Various users are reportedly experiencing a bug in Google calendar, creating random all-day events based on emails they received on Gmail.
Various emails, such as delivery updates from e-commerce companies, purchase receipts, and newsletters, are appearing as all-day events on calendars.
Y’all, my @googlecalendar has started creating random events based on emails I’ve gotten … only it’s just like, random marketing content and newsletters.
What fresh hell is this? pic.twitter.com/9ZWR4Txw9C
— Christina Stephens (@CEStephens) December 23, 2022
Random bug(?) in @googlecalendar. A bunch of random emails are showing up as events in my calendar. pic.twitter.com/s0QNjKoY9R
— Justin Duino (@jaduino) December 23, 2022
Why are Chicago Tribune headlines suddenly appearing as events in my Google calendar? pic.twitter.com/CDnTMU84Yp
— Morgan McFall-Johnsen (@MorganMJohnsen) December 23, 2022
It is widespread, and even I have seen such events created in Gmail. For me, it’s just one event made from a newsletter I received in my mail.
The event I saw in my Google calendar from a random newsletter.
The exact cause behind the issue is still unknown, but emails with the dates mentioned seem to trigger this.
While there is a different spam issue with Google Calendar, the one which adds events when a spammer sends you an invitation via email to an event, even if the mail ends up in the spam folder, this issue seems different; the email doesn’t need to have an event invite for the Calendar to add an event based on the email. It also happens randomly; not all emails with dates trigger an event, and only some random emails cause the issue.
Google has yet to clarify this issue and roll out a definitive fix. Luckily, the old fix for stopping spam invites from appearing at events will also work for fixing this issue.
How to stop this?
As of now, the simple solution for this is to turn off the “Show Events from Gmail” option. Here’s how to do it:
- On the Google Calendar app, click on the hamburger menu on the left and select Settings.
- On the next page, select ‘Events from Gmail.’
- Turn off ‘Show Events from Gmail’ on the next page.
- This will stop Gmail from adding any events to Google Calendar. It will also mean your ticket bookings from BookMyShow will stop showing up on Google Calendar and other useful events.