Best Google Calendar App for iPhone & iPad

Google Apps on iOS

In recent years, Google Cal­en­dar is per­haps one of the most wide­ly used and use­ful cloud based cal­en­dar pro­grams on the mar­ket. It offers both per­son­al and busi­ness options. A year ago, Google stopped sup­port­ing the ​“Microsoft Exchange” set­tings on the iOS devices, which was the key to set­ting up your Google Apps seam­less­ly on the iPhone and iPad. Pre­vi­ous­ly, a user could type in his/​her Google Apps set­tings using the Exchange icon and have all cal­en­dars, con­tacts and mail in a two-way sync (like the MS Serv­er days, only better). The good news is that with iOS 7 (released in the fall of 2013), a user can now just use the Google icon (under Mail, Cal­en­dar and Con­tacts: SET­TINGS) and get the Cal­en­dar, Mail and Con­tacts to work again. So Google Cal­en­dar can work with­out much set­up or techie knowl­edge. It will just sync with the native iOS Cal­en­dar App. This is the con­fus­ing part for many non-techie users. They are not quite sure how it all works and how to sep­a­rate Apple’s iCloud cal­en­dar from the Google Cal­en­dar. So in this blog post, I’m rec­om­mend­ing an easy fix.

Cal­en­dar 5 by Readdle

It seems like every quar­ter a shiny new cal­en­dar app is updat­ed or released. I’ve tried what seems like dozens of them. If you were to look at my phone, you’d some­times see 3 – 4 cal­en­dar apps run­ning side by side! Please don’t do this. If you are not techie, you’ll dri­ve your­self crazy. Do your­self a favor and down­load the free (or paid) Cal­en­dar 5 app by Read­dle. Cal­en­dar 5 inte­grates Google Cal­en­dar the best. The col­ors you select on Google Cal­en­dar are iden­ti­cal on Cal­en­dar 5 and visa ver­sa. You can do just about every­thing on this mobile cal­en­dar as you can on the desk­top minus upload­ing doc­u­ments, but hope­ful­ly that will soon be avail­able. Cal­en­dar 5 also allows you to use Google Task or the iOS Reminders right with­in the App. The learn­ing curve on this app is pret­ty easy. They walk you through a sim­ple tuto­r­i­al. It is a bit dif­fer­ent than Apple’s cal­en­dar, so just be aware of that. I have been rec­om­mend­ing this app to a num­ber of clients, and I’ve heard noth­ing but pos­i­tive feed­back.

Change the Notifications

One final word of advice when you down­load and start using Cal­en­dar 5. Make sure you adjust your noti­fi­ca­tion set­tings. This is impor­tant so you do not get dupli­cate noti­fi­ca­tions on your smart device. You can make Cal­en­dar 5 your default cal­en­dar in the noti­fi­ca­tions cen­ter. Any ques­tions, let me know by email or in the com­ments on this post.