It is Android’s 14th birthday at the moment, but when Android was a good friend that I added to Google Contacts, I’ll have utterly forgotten about it. You see, Google Contacts lets me fill in all types of particulars about my pals, colleagues, and household. Together with addresses, cellphone numbers, and e-mail particulars, I may fill the contact card with relationships, anniversaries, and—you guessed it—birthdays. These conveniently present up in Google Calendar below a particular Birthdays calendar, which neatly ties in with all the opposite appointments, reminders, and blocked time slots I’ve.

All this might make Google Calendar my one-stop resolution for planning out my life, however the service falls quick in a single key approach. I can not arrange customized reminders for birthdays proper in Google Calendar.

You may assume that this is not an enormous deal. In any case, birthdays are all the time on the identical date annually, so in some unspecified time in the future, I ought to keep in mind all of the essential birthdays in my life. Whereas that is true for my household, I sadly should admit that this is not the case for my pals, not to mention colleagues. (Notice to my editor: I am so sorry!) I can not recall what number of instances I’ve checked out my weekly agenda on Google Calendar, solely to see that I missed congratulating a good friend two days earlier. ouch.

This wasn’t an issue earlier than the pandemic once I nonetheless studied at college. I might often have extra attentive pals in my circle who would plan birthday surprises and typically events for different pals, animating others to chip in. However with me and lots of of my pals transferring to different cities all through Germany and Europe since we’re carried out finding out, our community is not as native and woven as strongly because it was earlier than. Mix that with the truth that I ended utilizing Fb towards the top of 2019, which often served as my final resort for birthday reminders, and I’ve develop into that man that does not keep in mind others’ birthdays.

Notification choices for my customary calendar.

It actually irks me that Google might provide essentially the most seamless resolution potential to this. For each different calendar you create in Google Calendar, you may head to its particular person settings and choose precisely which customary notifications you wish to obtain for every occasion created in it. For those who do not need to be reminded of every occasion individually, arrange particular person reminders for particular person occasions.

Not so for the birthday calendar. The Birthday calendar settings do not provide the choice to set reminders. And you may’t set particular person reminders for particular person birthdays.

No notification choices for the usual Birthday calendar.

What makes this case extra laughable is that Google Assistant reminds you of your shut family and friends you’ve got added to the Your Folks part within the Google Assistant settings in your cellphone. The listing of individuals you may add to the Your Folks group is generated from Google Contacts, and when you added a birthday to one in all these contacts, you additionally get their birthday date imported into Google Assistant. Nevertheless, this is able to imply that you would need to keep in mind so as to add everybody whose birthday you care about to this listing, fairly than Google providing you with the choice to offer you reminders for everybody’s birthday you added to their contact card.

This convoluted system is symptomatic of Google’s chaotic method to merchandise, with a few of the firm’s apps seemingly by no means correctly speaking with one another. No less than it appears to be like like issues are getting higher, although. Google just lately introduced that it’ll make Google Duties the central place for all of your reminders set throughout Assistant, Calendar, Gmail, and Preserve. And talking of Gmail. The e-mail service is now tightly built-in with Google Meet, Chat, Docs, and extra below the Workspace model.

It is clear that Google is engaged on making its providers work higher collectively, so we will solely hope that the corporate will do the identical for birthday dates and Google Calendar, and at last give us the choice to set customized reminders for birthdays.

Within the meantime, there is a workaround I discovered whereas researching this editorial. Somebody in the same state of affairs suggests on the Google Assist discussion board that you simply create your individual customized birthday calendar in Google Calendar and ignore the birthday fields in Google Contacts. It’s also possible to export birthdays you’ve got added to Contacts up so far by exporting the Google-created Birthday calendar in Google Calendar after which importing that as a brand new calendar once more. Whereas it is a disgrace that this implies I can not use the handy area supplied by Google Contacts for this, that is the workaround I will be choosing sooner or later.

Now excuse me whereas I export and re-import my birthday calendar to lastly get correct birthday reminders.

My expensive Android, you might sit up for a correct birthday put up to your fifteenth birthday subsequent yr!