Google Calendar Now Shows Your Event Scheduling Conflicts

Google Calendar for Android has been updated and with it comes a new event conflict notification feature.  This feature shows you in the app as you try to schedule another event where you have conflicts in your schedule.  The idea is to prevent yourself from double-booking events only to realize it later.  This feature actually rolled out to those who use the app as part of Google apps for Work or Education last month as they were tied to domains associated with those services.  Google has now rolled it out to everyone although it does have some limitations.

Once you have the updated build on your Android devices, there is nothing special you need to do.  As you start to try to schedule an event, the app will show you your calendar and where you have

Google Calendar Appointment Conflicts

potential conflicts.  Once you find a clear spot on your calendar, you can schedule your new event at that time, removing the mystery of if you have another meeting in that time slot.

There are limitations to this feature however that users should be aware of going in.  In my testing it appears that the update only shows events on your Google account’s calendar and not any other calendars you may have on your devices.  For example, I use Exchange for work and none of the events I have scheduled on that calendar show up as conflicts.  This somewhat makes sense as Google doesn’t have access to my Exchange calendar… but it is on the app.  It would be nice if this could look at what is stored locally on my phone on all calendars.  But it is a start and a nice add-on for sure.

To see this new feature you will need to have the latest build of the app on your devices.  That update is coming to everyone as an OTA for those who have it installed and should be hitting your device over the course of the next few days.