Dear Maintainer,

The user interface becomes completely unresponsive and freezes. When running gnome-control-center in debug mode via terminal, the console is continuously spammed with an infinite loop of date/time format DEBUG messages. The UI never recovers.

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Open GNOME Settings (gnome-control-center).
2. Navigate to System > Date & Time.
3. Click the "Unlock" button and authenticate.
4. Click on the "Time Zone" row.

Observed Behavior:
The user interface becomes completely unresponsive and freezes. When running gnome-control-center in debug mode via terminal, the console is continuously spammed with an infinite loop of date/time format DEBUG messages. The UI never recovers.

Here is a snippet of the looping debug output:
GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: replaced_format: Jul 19_20:58 20:58:00.0404 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: is_utf8: TRUE 20:58:00.0404 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: ret: Jul 19 20:58 20:58:00.0404 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: clock_format: 24h 20:58:00.0404 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: show_weekday: FALSE 20:58:00.0404 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: show_full_date: TRUE 20:58:00.0405 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: show_seconds: FALSE 20:58:00.0405 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: format_string: %b %-e_%R 20:58:00.0405 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: no_enspace: %b %-e_%R 20:58:00.0405 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: replaced_format: Jul 19_20:58 20:58:00.0405 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: is_utf8: TRUE 20:58:00.0405 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: ret: Jul 19 20:58 20:58:00.0405 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: clock_format: 24h 20:58:00.0405 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: show_weekday: FALSE 20:58:00.0405 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: show_full_date: TRUE 20:58:00.0405 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: show_seconds: FALSE 20:58:00.0405 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: format_string: %b %-e_%R 20:58:00.0405 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: no_enspace: %b %-e_%R 20:58:00.0405 GnomeDesktop[20863]: DEBUG: replaced_format: Jul 19_20:58

Expected Behavior:
The Time Zone map and selection interface should open normally without locking up the main application thread.

Best,

I'am affected by the same bug and can replicate it on a fres Debian 13.6 install. Both my Thinkpad t440s and T490 are affected. The bug happens 100% of the time.

To reiterate, my steps to reproduce are the same and as following:

- Open GNOME Settings (gnome-control-center).
- Navigate to System > Date & Time.
- Click the "Unlock" button and authenticate.
- Click on the "Time Zone" row.
- Control center becomes unreactive. Only killing process helps.

System details:

cat /etc/debian_version
13.6

dpkg -l gnome-control-center

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Architecture Description
+++-====================-================-============-========================================
ii gnome-control-center 1:48.4-1~deb13u1 amd64 utilities to configure the GNOME desktop

# System Details Report
---

## Report details
- **Date generated:** 2026-08-08 13:15:57

## Hardware Information:
- **Hardware Model:** Lenovo ThinkPad T490
- **Memory:** 16.0 GiB
- **Processor:** Intel® Core™ i5-8365U × 8
- **Graphics:** Intel® UHD Graphics 620 (WHL GT2)
- **Disk Capacity:** 256.1 GB

## Software Information:
- **Firmware Version:** N2IETA7W (1.85 )
- **OS Name:** Debian GNU/Linux 13 (trixie)
- **OS Build:** (null)
- **OS Type:** 64-bit
- **GNOME Version:** 48
- **Windowing System:** Wayland
- **Kernel Version:** Linux 6.12.101+deb13-amd64
I have did try to replicate issue on https://distrosea.com/start/debian-13.0.0-gnome/ but the version seems to be unaffected. Distrosea runs Debian 13.0. The difference with distrosea is that I do not have to unlock. So either distroseas account is setup differently or the bug has been introduced with an update.
Kind regards,