You don't want to be late for that upcoming meeting, and you certainly don't want to forget to pick up someone from soccer practice. So in this video I'm going to show you everything you need to know about notifications and alerts right here within Google Calendar, not only for your desktop, but also for your mobile phone.
Now, you probably already know that when you go to create a new event, or if you go to edit an existing event, you have the opportunity to add or edit your notifications here under the location area. I can either change this notification, I can remove it, or I can add additional notifications either at different intervals or maybe I want to set up an email notification. But unless there's something extra special about this particular event, in most cases, we want to adjust our default settings.
So for that, let's jump up here to the gear icon and then let's select settings. Here. We want to pay special attention to two different areas. First, we're going to look at the general area, which is going to apply to all of your calendars here within Google Calendar. And then we're going to jump down to an individual calendar.
They work together, but you need to know where to go and what these adjustments mean.
So starting with the general section about the fifth one down is called notification settings, and let's take a look at the few options we have available to us.
Now, the first one here is to determine what type of notification we want to receive, and we have three options. We can either turn all of our notifications off, meaning we will not be reminded or alerted of anything on our calendars. We can choose to enable desktop notifications. And what this will do will allow us to receive notifications on our desktop computer. Here in this example, you can see that my desktop notification flies out from the bottom right hand corner, but depending on which version of Windows or Mac OS or whatever desktop operating system you are using, it may look a little different. The one nice advantage of using desktop notifications is that you will be alerted regardless on what is in front of you, whether it's your browser or other applications on your computer.
Now, if you do choose to have desktop notifications on, we have two other options available to us as well. Number one, we can choose what is the duration of time that we can snooze these events. Meaning if you receive your desktop notification and you choose to snooze it, what is the minute interval you would like to see before you get that reminder? Again, you don't have to snooze your alerts, but if you choose to, you can choose between zero and five minutes before the event.
The other option we have available to us is to play a notification sound. So if you want to hear an audible alert, you're going to want to keep this checked or uncheck it if you just want to see the visual desktop notification.
Lastly, our third option is what's called alerts. And with this option turned on, both the show snoozed and play notification sounds become disabled. Alert notifications will look something like this. Usually it'll be something at the top of your screen, but note this will only apply if you have Google Calendar open within your browser. So unlike desktop notifications, you may only see this once in a while when you are within your respective browser.
Lastly, whether you choose alerts or desktop notifications, you can choose to be notified only if you have responded yes or maybe now pay special attention that this only applies to events or meetings in which you have been invited to, not the things which you have created or the meetings where you are the organizer.
Now while there's only a few simple settings here under general, we'll next want to go down to your individual calendars, starting with your main calendar to adjust many more detailed notification settings. And there's really three sections we want to look at. Event notifications, all day, event notifications and other notifications.
Let's start with those event notifications. So first off, we get to choose our default for both new but also existing events on our calendar. Here you can see I just have one event notification shown a notification five minutes before that event starts. If I jump back into my calendar view, and if I go to start to create a new event, I'm going to say more options. Here you can see that notification setting is applied not only to this event, but if I change it, it will apply to future events as well.
So it's really important for you to make this your own. Do you want to be notified five minutes in advance, 10 minutes in advance, or maybe you don't want to receive a default notification, but you can also receive an email notification instead. Now, this isn't an either or option. You'll notice down below that we have an add notification button.
So maybe I want to receive a notification here five minutes in advance, but I would also like an email notification maybe 30 minutes in advance here you can see you can customize and layer a number of notifications if desired. But keep in mind, whatever you set up here is going to apply to all of your future events on your calendar and anything that you create by default. So make sure that you select something that is relevant to you.
Keep in mind the duration of time can go all the way out from a few minutes to a number of weeks if you like, and you can actually add up to five different notifications, although I can't see why anyone would need five notifications for a single event.
Now down below we have a separate section for all day event notifications. All day events are anything that you put up here at the top of each day. So for example, you can see that tomorrow I have a business trip planned. It's an all day event, not a specific time, but something that's going to happen all day.
So here we have a different set of notifications. It wouldn't really make sense if I received a notification at 11:55 PM for that all day event. So here we can choose if we want a notification in the first place, and if we do, what time would we like to receive it?
