Edgar Cervantes / Android Authority
TL;DR
- Google Calendar could soon get a dedicated Birthday chip when creating a new event.
- The Birthday chip removes unnecessary fields from the standard event creation screen, tuning it better for adding birthdays.
Google Calendar is a rather underrated Google app that does most things right. Since it is part of GMS, most Android phones come with it out of the box, and users generally don’t need to install an alternative calendar app. Many people add birthdays to Google Calendar to get reminded of such important dates every year without manually creating a new event for every year. Google seemingly recognizes this use case, as an upcoming Google Calendar update would make it even easier to add birthdays.
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In the latest Google Calendar v2024.21.0-637471596 app update, we managed to activate a dedicated “Birthday” chip that makes it super convenient to add recurring birthday events.
Ordinarily, a birthday on Google Calendar is just a full-day yearly recurring event. That is how people have conventionally added birthdays: by adding them as an event, removing the time duration, marking them as all-day, and setting them to repeat annually.
With the upcoming change, clicking on the “Birthday” chip makes all of these changes for you, giving you fewer fields to bother with. Further, you can even set the year of birth. We couldn’t spot anything special happening when the birth year is set, but speculatively, this is a good opportunity to display the person’s age alongside the birthday event. Google is also showing a button to nudge the user to add more birthdays and be reminded of them.
This new feature is not currently live within Google Calendar, so you will still have to continue adding birthdays the old-fashioned way. The new Birthday chip may or may not roll out in the future.