Use the Google Calendar App and Ditch the iOS Calendar app

Hi, everyone!  This is Lara Hammock from the Marble Jar channel and in today's video I'll tell you why you should ditch the innate Calendar app on the iPhone and use the Google Calendar app. 

A couple of weeks ago I decided to stress test the Google Calendar app for iPhone and iPad and temporarily ditch the innate iOS Calendar app that I had been using for nearly a decade.  Okay -- admittedly this was a pretty low risk proposition on my part: I already use Google Calendar to sync with my iOS calendar, so i didn't need to migrate data or manage parallel systems during this test.  I could cut over immediately with no import or really any work at all. AND I could revert back to the old system at any time without any loss of data. 

I had tried the Google Calendar app at times in the past, but I have some picky requirements that I am not willing to compromise on, so the app never totally met my needs. I guess they have done some development, since I'm now using it full time with no plans to go back!

Pros:

Here are the reasons I like the Google Calendar app over the iOS calendar app. 

Google Maps - honestly, this was the biggest driver in getting me to convert to a different app. I use Google Maps for driving navigation. It is SO much better than the iPhone's Map app. I won't get into all of the reasons here, but for me, there is really no comparison at all.  I almost always put in a location for my calendar events.  Using the iOS Calendar, if I click on the address, it automatically opens the location in Maps. No thank you, but there is no way to change the default map app.  So, I need to copy the address, open Google Maps and paste it in (and sometimes even search for it) to get it to navigate. This isn't a huge deal, but after doing this hundreds of times, I really like the idea of hitting the address and having it do all of that automatically.  The Google Calendar app lets you choose a default Maps program if you are one of the 3 people on earth who prefer iOS Maps.  Go into More, then Settings, then Apps from Google.  You can also choose a default browser and email app. 

Views - one of the reasons I've never switched over in the past is that I strongly prefer weekly view -- particularly on the iPad. I tolerate the daily view on the iPhone since when you turn the phone landscape you can see several days together. Granted, I find this a little disorienting, being plopped in the middle of the week -- in the end I still really prefer weekly view. So, how exciting that you can do a 3-day view on the Google Calendar iPhone app AND when you turn it to landscape, you get WEEKLY view!  You can actually also just choose weekly view for portrait, but that is awkwardly skinny even for me.  Some people really like the schedule view also.  Suffice it to say there are enough options for most people to be happy. 

Prettier - okay -- this seems silly and unimportant, and it wouldn't ever be my main decision-making criterion, but all others things being equal, wouldn't you rather have the app that is nicer to look at?  First of all, it is much brighter and more vivid than the iOS Calendar app. Here they are side by side. Second of all, for the iPad app, if you turn on Show Background Illustrations, it grabs these whimsical, colorful drawings as the background heading for each month. Let me put this in month view and show you some of the illustrations. And lastly on this prettier point, the Google Calendar app sometimes grabs either keywords from your event or the event's location and then matches them with a photo to jazz up some of your appointments. Like here are a couple of location examples where Google Calendar grabs an image from the Internet and make them the background: Concert at Wolftrap, The Women's Center where I volunteer or Coastal Flats where I'm having lunch with a friend. And here are a couple of examples of keywords: first day of school, lunch with friends, and tennis practice.  Cute, huh?  Admit it -- you use your boring calendar quite a bit, it's fun to have some visual surprises. 

Conversational Scheduling - I really like the Quick Add feature in the browser edition of Google Calendar.  It lets you write kind of a stream of consciousness phrase like "coffee with Ann on Friday at 3pm" and attempts to parse it into the appropriate appointment fields. Not always with perfect success.  The Google Calendar app has incorporated this functionality, but it is still pretty clunky. It doesn't always work and has some very strange semantic rules -- like you have to spell out months and can't write times separated by a dash. But I think this is a good start to more natural scheduling that doesn't look entirely like data entry. Let's call it a placeholder. 

Notes field - This doesn't seem like a big deal, but it is to me. I use the notes field on appointments a lot. I put event details in there and also attachments (see my video on "attaching" files).  On the iOS calendar, the notes section is way down at the bottom so I almost always have to scroll down to see them all.  On the Google Calendar app, notes are in a more central spot, so I rarely have to scroll down. 

Google Drive - for iOS Calendar, there is no way to attach documents -- although I have created a workaround.  If you use the Google Calendar app, you can attach files directly from Google Drive I haven't used this much, but I can see how it might come in handy. 

Cons:

There are some drawbacks, but not too many. Here they are:

Siri - Google Calendar doesn't work directly with Siri. I use Siri quite a bit for hands-free everything.  For example, you can say, "Hey Siri, make an appointment to get my haircut at 3pm on Friday."  Siri will create an event with all of those details in iOS calendar.  That said, even though Siri doesn't talk directly with Google Calendar, if you keep the iOS calendar running in the background and continue to have it synced with Google Calendar, you can still use Siri in this way. It doesn't work quite as quickly, but still appeared in my Google Calendar app within 15 seconds.  Not bad! 

Email - same thing here. I haven't moved over to the Gmail app yet.  And iOS doesn't give you an option to choose your default calendar app, so the Mail app only interfaces with iOS calendar. I really like being able to make events right from mail messages like this one.  Right?  If there are enough details in the email, you can just click on the link and create an event. But guess what?  Same logic applies. This still works in creating events in Google Calendar using the iOS Calendar app as a conduit.  This time it appeared in 8 seconds. 

Default Calendar - if you've watched my video on using Google Calendar for my family, you know that I have a couple of active Google Calendars: a personal one and one for family events.  iOS Calendar allows you to set a default calendar that comes up each time.  The Google Calendar app doesn't, but I think I've figured out that it just defaults to the calendar that you used last. That is slightly disorienting for me, but I can handle it. 

Change Calendar - I can't figure out how to change Google Calendar for an event (in my case personal to family) once I've saved it. Maybe there is something I'm missing here. Anyway -- there are workarounds. You can recreate the event or go into iOS Calendar to make the change!

So, I'm a convert to the Google Calendar app!  I love all of the Pros and the Cons are not deal breakers. Let me know what you think!  Comments are always appreciated and thanks for watching!