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August 29, 2011

Google Calendar Grays Out Old Events

Google Calendar found a way to separate old events from upcoming events: old events are now grayed out. The interface also grays out future recurring events because it's likely that they're less important (this was an experimental feature in Google Calendar Labs).


If you don't like the new features, it's easy to disable them: go to the "Options" menu from Google Calendar's navigation bar, select "Calendar settings", go to the "Event dimming" section and disable these two options: "Dim past events" and "Dim recurring future events".


Google says that the brightness of these events is reduced "so you can focus on today", although you'll be able to better focus on the future, as well.

{ Thanks, Cougar. }

25 comments:

  1. This was always around in Labs!

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  2. thanks the dimmed out past events were really annoying to me. Was searching around to find where to disable it!

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  3. it is about time that Google do that...maybe they can make a highlight to today event..something like bright color or some attracting color, so that the user will surely see it clearly .. maybe they can incorporate sound of people reminding on today event ( man made voice )...

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  4. Much improved. Depending on monitor contract the previous version it was very hard to even tell where 'today' was in the calendar. With this update it's much more clear.

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  5. Strangely, I had this option on my Calendar last week, but it suddenly disappeared from options!

    I really like dimming past days - it gives you a visual cue as to where you are. I've posted this as a suggestion to google a long time ago.

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    1. If you don't what day it is without looking at google calendar how did you know what underwear to wear before google calendar dimming?

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    2. I thought the idea here is to help each others, not to advertise your IQ.

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  6. There is a huge bug on this implementation! At leas on my calendar, I have a recurring event that happens every week. If I look at this event sometime in the next few months, it's ok: it's displayed dimmed. But once I get on the same month, but in a different year, it restarts the dimming from the beggining!

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  7. I would prefer to have past events deleted from my calendar after archiving them in Gmail. That way I'd have an audit trail but not a cluttered calendar.

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    Replies
    1. Perhaps you could create another calendar to give you a choice of view

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  8. Replies
    1. Did not know how to add a comment so add mine here to say thank you also. I noticed this for the first time and had to come here to see the reason and the answer to switch it! And if that is the case wouldn't it have been better to have a switch just to highlight the present! But yes the more features the better as long they are reasonably easy to access and understand, I was going to add "logical"...

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  9. Thanks for this post. I'm all for new features, but with one proviso, that the user retain the ability to turn it off or on, and customize it.

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  10. Does not work with past recurring events

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  11. What happened to my past days and events being dimmed? It was so helpful and allowed only the current and future to be noticed. I hope they don't take this away. I've gone in and clicked the boxes but even that doesn't work... Yikes

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  12. Just stopped working today for me :(

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  13. Dim passed events has stopped working on Month or 4 weeks view...on weekly its fine. Weird

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  14. My dimming feature stopped working too!

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  15. Just noticed the dimming feature stopped working on my Google Calendar as well. It was fine only yesterday. Checking/Unchecking/Re-checking the option + restarting the browser did nothing.

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  16. In the settings it says that dimming only works in day and week views. Does anybody know why this change?

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  17. Stopped working for me too!

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  18. Idiots at google can't leave well enough alone. Leave the dimming optional. My TODAY is now grayed out and I have no idea what is in there. Good grief do I have to go to yahoo calendar?

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  19. Google, we know you hear us! SAAAAAVVVEEEE USSSSSSS!!!! We need a way to delete old events. Please speak to us!!!

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  20. Hurrah I found the comment box! Lucky I did not have to go through a couple of thousand entry to get here!
    But thank you again for providing the answer for this dimming. I spent a little time like most of you to see what was going on, obviously never notice it before. I just wanted my birthday entries in green and tried to correct those whose colour did not quite match. Perhaps you'd also notice that you don't get the same range of colour choice in different calendars. (have not figured this one yet) But why shouldn't it be in the calendar appropriate editing menu...Beats me! Well again thanx

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  21. Jeez...This thing is 5 to 6 years old. Does this mean I'm the only one with that problem now!

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