Google Calendar makes ‘Working Hours’ more prominent, enables by default

Abner Li | Sep 3 2019 - 4:26 pm PT

One place Google has been encouraging Digital Wellbeing and work-life balance is in Google Calendar. The “Working Hours” feature is now more prominent, proactive, and enabled by default.

The Working Hours feature in Google Calendar lets you set what times you’re available every day. When scheduling a meeting in the app, Google will now note other invitees hours in the calendar grid.

The new features will make it easier for your colleagues to see when it’s best to work with you. This can help reduce back and forth when finding the right time for a meeting, and help make sure that meetings are scheduled at convenient and productive times for all participants.

Calendar will also provide an alert notification when you schedule an event outside the working hours of any of your guests. The “Some people might decline” warning prompt appears after confirming Gmail notifications and notes the affected hours. Elsewhere, it’s marked by a purple briefcase icon that features a strikethrough and notes “Outside working hours.”

The last update sees Working Hours on by default for all users. When first enabled, Google will display an estimate of your working hours based on previous appointments.

“Got it” confirms with edits possible in Settings when using Calendar on the web. Users can also disable the feature entirely. This feature for all G Suite editions begins rolling out today, and will be fully available later this month.