Back in 2014, Google announced a shiny, new design language called Material Design that sought to unify the design and user experience across mobile, desktop and the web. For over three years now, Google has slowly been updating its products and services with newer, cleaner interfaces. YouTube got a long overdue facelift back in May.
The latest Google product to get the Material Design treatment is Google Calendar on the web. It’s cleaner, has more white space and is easier to read.
A new Day view will put multiple calendars side by side.
New features include a multi-column day view for viewing multiple calendars side by side, an easily accessible trash bin for restoring deleted items and the ability to add rich text formatting to event invites. There’s a new event add screen, and quickly adding an event now lets you set a time and date on the fly.
The new Google Calendar web app is slowly rolling out to everyone starting today. Here’s how you can get it now.
The new Week view is cleaner and easier to read.
Taylor Martin/CNETWhen you visit calendar.google.com, look for a button near the top right corner (between the Agenda and More buttons) that says Use new Calendar. Clicking this will opt you in to the Material Design version of Google Calendar.
If you don’t see the button, you’d normally have to wait for it to show up. But Android Police’s Corbin Davenport shared a helpful tip that will force the opt-in button. Clicking this link should force the button to appear in the top right corner.
After switching, if you don’t like the new design, first try customizing the appearance. Click the settings cog in the upper right portion of the screen and click Density and color. Selecting Compact under Information density and Classic under Color set will get you closer to the older design, while Responsive to your screen and Modern are the Material Design defaults.
To revert to the old design altogether, click the setting cog button in the upper right once more and select Back to classic Calendar.
