Google Calendar does a great job at letting you know about an upcoming event...but sometimes, it seems like it does too good a job. Picture this: you're working on a Google Doc, or maybe trying to answer an email, when suddenly Chrome switches away from what you were doing, freezes, and shows you a dialog box about your upcoming event:
Thankfully, there's an easy way to receive less-intrusive browser-based notifications. This has two advantages:
- The notification doesn't stop you from finishing what you were doing.
- It actually makes a little noise too, which the default dialog box (shown above) doesn't do.
Here's how you enable browser-based calendar notifications.
1. Navigate to http://calendar.google.com. Click on the gear icon in the upper-right hand corner, then choose 'Settings'. ProTip: you can also open the settings menu by typing the 's' key on your keyboard. Keyboard shortcuts for the win!
2. Select 'Notification Settings' from the left-hand sidebar. Change your 'Notifications' setting to 'Desktop notifications'.
3. While you're there, you can also change your settings for the behavior of snoozed notifications, whether you want the desktop notification to make a sound, and whether you want notifications for events you aren't planning to attend:
4. If you're a Chrome user (this will look slightly different on other browsers), you'll immediately be prompted to allow or block notifications from calendar.google.com. You should select 'Allow'.
4. That's all there is to it. From now on, you'll get your calendar notifications as browser notifications (see below). If you decide you want to undo this change, you can always go back into the calendar settings and revert your settings.
