You don't have to settle for the default Google Calendar look.Google Calendar is one such application that you can probably load and use without much thought. It's designed to be clean, lightweight and functional by default, making it perfect when you need to quickly check your schedule.
However, you have more options than you think for changing the way Google Calendar looks on the web. Dig deeper into the settings and you'll find a variety of ways to adjust what's on your screen, from the number of days you can see it at a time, to how recurring and past events are handled in the interface.
If Google Calendar is a key tool you rely on, it makes sense to set it up in a way that's most useful to you, so you can reduce clutter, access the information you need faster, and waste less time clicking around for additional information. Screen. Here are all the different settings worth tweaking.
Custom view
No matter which view of Google Calendar you're currently using on the web, you can change it by clicking the drop-down menu to the right of the gear button in the upper right corner. It will be labeled with the name of the current view, such as Month or Week . The same drop-down menu has some basic view options, such as whether to show declined events and weekends on the screen.
To truly control what you see, you can create custom views. Click the gear button (top right), then click Settings and View Options . In the "Set custom view" drop-down menu, you'll see that you can select any time period from 2 days to 4 weeks to be displayed when Google Calendar loads in your web browser.
This setting is automatically saved and will appear as the last option in the drop-down menu on the Google Calendar home screen (with Month and Week options). Unfortunately, the same custom view options cannot be synced to the mobile Google Calendar app - you must use the default options
Back on the View Options page, there's another drop-down menu that lets you control the day the week starts— Saturday , Sunday , or Monday . This changes the layout of any views you view more than 7 days ago. Last but not least, you can use keyboard shortcuts in the Google Calendar web app to quickly jump to a custom view: just hit the X key.
Other view options
Click the gear icon (top right corner), select Settings and View Options , and you'll see that there are several other ways to configure the appearance of Google Calendar besides creating your own custom view. For example, use Reduce Past Events to make old calendar entries appear more faded on the screen, which is a handy way to help you keep track of your current schedule.
There are checkboxes to show or hide weekends, show or hide events you declined to attend, and show or hide completed tasks. Moving some of these details off the screen can reduce clutter in Google Calendar and make your schedule easier to view. Week number labels can also be shown or hidden.
Opening the Time Zone tab on the Settings page lets you display secondary time zones on day and week views, making it easier to see what events are scheduled for in different parts of the world. You can also enable multiple time zone clocks in the left panel via the "World Clocks" tab: you can see the time in your city (as well as current weather conditions) at a glance.
You can then edit the settings on the actual Google Calendar view itself. Click the three horizontal lines (top left corner) to show or hide the left panel, and use checkboxes within that panel to show and hide individual calendars - a quick way to focus on what you really need to see. You can also adjust the text size and label color used by clicking the gear icon (top right corner) and then clicking Density and Color .
