Google Calendar Update for Android: Custom Colors and More

One of the most requested features we’ve seen so far for Google Calendar on Android is the ability to customize event and calendar colors directly from your device. Today’s update allows you to do just that. Now you can highlight those super-urgent meetings and important birthdays, or just switch up the color of your calendar whenever your heart desires.

Adding events is now easier and more fun with our redesigned date and time pickers, which let you schedule your special dinner date or the start of your well-deserved vacation in a snap.

For all of you world travelers, our redesigned timezone picker makes it simpler to find the region that you’re looking for, whether you’re in San Francisco, Tokyo or Zurich.

Finally, it’s easier to schedule repeating events. You can now set events to repeat every Tuesday and Thursday, every month, or every 7 weeks, it’s completely up to you.

The latest version of Google Calendar is built for devices running Android 4.0.3 and above (Android 4.1 or higher for custom event colors). Get it on Google Play, rolling out over the course of the day, and let us know what you think.

Posted by James Kung, Software Engineer

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A smoother Drive app for Android

(cross-posted to the Google Drive Blog)

The process of creating and accessing your stuff shouldn’t be, well...a process. Today, the Drive app for Android is getting several improvements to make creating and accessing your stuff on-the-go even easier.

To help you find the content you care about, Drive files will now be displayed in a clean, simple card-style. You can swipe between files to see large previews that let you quickly review and discover the information you’re looking for. And if you want to keep some Drive files on your Android device, you’ll now be able to “download a copy” from the actions menu inside settings.

The updated Drive for Android app also gives you to a way to keep track of important paper documents like receipts, letters, and billing statements. Simply click “Scan” from the Add New menu, snap a photo of your document, and Drive will turn the document into a PDF that’s stored for safekeeping. And because Drive can recognize text in scanned documents using Optical Character Recognition (OCR) technology, a simple search will retrieve the scanned document later. No more frantic scrambling through drawers looking for a receipt or digging through your pockets to find that business card -- just scan, upload and search in Drive.

The editing experience in Google Sheets has also gotten some improvements: now you can adjust font types and sizes for a spreadsheet and tweak the cell text colors and cell alignment right from the app. Plus, the Drive app comes with Cloud Print support so you can print anything from Drive with a Cloud Ready printer -- perfect if you need to, say, print that extra resume right before a job interview.

Get the Google Drive app today on Google Play and circle us on Google+ for continued updates. 

Posted by Denis Teplyashin, Software Engineer

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