So for example, here I have a notification set for one day before at 8:00 PM Maybe that's too late and I won't get a chance to see it. Maybe I'm going to set that to 5:00 PM so that just before the end of my workday I'll receive that notification. And just like these settings up above, we can choose between email or regular notifications and layer a few different ones if we want as well.
Next, let's head down to the other notification settings where we can choose to either receive email updates and email notifications or turn some of these notifications off.
Now the first one here is titled New Events when an Event is Added to This Calendar. Now here you can see that my dropdown is actually grayed out and it says automatic. The reason being is that this is tied to another setting in the general area when it comes to adding invitations to our calendar. Let's quickly jump back to the general setting, and this time we're going to go to our event settings.
And you can see here that under this dropdown when it comes to add invitations to my calendar, I have it set to only if the sender is known. I could choose either from everyone, the one I currently have, or when I respond to the invitation in an email, depending on which option you choose here, that will depend on what you will see here under other notifications.
Down below, we've got three that are closely related. Do you want to receive an email notification when an event is changed, canceled, or when you receive responses? Now, for the first two here, this is only going to apply to events where you are not the organizer or you have not created yourself.
So in most cases, I suggest that you leave these to email. Our only choices is email or none. If someone changes an event, I would like to be notified about it and if someone cancels it, I would also like to be notified about it as well. But down below when it comes to event responses, this relates to events which you have created. Do you want to receive an - Email every time someone has said yes, maybe, or no?
This is really down to personal preference. Personally, I don't want to receive an email update for every response. I would rather come in and check it on my own from time to time, but you can choose to turn this on or off.
Lastly, within this section, we have the option to turn on the daily agenda. This will allow you to receive an email showing you what you have planned for that coming day. You will have to adjust this for each calendar that you manage. For example, maybe I want to receive an agenda for Scott's calendar and for my booking calendar, but I don't want to see these other calendars on my agenda. I would have to go into each of my calendars to adjust this setting.
Now to take a quick look at what this daily agenda looks like, here's mine from earlier this morning. Here you can see this is the title of them, email a Daily Agenda for my username as of 5:00 AM and it's important to know that you can't change this time. It will always be sent at 5:00 AM local time.
But then down below I've got a snapshot of what is happening in my day, and it's even included some of these nice spaces in between, just so I can see sort of the relationship between my day. The other nice thing is that all of these are clickable links, so I can click directly on them and immediately go to that part of my calendar if I want to learn more or if I want to edit something as a part of my agenda.
So now that you know where to go on your desktop computer to adjust your Google Calendar notifications, let's jump into the mobile app so you know what you need to do there.
Here I am within my Google Calendar app, and to get started, we want to hit that hamburger menu in the top left hand corner, and we're going to want to scroll all the way down to the bottom and select settings. And under the settings menu, we want to select general.
This is going to give us a number of options to choose from, but we also want to continue to scroll almost all the way down to the bottom. And here you can see our notification settings.
Now first off, we have a toggle if we want to be notified on this device or not. If you don't want to be notified, and I'm surprised if that would be the case, you can always toggle this off. But then down below we have an option to customize our notifications for our calendar, but also for our tasks, which you may be using as well.
If we select calendar notifications here, we can go into a lot more detail. And depending on the type of device you use, Android, apple, or otherwise, your screen may look a little different than what you see here. But here you will find settings such as if you want a default ring or if you want a silent, do you want to turn on popup messages or not? Do you want sound or not vibration? Do you want to show it on your lock screen? - And do you want them to override your Do not Disturb settings? This is the place you want to be to adjust all of these settings on your mobile device.
Now going back to our settings menu, you will also see that we have the option to go into those individual events. So in this case, I'm going to select on events, which is one of my calendars, and I can adjust those notification settings here as well. But pay special attention, any of the choices that you change here will apply to both your desktop and your mobile device. So for example, if I change my default notification from 10 minutes to five minutes, this will also change my notifications on my desktop setup as well.
Now, do you have any further questions about Google Calendar or any of your settings? Be sure to let me know in the comments down below. Thank you so much for watching today's video. And remember, being productive does not need to be difficult. In fact, it's very simple.
