I finally fixed my 4 biggest annoyances with Google Calendar — here's how

I’ve been using Google Calendar to manage my life for years. It reminds me of upcoming meetings, appointments, and other scheduled events for the day so that I don’t miss them. The app is free to use, and because it belongs to the Google ecosystem, it blends seamlessly into my workflow.

However, the way certain things work in Google Calendar out of the box annoys me. So, a while back, I decided to dig into its settings and fix my biggest Google Calendar annoyances. Here’s what they are, and how I fixed them.

New weeks start on Sunday

Google Calendar, like most calendar and to-do apps, shows Sunday as the first day of the week. It’s a product of ancient history, and most countries follow it today. However, I don’t prefer this, as it splits the weekend, placing Saturday and Sunday at opposite ends of the week. And because of that, I’ve been in situations where I’ve mistaken the first day of the week for Monday and added work-related tasks to it, when it was actually a Sunday. Additionally, I struggle to visualize a weekend when it isn’t continuous.

For this reason, I’ve configured Google Calendar to start weeks on Monday. If you prefer the same, you can do it too. Open the Calendar app, tap the hamburger menu in the top-left corner, scroll down to the bottom, and select Settings. Go to General > Start of the week and choose Monday.

Email invitations are automatically added to the calendar

I receive plenty of invitations to press briefings and other events in my email every week. If the invitations are from known senders, Google Calendar automatically adds them to my calendar, creating an event slot and blocking off my day and time. Although it’s handy and saves me manual entry, there’s one problem: I don’t attend every single event I get an invitation for, so seeing them in my calendar serves no purpose.

I’ve fixed this by telling Google Calendar to add events only for invitations that I respond to. This puts me in complete control of what events get added to my calendar. It’s also pretty easy to do this. Open Google Calendar settings and go to General > Adding invitations. Locate the account you want to configure invite settings for, tap Add invitation to my calendar, and select When I respond to the invitation in email. Tap OK to confirm.

Redundant entries for birthday events

If you’ve added birthdays to people’s contacts in your phonebook and synced your contacts with Google Contacts, you’ll see them in your calendar, and Google Calendar will remind you when it’s someone’s birthday. I find it quite useful, but there’s one thing that annoys me: since I’m logged in to Google Calendar with multiple accounts and have all my contacts synced across them, it shows multiple entries for the same birthday, leaving my calendar cluttered.

To fix this, I’ve turned off birthday syncs for all my Google accounts, except the personal account. So now, I can continue using the feature without seeing duplicate entries. If you want to do the same, head to your Google Calendar settings, scroll down to the More section, and select Birthdays. Flip the Sync from Contacts option off under all the accounts you want to stop syncing birthdays with, leaving it enabled for just one account.

A 30-minute reminder for events is too little

Unless you change it, Google Calendar sends you a reminder for an event 30 minutes before it starts. This works for most people, including me, in most scenarios. However, I’ve been in situations where I completely forgot about an event, and getting a reminder just 30 minutes before the event didn’t give me enough time to prepare and be ready on time.

Learning from my mistakes, I’ve increased the default reminder time in Google Calendar to one hour, which is ample heads-up before an event. To do this, go to Google Calendar settings and tap My calendar under the Google account whose notification time you want to change. Tap 30 minutes before under Default notifications and select 1 hour before. You can also set a custom time if you want. You’ll now receive a notification one hour before any event linked to this account, irrespective of whether you created it or someone shared it with you.

I’ve lived with some of these annoyances for years and even explored a few Google Calendar alternatives to switch over. However, I’ve always come back to it because of how well it works with other Google apps. And since I’ve managed to fix most of my annoyances, I don’t see any reason to ditch Google Calendar for another calendar app, at least for now.