Google Calendar gets new out of office and work hour tools

Google spent a lot of time at I/O talking about its new focus on helping people with their digital wellbeing, and the latest efforts with this initiative come in the form of a couple new features for Google Calendar.

When making an event on Calendar, you'll see a new "Out of Office" event type. When you select this, the event will have a different appearance on your calendar so co-workers and supervisors can more easily see when you'll be unavailable.

Any meeting invitations you receive that take place during times your out of the office will automatically be declined, and going forward, Google Calendar will automatically select the Out of Office event type based on what you enter for the title.

Along with this, Google Calendar will give you more control over your work schedule. You could previously create one set of hours for your working week, but soon you'll be able to customize these for each day.

These features are rolling out for all G Suite users and should become available over the next two weeks.

The Android P feature I'm most excited for will actually help me use my phone less

Joe Maring

Joe Maring was a Senior Editor for Android Central between 2017 and 2021. You can reach him on Twitter at @JoeMaring1.