Google Calendar will make it a lot easier to create a task instead of an event

Ben Schoon | Dec 5 2023 - 9:20 am PT

For many, Google Calendar is an essential app for keeping track of events and ongoing tasks, but the app currently makes it a little more complicated than it needs to be to create a task. Soon, though, that’s set to change in the Android app.

Behind the scenes of the latest Google Calendar for Android update (v2023.48.0), a tweak spotted by @AssembleDebug reveals that Google is adding support for a quick switcher when creating a new event that lets you switch between making a Calendar event or a task in Google Tasks (which also shows up in Calendar).

The change, which we’ve also enabled ourselves, simply adds a chip to the creation page, which lets you switch between the two types. By default, this is set to a calendar event, but it only takes one tap to switch it to a task.

As it stands today, doing this same thing requires backing out and tapping the dedicated “task” button that appears when you hit the “+” floating action button. Google doesn’t seem to be changing that UI, notably, so if you’ve got the muscle memory down to tap the right icon first, you won’t notice any change.

But the important thing to note here is that Google Calendar will save your ongoing title and date information when you switch back and forth between a calendar event and a task under this new change. With the existing method, you lose all of that information, which is why it’s really frustrating today to accidentally start creating one when you meant to create the other.

It’s unclear when this change will roll out to all users.