If you’re like most Google Workspace users, you’ve been blocking off tasks in Google Calendar by creating an entry with the name of the task rather than using Google Tasks, which is an easy app to miss. Now, you can block off a task as an actual task rather than a time entry.
How To Block Off Tasks in Google Calendar
Go to your Calendar, create a new time entry, and select “Task”. Enter the name of your task and click “Save”. If you want to change your presence information for the time the task will take, click back into it, and change your status to “Busy”. This will put you into Do Not Disturb mode on Chat during the task time.
If you want to make yourself unavailable for meetings, click the box for that. You can also choose to make the task name and description private only to yourself.
Once the task is complete, you just need to check the circle beside it.
It will also generate reminders until the task is completed. If you miss a task, you can just drag and drop it to the time you’ll be able to complete it on your calendar.
This feature will be completely available for all Google Workspace users by December 15, 2025.
Why Would I Want to Block Off Tasks in Calendar?
If you have any kind of scheduling dependent on your Google Calendar, such as booking links or shared calendars with other departments, you need to block off part of your workday in order to guard against it filling up entirely with meetings.
Additionally, you may want to schedule a task for a specific day to make sure it gets done ahead of schedule.
Wait, What is Google Tasks?
Google Tasks is a very light project management tool that allows you to create lists of specific tasks. To use it, go to tasks.google.com and start creating your tasks and lists. Its best use is as a daily organizer for simple tasks, but it can also be a helpful tool to keep track of recurring monthly, daily, or event-specific tasks for a specific job role, campaign, or event.
Creating a task in Google Tasks will mark it off in your calendar, but it will not have the same functionality as creating a task in Google Calendar itself, such as being able to adjust your presence settings or hide the name of the task. It does, however, block off the time in Google Calendar. If you’re a regular Google Tasks user, you may want to switch to using the feature in Google Calendar instead as you have more granular control over the task there.
Another New Google Calendar Feature: Dedicated Secondary Calendar Owners
Google Calendar power users take note: secondary calendars will now have a dedicated owner. A secondary calendar is usually a group calendar such as one shared by a team, or a calendar created for secondary use by a single user. This may be for personal appointments, a campaign calendar, or anything you may want a separate calendar for.
This change is being made for security and to make offboarding easier, so that vital information on a team calendar isn’t lost when someone leaves the organization. Previously, secondary calendars were managed at the organizational level - leaving work for admins to figure out calendar needs if someone left the business. Now, you can transfer ownership to another user as well.
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