Google Calendar for iPhone | Hacker News Reader

Google Calendar for iPhone

gmailblog.blogspot.com

142 pointsharveynick65 comments

Someday, maybe someday, we'll have a calendar app smart enough to show a month view and NOT anchor it to the first day of the month.

Look at the calendar in the App Store screen shot. It's February 27th and 4/5 of the month view is showing days that have already passed. The week ahead is totally lost because the next week is in March.

UX-wise is there something disorienting, taboo, or just plain illegal about centering the current week in the middle or top 1/3 of the view? Because this just sucks. And it never changes. It happens in every calendar app that has a "month" view, and it's the most unusable the last week of the month (which is, oh, 25% of the time you use it).

Apple is just as guilty (looking at you, OSX Calendar).

People think in months. Financials and billing cycles are per-month. Some people get paid monthly. I know in some european countries, this is less the case (current week#/year was almost as important).

Personally I really like how Fantastical does it - portrait view is daily forecast (-1 to +5 days) listing up top with the list of events going down equally spaced, but if you rotate, it becomes the month view (which is also shown in the lockscreen widget).

The Google Calendar app assumes I have pictures for my events. Unless it happens to be a birthday evite, I don't. They're mostly business, and don't even have a location (other than dial-in and webex). Does it just fill in some image if none is there?

The app does its best to generate one picture based on the event data and if it can't it will just use a smaller header. In my experience, it works fairly well for non work events. It is a great way to add some personalization magic very simply.

Not sure about the decision to vary size based on whether it has an image to show for the event.

To me, size is an indicator, and I'd prefer it the size of the event was based on importance (either directly or based on my contacts) or meeting length. By varying the size just to include an image, Google is promoting one event over another. A small but important event sandwiched between two larger events can be easily ignored.

Maybe this app is good for purely social uses, but doesn't seem to fit my use case well.

I meant the size of the header in the event page, not in the planning / calendar views (where the length of the event drives the size).

You can totally scroll the month view in OS X Calendar in Yosemite and center it on whatever week you want (might require a trackpad / magic mouse).

Speaking personally: Yes. Most people are used to calendars in such a way as the one on their desk is laid out. Changing that would please a minority of people and disorient everyone else.

I kind of like the compromise that's taken. Show a few days into the next month as necessary to complete the week, but grey those days out and jump into the next month if clicked.

OS X Calendar can do exactly what you want. Just go to month view and then scroll.

BusyCal on OS X lets you scroll by week in the month view.

This is actually why I use Google Calendar. The web version has a great 4 week view.

Are you using the same Calendar as I am? https://www.google.com/calendar/. I don't see this 4 week view you speak of!

The 4-week view is one of the options for the configurable custom view in the Settings panel. I think 4 weeks is the default, but if you've changed it anytime in the past you might see something different. In my most-used Google account I have it configured to two weeks.

you have to enable it in the settings: http://i.imgur.com/1qoNlDP.png

if apple is "just as guilty", why is it their OS X AND iOS built in calendar apps support exactly what you asked for.

On iOS just toggle the auto scroll option (icon with a square and two lines next to search icon)

I can't work with a 'list' view like they introduce here. It sure is pretty, but my brain needs a visual week with 7 columns to process the information of 'how busy am I on ... ' efficiently.

Maybe some of you would like to share what calendar app you are using on either Android or iOS?

You can tap the blue text on the left that reads "10 Tue" (date, day) and it will switch from List view to Day view. Then you can swipe left and right to move between days. You can also hit the vertical "..." in the top right to get a 3-day view.

I tried it on Android, but I have to scroll up-and-down to see all the 24 hours. I would love an overview where I see the full 24/7 in a glance.

If I pinch-to-zoom, I can get 23 hours on the screen at once. Not sure why it won't go for that last hour, but it should help.

That's Google's way of demanding you sleep at least one hour per day.

Fantastical on iOS.

Looks pretty but it's going to take a lot to pull me away from Sunrise.

I love the design of Sunrise, but the slowness of the app and network refresh infuriates me. Been using the Google Calendar app this morning, and love the instantaneous sync.

Sunrise was relegated to the fourth screen on my iPhone immediately.

Yeah. Calendars are something I only look at when I need to immediately do something. Any lag kills the uX.

I was going to say the exact same thing. Been waiting for an official Google Calendar for iPhone but then I found Sunrise.

Loving the calendar+tasks hybrid view. It even resizes as you interact with either so you can fully make use of the available the screen estate. One can say it's "Touch-Responsive Design".

I wonder what the rationale is to have the springboard display name as "Google Calendar" instead of "Calendar". It displays as "Google Cal...", also known as a rookie error.

Surely even "G Cal" would be better.

My other complaint is the app icon doesn't dynamically update to today's date. Through no fault of their own of course, but I'll keep Apple's Calendar on my first screen for this feature alone.

There's actually more to it than that. There are some accessibility benefits to allowing the OS to foreshorten it, rather than doing it manually.

Rest assured that if the option to dynamically update the app icon becomes available, we'll be all over it.

I also wonder why the dragged along the Android theme into an iOS app. You can't do OS integration much worse than that.

