Google has been re-embracing the Apple Watch over the previous few years. In 2020, Google Maps famously made a comeback to the wearable, adopted by common updates so as to add new performance. Now, Google is bringing its calendar to your wrist.
Whereas it’s not a very subtle implementation, it is going to enable customers who depend on Google’s Calendar app to maintain monitor of their schedule while not having to sync it with Apple Calendar or one other third-party watchOS-compatible calendar app.
The watchOS app is included as a part of the model 25.24.1 replace to Google Calendar for iPhone and is the one change listed within the launch notes. The app shows the subsequent seven days’ price of occasions in a easy checklist view; not like Apple Calendar, there aren’t any conventional calendar views obtainable. You may’t scroll again to previous occasions — even the present day’s occasions vanish as soon as their finish instances have handed. Nonetheless, they’re color-coded in accordance with calendar and any particular person occasion colours you’ve assigned, which is a pleasant bonus, as Apple Calendar doesn’t pull in these occasion colours.
Tapping on an occasion reveals extra particulars, together with the identify, location, and outline. Nonetheless, you may’t edit or create occasions from the Apple Watch, and the places don’t actively hyperlink to Google Maps or Apple Maps for instructions. Whereas Google Duties are additionally displayed within the watchOS app, they will’t be accomplished from there. In a number of locations within the app, customers are prompted to “Open Calendar in your telephone to view extra.”
In all equity, Google isn’t singling out Apple Watch customers right here; the Put on OS model of Google Calendar affords equally primary options.
On the upside, Google Calendar now contains two new issues, permitting you to view your upcoming occasions straight in your watch face. A “What’s Subsequent” complication might be positioned in a round, nook, or rectangular slot to indicate the subsequent upcoming appointment or job. A “As we speak’s Date” complication acts as a button, displaying the present date and permitting the consumer to open Google Calendar straight. There’s additionally a widget for the Good Stack.
Because it stands, Google Calendar is simply the fourth app to turn out to be obtainable on Apple’s wearable, so it nonetheless falls in need of what Google might be doing. Whereas Gmail is perhaps a bit a lot for the Apple Watch, Google Duties can be fairly useful for many who dwell within the firm’s ecosystem — though a minimum of Google Calendar now fills that void.
Whereas Google Maps was technically the primary watchOS app the corporate supplied, it eliminated the potential in early 2017. After that, Google Hold turned the primary new Google app on the Apple Watch in 2019, enabling customers to view their notes on their wrist, though it’s obtained few updates since then. Satirically, though Google beat Apple to a notes app by about six years, it additionally introduced the top of life for Hold in Could, lower than a month forward of Apple’s announcement that its personal Notes app can be coming to the wearable in watchOS 26.