Google has an all-new Calendar app for Android, and it's coming to the iPhone too

11/5/2014

Google has totally reworked the Calendar app for its new version of Android, making the app smarter, more colorful, and all-around more helpful. The new version of Calendar takes on the playful Material Design style that's working its way across all Google apps. That's going to make browsing your calendar a lot more pleasant, but the biggest features in this revamped app are all about making adding and viewing events much easier. For one, Calendar will automatically pull events, such as booked reservations, flights, or concerts, out of your inbox and add them to your calendar. Calendar will also help you enter events by automatically filling in information as you type, such as your contacts and nearby locations.

Seeing what's coming up ahead on your agenda should be simpler in this new version of Calendar too. Google has added in what it calls a "schedule view," which just displays your upcoming appointments. They're all given big, colorful backgrounds, often with images that are contextual to the event, which should make them easier to browse through. Third-party calendar apps that plug into Google have continued to add new and more intelligent features, and this release in many ways feels like Google playing catch up. That said, it looks like Google has actually taken quite a few steps forward here. The new app is available on all devices running Android 5.0 right now, and it'll be rolling out to the Play Store over the coming weeks for everyone running Android 4.1 and above.

There's one other big piece of news here: Google is bringing this new Calendar app to the iPhone. While there have been a good number of ways to access your Google Calendars on the iPhone and iPad, including through Apple's Calendar app, this will be the first time Google has actually released a proper Calendar app for iOS. For now, Google hasn't given an estimate on when it'll be released.

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