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Summary
- Google Calendar is rolling out a new Android setting that gives users more granular control over how other apps access their calendar data, moving beyond the broader Android calendar permission.
- This new feature, found in Google Calendar’s settings, aims to allow users to prevent third-party apps from viewing their Google Calendar events, even if those apps have general calendar access.
- While the setting has appeared for some users, the functionality of blocking data sharing with other apps is currently not working, at least for me.
Google Calendar is great for my digital organization and scheduling needs. The platform is not only intuitive to use, it also offers seamless integration with other ecosystem apps like Gmail and Google Meet, paired with access to multiple calendars within one, timely reminders, event and calendar sharing, and more.
The platform recently got a quality of life boost with a new event creation interface that displays all your sub-calendars in a carousel layout on the main event creation screen. Subsequently, Google was spotted working on bringing more granular Calendar sharing control to Android users late last week.
Now, Google Calendar is finally rolling out a feature that was spotted in testing back in March — a feature that gives users more control over how their calendar data is accessed by other apps.
For reference, Android has a Calendar Provider API that serves as a central repository of data. It stores calendar events from the various calendar apps installed on your device. Other (non-calendar) apps that have access to the API can add new events, all while being able to update or delete existing ones, provided they have been given the necessary permission.
What Google is rolling out now simply creates a separate permission layer within Google Calendar itself, as shared by Android Authority.
The new toggle essentially lets you control whether Google Calendar shares your event data with other apps on your device (the ones tapping into the Calendar Provider API).
For what it’s worth, even though the new setting and its toggle have been rolled out to me, the functionality seems to be lagging. My Google Calendar events are still visible on Outlook, even with the ‘Share Google Calendar data with other apps’ toggle disabled. I force closed both Outlook and Google Calendar, cleared storage and cache data, and even restarting my device after disabling data sharing access, but my Google Calendar events still made their way to my Outlook calendar.
I’ll update this story if and when the feature starts working as desired.
