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GCal guide

Fix missing notifications

Check GCal’s reminder settings, macOS permission, and the event’s own reminder.

Enable delivery in GCal and macOS

  1. Open GCal Settings → Notifications and turn on native notifications.
  2. Choose Open System Settings. Allow notifications for GCal and choose the banner or alert style you want.
  3. If a Focus is active, open System Settings → Focus and select it. Under Allowed Apps, add GCal if you want its notifications to appear during that Focus. If the Focus silences selected apps instead, make sure GCal is not in that list.
  4. Check the GCal Focus filter separately. It controls which events GCal includes while the Focus is active.
  5. If banners appear without sound, check both Play Sound in GCal and the macOS notification sound setting.

Check which reminder you expect

  • Event reminders: check the event’s notification settings in Google Calendar. Email-only reminders do not become native popup alerts.
  • Task reminders: enable the relevant task-reminder option in GCal. Scheduled and all-day tasks use different timing settings; completed and undated tasks are excluded.
  • All-day events without a reminder: enable the additional all-day-event reminder if wanted. It applies when the event does not already have a reminder.
  • Grouped reminders: all-day items scheduled for the same moment may appear in one summary if grouping is enabled.

Additional task and all-day reminders require Premium. Existing event-alarm features are also available with Classic access.

Check the calendar and timing

The event’s calendar must be included in GCal’s native agenda. Open GCal to receive current calendar changes before the reminder is due. macOS can deliver already scheduled notifications after the app closes, but GCal needs to run again to schedule changes it has not received.

Use a future event with a popup reminder to test. A reminder time that has already passed will not necessarily produce a catch-up notification.

If alerts still do not arrive

Check whether the event reaches the native agenda first. Then contact support with the reminder type, your macOS version, whether a Focus was active, and whether GCal was running.

Keep exploring

Use GCal with macOS FocusLimit menu-bar events and notifications while a particular Focus is active.Show Google TasksConnect your task lists and choose which tasks appear alongside your events.Find missing calendars or eventsStart with where the event is missing, then check the account, selection, and filters.