Put an end to annoying Google Calendar pop-up alerts

I absolutely love Google Calendar. I use it to keep track of everything from my personal appointments to my business appointments to the sports schedules for the Green Bay Packers and my beloved Wisconsin Badgers. And quite frankly, I’d be lost without the reminders I set up for all of my appointments.

One thing I hate though. When I’m working along on something, like writing a blog post, and one of my calendar reminders pops up on my screen. No, I don’t mind the pop-up. What I mind is that the pop-up takes focus on my computer thus messing up whatever I was typing at the time. Worse yet, if I happen to hit the Enter key on my keyboard while the pop-up reminder is displayed, it dismisses it without me ever getting a chance to read the reminder.

Fortunately, there’s an easy solution to this thanks to one of the Google Labs available for Google Calendar. Here’s how you enable it.

1. Click the Gear icon in your Google Calendar and select Settings.

2. Click the link for Labs across the top of the Calendar Settings page.

3. Look for the lab called Gentle Reminders and click the Enable button.

4. Scroll down to the top or the bottom of the page and click the Save button.

With this lab enabled, instead of a pop-up reminder, you will hear a notification sound and the title of the Google Calendar window or tab will blink in the background. Better yet, if you are using Google’s Chrome browser, you will receive an attractive and unobtrusive desktop notification in the bottom right of your monitor.