Google Calendar

Following the Gmail redesign last week, Google today showed off Material You for the key Workspace apps on Android 12. This includes Google Calendar, Drive, Docs, Gmail, Meet, Sheets, and Slides.

To help employees better manage their day, Google Calendar is introducing new “Time Insights” that let paid Workspace users see “how [their] time is spent across meetings and collaborators.”

Google Calendar already lets you specify your working hours and earlier this year added support for split schedules. Google is now letting users share day-to-day locations in Calendar amid the increase of hybrid work environments.

Chrome OS is preparing to offer access to the calendar from the quick settings area, complete with your Google Calendar events.

In addition to different applications being accessible all on one page, Google’s vision for the future of productivity involves having those services be tightly integrated together. The latest example of this will see Google suggestions for 1:1s in Chat based on Calendar.

The side panel in Google Workspace apps provide quick access to Calendar, Keep, Tasks, and most recently Voice. Google Calendar on the web now features an add-on for Google Maps.

In October, G Suite became Workspace and last month rolled out to education customers. A new “Workspace Frontline” tier is coming as Google lays out how it wants to help users adapt to the new hybrid working environment.

Back in 2019, Google made the “Working Hours” feature in Calendar much more prominent to aid Digital Wellbeing efforts. Google Calendar is now adding support for split working hours, as well as creating repeat out of office (OOO) entries.

Google is updating Calendar on the web with basic offline viewing functionality. This joins Gmail, Drive, and Docs/Sheets/Slides, though the new feature is currently only for Google Workspace accounts.

Although not necessarily the best calendar experience, Google Calendar is a solid digital diary, but a recent shift to the search button to the top navbar might be one of the best simple UI changes in recent updates.

Assistant has primarily been tied to your main email account since it launched. However, most people use and have several accounts signed in on their phones. Google Assistant now better reflects that reality with multi-account information access.

Back in September, Google introduced iPhone and iPad widgets for Photos, Search, and YouTube Music. In addition to Gmail yesterday, Google Drive and Fit widgets are now on the iOS home screen, with Calendar and Chrome also previewed today. 

Android users today can enter a “work profile” that partitions personal apps and those required by their job. Google, starting with Calendar, is making the experience less disjointed on Android 11 by surfacing both personal and work data.

Over the past few weeks, Google has been replacing the logos and icons of some of its most beloved services, and the public reaction has been… mixed. Some people don’t care, while others absolutely hate the new icons. If you fall into the latter group, here’s how to replace Google’s new icons for Gmail, Calendar, and other apps with the older, arguably better versions on Android, iPhone, and Chrome.

As part of Google Workspace, the company is rolling out new branding for its productivity apps. Gmail — as teased last month — will be getting a new icon, with Calendar, Drive, Docs, and Meet also following over the coming weeks.

Google has been working on Tasks integration in Calendar for Android and iOS over the past year. The feature is now officially rolling out in the coming weeks.

Following a minor layout tweak last week, Calendar on the web is getting a more substantial usability change to how you add events. Google Calendar’s pop-up dialog now lets you directly add more advanced event details.