> also known as a rookie error

Unfortunately, that's a common error when it comes to Google's client-side desktop and mobile software.

I tried it and to me the main problem with going whole-hog to a Google Calendar app is that I don't think a platform-specific calendar app can ever be as effective as a platform-agnostic one like Sunrise.

All things social belong to Facebook, so using a calendar that isn't linked to Facebook events is a non-starter for me. Similarly, travel plans tend to belong to Google since I use Gmail, so one that isn't tied to Google accounts would never work for me either. Execution and visual design is fine, but I think to most people it's secondary to functionality. If the app is causing a large portion of my events to be disregarded, I'm not going to use it no matter how pretty it is to look at.

> All things social belong to Facebook, so using a calendar that isn't linked to Facebook events is a non-starter for me.

Can't you just sync your Facebook events to your Google Calendar?

First impression: Good Heavens, this is ugly.

Second impression: What? You can't even rotate the screen to get a wider view? Are you kidding?

Sayonara, Google Calendar App.

One opinion of course. Already blew away Sunrise, absolutely love the new Google Cal app.

Thanks from the team. Google Calendar loves you too ;-)

Uhh, does it have neither a month nor a week view or am I missing something? You have to scroll, no way to get an overview?

There is a month (not really a month "view" of your appointments). Tap the month name at the top.

No week view as far as I can tell.

Edit: There is a three-day view accessible by clicking the vertical "..." in the top right. From there, you can scroll right to see the rest of the week.

Oh man, this is what Mitch Kapor was trying to do with Chandler! "No Silos" was supposed to mean that instead of having your email in one silo, and your calendar in another silo, and your reminder notes in a third, there would just be a single unified silo holding everything. http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/01/21.html

The outlook all is a killer productivity all. It's email, calendar and access to my google drive, Dropbox, and sky drive all in one place. Sending meeting availability is my favorite feature. It's my primary email and calendar app on the iPhone and loving it. I am using it to access my gmail and Google calendar and works flawlessly.

The month views where you need to click every single day to get more infos drive me crazy.

I use the WeekViewPro app[1] on iPhone to view and read a full week, and even better a full month of events. It helps a lot for scheduling and rescheduling professional and personal events.

WeekViewPro is not pretty and it's not configurable enough… but it does one thing very well: It gives you one single screen with a full month (or a full week) of information, like in desktop calendars.

It's particularly useful to see full month with name of events when you need to give people a free slot in your planning.

I have tried Fantastical, Sunrise, etc. and the only one I keep opening every single day is this little app.

(but I'd love if it integrated with Fantastical for event entry, as it is much better. )

[1] https://appsto.re/fr/NQIYH.i

It does stuff "automagically" according to the ad. When did "automagically" stop being a derrogative term to automatic stuff that nobody understands?

Direct link to it in the app store for those who can't see it yet: https://appsto.re/us/8XXm2.i

ugh. why no week view when you tilt the phone sideways? do you hate me being able to see my week?

TheVerge's take : https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9179934

I just wish they fixed their Gmail app for iOS.

Fixed in what way? I prefer Apple's Mail app, but I use the Gmail app when I want to look at a label or something, and it seems to work fine.

I have an issue where at least half the time I need to force-close the app, otherwise it hangs trying to load new mail. Happened on my iPhone 5 and happens on my newer 6.

I also have this issue. Also, on three separate occasions one of my accounts has just disappeared and I've needed to re-add it.

Almost without fail, switching between my personal and work email accounts causes the app to hang and I have to force-quit it. A fix for that would be nice.

Key feature missing in Apple Mail is sorting by "Important and Unread". I get so many emails, any app without this is unusable. I use the GMail app.

There is Inbox now

Inbox is a fairly different product and not a replacement for everyone

Doesn't support Google Apps accounts, still :(

Could we get a mac app too. I'm tired of Sunrise.

I got so sick of Sunrise on Mac, I went back to Calendar.app. It required a lot of up-front configuration (I had to set every calendar I follow to "ignore alerts") but once I got past that I've found it works pretty well. Better than I expected it to, and better than Sunrise does.

FluidApp works great for this.

White text on intensely saturated blocks just isn't very legible to me. Same goes for Windows 8.

Hi, Google Calendar developer here. Do all of the colour options not work for you? What could we do to make it better?

> Google Calendar for iPhone works with all the calendars you've already set up on your phone.

False advertising: It doesn't work with the FaceBook calendar on my phone - other calendar apps like Fantastical and Apple's own Cal show the FB calendar.

It works on my iPhone - it's letting me pull in any calendar I have on my device, incl. Exchange, Facebook, and iCloud.

Try under Settings-->Manage Accounts, and throw the toggle switches for the device calendars you want

thanks, found it. Not sure how i missed this before.

still doesnt show up in my phones itunes. does it support creating events on subscribed calendars?

Where are the TASKS?

Finally!

FINALLY!

Doesn't it seem like they realized they also have another product to maintain? This version seems more of a 1.0 with just extra eye candy.

i am still waiting for the version that has innovation baked in ... e.g. something new and profound.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com