to current. Then you know that the first rotation of 12 hours is AM, and you can simply adjust to the time of day.

Day-Date with Single Quick-Set

A Day-Date model with what is referred to as “single-quick” setting means that the date can be adjusted independently, but the day of the week cannot.

This model is almost identical in method to a date with quick-set. The only thing that you additionally need to consider is that the day of the week will have to be set by running the hands through the days to reach the current one. The date will continue to change as you do this, so the process has an additional step in the beginning.

Start by going all the way to hand setting mode and setting the day of the week one day before the current one. Then go back to date setting and advance to one day earlier than today. After doing that, go back into hand setting mode and move forward to the current day. This way, you can ensure that the day and date are synchronized in the fewest steps possible.

Day-Date with Double Quick-Set

As the name implies, this differs from the single-quick model by one significant factor: both the day and the date can be set quickly.

Following from what we’ve seen with the other models, this makes setting the watch very simple: pull the crown out to the first position to set both the day and the date, advancing both to reflect yesterday’s day and date. Then pull the crown one more step to hand setting mode and advance to the current day and time.

GMT Models

The GMT function is specially designed to be able to give you a reading of the current time in another timezone; for those who know how to use it and need the functionality, it is a very useful tool. Getting into the deeper elements of how this works is a little outside the scope of this article, but may be worth diving into in the future.

However, for a casual user who may be more interested in the popularity of the model than the timezone function, it is fortunately fairly simple and elegant to set these, as is the way of Rolex timepieces.

The easiest way to do this with modern Rolex GMT models is to synchronize the GMT hand to your own timezone. To do this, pull the crown out twice to go into hand setting mode, then advance until the large GMT hand points to 12–don’t worry at all about the date at this point.

Once it is lined up, go back to the first position; in modern movements, this actually does not control the date but actually allows the hour hand to be set independently. Run it forward or backward to get to the current date. If you are advancing forward, that will be when the date jumps, and if going backward, the easiest way can be to overshoot slightly to the day before and then advance to the current date. This ensures that you are at midnight.

From there, just go back to hand setting mode and advance to the current time.

Sky Dweller

This model can be a little intimidating, as all of the different functions lead to what seems like an overwhelming task in setting. We will cover setting this one in a separate article, since even while it is an elegant system, it is complex enough to warrant a deeper dive of its own.

Hopefully, this article has made your experience setting your watch simple and straightforward and you can go on and share your knowledge with others who may need it!