How to Add Events to Google Calendar With the Amazon Echo

MakeUseOf

By Nancy Messieh

Published May 19, 2016

The Amazon Echo is a personal virtual assistant that can add events to Google Calendar just by hearing your voice. Here's how to set that feature up.

There are a lot of creative and practical uses for the Amazon Echo, but when it comes to keeping up with your calendar using the gadget, Amazon has very smartly tied the feature to Google Calendar.

Probably one of the most popular options for maintaining a calendar, with the Amazon Echo, you can check your schedule, or more importantly, you can also now add events.

Step 1

The first step is to connect your Google Calendar to the Amazon Echo. Open up your Amazon Echo account -- you can do this through the mobile or tablet app, or by logging in to your account in a browser -- and go to Settings > Calendar > Link to Google Calendar.

Make sure you are logged in to the Google account that has the calendar you want to link to Alexa. You will then be prompted by Google to grant Amazon access to your Google Calendar.

Once that's done, return to your Amazon Echo account. If you have multiple calendars in your Google account, you can selectively choose which of them you want to be able to use through the Amazon Echo.

There doesn't appear to be a way to use voice commands to choose which calendar to add events to, but you can select which calendar to use from a drop-down menu in the app. Given that quirk, it's probably best just to use one calendar with the Amazon Echo.

For households with multiple accounts on the Amazon Echo, you can each link to your own personal Google calendars.

Step 2

Now that you have Alexa connected to your Google Calendar, you can use the following voice commands to add events to your calendar:

Add [dinner with Chris] to my calendar on [Saturday] at [7pm]
Add an event to my calendar (This will lead to Alexa prompting you to provide the place, date, time, and event name, one by one. Be forewarned though, if you make a mistake in this process, you'll have to start all over again.)

You can also check what is on your schedule in general, or for a specific day or time. Examples of commands you can use include:

What is on my calendar? (Alexa will respond with the first four upcoming events, and will ask you if you want to hear more.)
What’s on my calendar [today at 3 pm]?
What’s on my calendar on [Saturday]?

Have you linked your Echo to your Google Calendar? What else do you use the Amazon Echo for? Let us know in the comments.