Right, @jacqueline-bosco approach works perfectly if you just want to display the time. But if you’re like me and need to manipulate or calculate with the actual Date values, then you’ll want to work with UTC and manually adjust the offset. Here’s how I usually go about initializing a JavaScript Date object to a specific time zone when I need to control the internal time directly.
var mydate = new Date(Date.UTC(2013, 1, 28, 19, 0)); // 7 PM UTC
var timeZoneOffset = -5; // Eastern Time (without DST)
mydate.setHours(mydate.getHours() + timeZoneOffset);
console.log(mydate);
This method creates a Date in UTC and then adjusts it. But warning: it doesn’t handle daylight saving automatically—you’d have to detect that separately or hard-code around it. It gives you control but at a cost. If you want something smarter and smoother, go with a library.