Item: Google Calendar
Rating: 4.1
Author: APKCube

4.1 / 5

Good

Month, week and day views plus tasks in one place
Shared calendars others can view, add to or edit
Shows Exchange and other device calendars alongside Google's
Carries over to the computer and Wear OS on the same account

Not so good

Sync and sharing depend on a Google account
Automatic events need Gmail to read your bookings
Some team tools, such as booking pages, come with conditions

What Google Calendar is

Google Calendar is Google's own calendar app for Android phones, tablets and Wear OS watches. It holds your events and tasks, syncs them to the web version on your computer, and lets other people share calendars with you. With an install count of more than 10,000,000,000, it is the calendar a great many Android owners already have whether they chose it or not.

No price is asked for it. The real cost is the account. Everything that makes it more than a local diary, from syncing to sharing, runs through a Google login.

The parts that decide it

The pitch for personal use rests on three things. First, events can arrive on their own: flights, hotel stays, concert tickets and restaurant bookings that land in Gmail get copied into the calendar. Second, shared calendars let a household or a team see, add and change entries in the same place. Third, it does not insist you abandon other calendars, since it can show Exchange and other calendars on the device next to your Google ones.

Tasks sit inside the app rather than in a separate tool. You can create to-dos next to your events and open your task lists in a full-screen view, which suits someone who wants one place for both. Views switch between month, week and day, events can be colour-coded, and there is a dark mode. On Wear OS it offers tiles and complications so the next event or task shows on the watch face.

Built for teams on Google's terms

A large share of what the developer promotes is aimed at work. You can attach a Google Meet call to an event, lay colleagues' calendars over your own to find a free slot, and pin notes or documents to a meeting so everyone arrives having read them. Booking pages for clients and a working-location setting are also offered, though Google marks both as subject to conditions, so a personal account should not count on them.

That makes the app most useful inside an organisation already on Google Workspace. If your employer runs Microsoft, the Exchange support gets your work events on screen, but the scheduling and collaboration tools are built around Google's own services.

Who should install it

If you use Gmail and a Google account already, this is the obvious choice. The automatic bookings, the shared calendars and the sync with the desktop version all fall into place with no extra setup, and nothing has to be bought.

Skip it if you want a calendar that keeps your data out of Google's hands, because the headline features rely on its account and on Gmail scanning your reservations. People who need serious project planning should also look elsewhere: tasks here are a companion to the calendar, not a replacement for a dedicated to-do manager.