How to set a Google Calendar reminder that actually works
Google Calendar used to have a standalone "Reminder" item, separate from an event. Google retired it and folded every existing reminder into Google Tasks instead. What's left are two different features that behave differently: an event with a notification attached, and a task with a due date. This guide covers the desktop browser version, and points out which option will actually alert you at a specific time.
What you'll need: A Google Account. A desktop or laptop browser open to calendar.google.com.
Open Google Calendar
Go to calendar.google.com and sign in if you aren't already.
Start a new event
Click Create in the top-left corner, then choose Event from the menu. Don't choose Task — a task behaves differently, covered under Variations below.
Set the title, date and time
Type what the reminder is for in the title field. Set the date and the exact time you want it to trigger — leave it as a timed event rather than switching on All day, since an all-day event can only be notified in whole days, not minutes or hours, before it starts.
Open the full event editor
If you're working from the small pop-up that appears after step 2, click More options to switch to the full editing screen. The notification controls only appear there.
Set the notification
Find the row with a bell icon — it shows a default entry such as 30 minutes before. Click the number to change how far ahead you want the alert, and use the dropdown next to it to choose Notification (a pop-up or push alert on your device) or Email.
Add a second notification if you want one
Click Add notification to stack another alert on the same event — for example, one the day before and a second an hour before.
Save it
Click Save at the top of the editor. The event now sits on your calendar and will send the notification(s) you set, at the times you set them.
Variations
Click the Settings gear icon, then Settings, then Event settings in the left-hand menu. Under Notifications, set a default lead time that applies automatically to every new event you create, so you don't have to add one by hand each time.
A task is better suited to a to-do item than a fixed-time alert. Open the Tasks panel from the icon on the right-hand side of Calendar, add a task, and give it a date — and, optionally, a time. The task then appears as a block on your calendar. Unlike an event, a task has no Add notification option with a chosen lead time — whether you're nudged about it at all depends on notification settings inside the Google Tasks app itself, and there's less control over exactly when that nudge arrives.
Install the Google Calendar app and make sure notifications are switched on for it in your phone's own settings (not just inside the app). A notification set in the browser and a notification set in the phone app both come from the same Google Account, so you only need to set it up once — but the phone still needs its own notification permission granted separately.
Troubleshooting
Check your device's own notification settings, not just Google Calendar's. If notifications for the Calendar app (or your browser, for a desktop pop-up) are switched off at the operating-system level, Google has no way to override that.
This happens on an all-day event, because there's no specific clock time to count back from. Edit the event, switch off All day, and set an actual time — the notification options then change to include minutes and hours.
Tasks don't carry the same notification settings as events. Check the Google Tasks app's own notification setting on your phone — if it doesn't give you the control you need, switch that reminder over to an event with a notification instead.
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