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Manage Backups page is reporting backup date/time in UTC although switch to report in Local Time is set to "Yes"

Different site - https://peaceactionme.org with Joomla 4.3.1 (as opposed to 4.3.2 for test.theribboninternational.org site), PHP 8.1, Akeeba Backup 9.6.1 is reporting backup times in LOCAL time (EDT). 

To be clear - the actual times reported are correct - on test.theribboninternal.org they are correctly reported in UTC BUT since the switch was set to "YES" for "Local Time in Manage Backups" they should be reported using local date/times.

on peaceactionme.org the times are correctly reported IN LOCAL TIME - as they should be because the "Local Time in Manage Backups" switch is set to "Yes".

Did this get broken by the update to 4.3.2 ? Or have I misunderstood something?

thanks

I just updated peaceactionme.org - the site that was acting correctly (as I understand it) to Joomla 4.3.2. It now has the same version of PHP 8.1.19 , Joomla 4.3.2, and Akeeba Backup 9.6.1 as the site test.theribboninternational.org and the same options settings ("Local Time in Manage Backups" is "Yes") which is reporting the date/time of backups on the Manage Backups page in UTC date/time.

 It would appear that J 4.3.2 is not the culprit here. Given that the versions of Joomla, PHP, and Akeeba Backup are identical, what be causing the difference in behavior - or more specifically, what could cause the test.theribboninternational.org site to report backup date/times in UTC rather than in Local Time as it is configured to do?

both sites are hosted on the same Shared Hosting server (Scalahosting) in the same account.

I checked each of them for the site time zone and it was set to "New York" on each of them.

I checked the user (me) setting for time zone and found that on the one reporting UTC times, my user time zone was set to "Default" (which should be the same as the server time zone is set to in Joomla - "New York" - right??)

I changed the user time zone setting on that site to "New York" and Manage Backups started reporting times in "ET" (what we very provincially call "Eastern Time").

On the site that was already reporting backup times in ET, I checked my user time zone setting and it was "New York". I changed that to "Default" and Manage Backups reported backup times in UTC. So I set it back to "New York".

I don't think this is how things worked in earlier versions of Joomla - but, of course, I may never have noticed before.

I have a site still running J3.10.6 and it seems that the behavior is the same. The time zone used to display the backup times is the user time zone unless the user time zone is set to “Default”. In that case, instead of using the site time zone, the backup times are displayed in UTC regardless of the site default time zone  - this is all assuming that the switch to display backup times in “Local Time” is set to “Yes” (which it is in all three of these sites).

That seems like a bug -not terribly serious but irritating at least.

I should have turned on the help. I can now see that I was confused by one site displaying the backup times in local time while another displayed the backup times in UTC - and I didn't recall having set my user timezone to "New York".  After noticing that (unfortunately, after I'd posted this ticket) I saw that I could get all my sites to report backup times using local time by setting the user timezone to the local time. 

One suggestion involving no change in the behavior and no coding is to change "Local time in Manage Backups" to "User Time (if not "Default") in Manage Backups". I think this is a little less unclear than the current wording (in English anyway). I think it is also more likely to inspire a user to scratch their head and turn on the help text. 

I'd suggest also changing the help text from:

Should we translate the backup start time to the currently logged in user's timezone in the Manage Backups page? If set to No all backup start times appear in the GMT timezone. This option DOES NOT affect the [DATE] and [TIME] variables for backup file naming or the default description; Use the Backup timezone option to change how these variables work.

to 

Should we report the backup start time to the currently logged in user's timezone in the Manage Backups page?  If set to YES and the user's timezone is set to DEFAULT OR if set to No all backup start times are displayed in the GMT timezone.This option DOES NOT affect the [DATE] and [TIME] variables for backup file naming or the default description; Use the Backup timezone option to change how these variables work.

I gather from your last paragraph it sounds like you've been down this road before. Those relatively benign text message modifications would, I think, reduce the frequency with which you'd have to go over this old ground.