Are you little tired with the old fashioned pop-up notifications of your important events? If you use Google Chrome as your browser, Google Calendar has a nice solution for you. It has a nice labs feature named “Gentle Reminders” that replaces pop-up reminders with a more pleasing notification. Google has recently added sound effects to Google Calendar desktop notification.
First, you have to make sure that Chrome is set to allow desktop notifications. Go to “Customize and control Google Chrome” option and select “Options” from the menu.
Head into Under the Hood –> Content settings…
Select “Notifications” from the left pane. Select the second option “Ask me when a site wants to show desktop notifications (recommended)”.
Make sure Google Calendar is not blocked by clicking “Exceptions…”. Close the window.
Now, configure your Google Calendar account. Click the “Settings” link at the right-top corner and select “Calendar settings”.
Go to the “Labs” tab.
Enable the “Gentle Reminders” feature and save it.
A yellow bar will appear for permission to show desktop notifications. Click “Allow”.
You will see a sample desktop notification near the right-most taskbar.
You are done. Now set up an event to test the whole process. I set up a quick event and it worked nicely with a pleasing sound effect.
If you are through some important tasks and want to get notified a few minutes later, click the “Remind me again in 5 minutes” in the yellow bar appearing at the top of the window after you dismiss the pop-up reminder.
The only thing you have to ensure that Chrome is running at least in the background. You’ll never miss an important task now!
