If you’re like me, you depend on Google Calendar to keep you on track with your day. But out of the box, Android doesn’t exactly go out of its way to remind me of upcoming events. Fortunately, the developers saw to it to give us configuration options. By fine-tuning how Android deals with Calendar notifications, you can be sure to never miss a single event.

I’m going to show you how to do just that.

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What you’ll need

The only thing you’ll need for this is an Android device running at least Android 8. I’ll be demonstrating on a Google Pixel 4, running Android 10. You’ll also need your Android device connected to your Google account and events added to your calendar.

How to configure Calendar alerts

In order to configure Calendar alerts on Android, open Google Calendar. From the main window, open the sidebar by tapping the three horizontal lines in the top-left corner. Scroll to the bottom of the sidebar and tap Settings (Figure A).

Figure A

In the Settings window, tap General (Figure B).

Figure B

At the bottom of the next screen (Figure C), tap Calendar Notifications.

Figure C

In the resulting window, tap the ON/OFF slider for Pop On Screen (Figure D), until it’s in the ON position.

Figure D

Enabling the popup is the choice that should guarantee you’ll never miss an alert. If that’s a bit too invasive, tap Advanced and you can enable/disable:

• Vibrate

• Show notification dot

• Bubbles

• Override Do Not Disturb

With these options, you should be able to configure your Google Calendar notifications on Android to perfectly meet your taste and needs. Play around with the various settings until the notifications do exactly what you want, so you never miss another meeting or event again.

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