Google Calendar updates setting for preventing unwanted invitations from appearing

Abner Li | Dec 13 2021 - 7:19 pm PT

Google has “improved” the Calendar setting responsible for preventing unwanted event invitations from automatically appearing in your schedule.

Today, Calendar’s “Automatically add invitations” preference under “Event settings” has three options:

Yes
Yes, but don’t send event notifications unless I have responded “Yes” or “Maybe”
No, only show invitations to which I have responded

Google is rolling out a change where the new, simplified option located in the same place is now called “Add invitations to my calendar”:

From everyone: “Always have invitations automatically added”
When I respond to the invitation in email: “Only have them automatically added if you have RSVP’d in the email event invitation.” This is accompanied by an additional “Let others see all invitations if they have permission to view or edit my events” checkbox.

These additional controls can help you manage your calendar with less manual work by ensuring unwanted events don’t appear, and you see only the events that are important to you.

This change only applies to future events, with existing ones remaining visible unless you manually delete them. Meanwhile, Google has moved the Yes/Maybe alert preference to the notifications section.

If you choose to only add events when you RSVP, you’ll receive an email invitation to all events, even if the organizer chooses not to send one. This will help prevent you from missing events. Note that this doesn’t apply to updates, only to invitations.

This capability is rolling out now to all Workspace customers and personal Google Accounts.