How-To: Put Google Calendar and Tasks in Your Menu Bar
Don’t you wish there were an easier way to quickly view upcoming appointments and your task list? If you’re a fan of Google products, then follow these steps for an easy-to-use solution. In the end you will have two new items in your menu bar: one for Google Calendar and one for Google Tasks.
What You Need
1. Fluid –Â This allows you to create applications from web sites. In our case we will be creating a Google Calendar application, and a Google Tasks application.
3. Tasks icon
4. 10 minutes
The Steps
1. Download Fluid.
2. Open Fluid.app.
3. The first app we’ll create is for Google Calendar. Let’s use “Calendar” for the name.
4. The URL for Google Calendar is google.com/calendar/m.
Note: For Google Apps users it’s google.com/calendar/hosted/[your domain name]/m.
5. The dock or menu bar icon for this application can either be Google Calendar’s favicon, the tiny icon that appears in the address bar of your browser when you visit the site, or something a little fancier, like what I suggested above. Â To use the fancy icon select “Other” from the Icon menu, and locate the newly downloaded icon on your hard drive.
6. Click Create.
7. After a few seconds you’ll have the option to Launch. Go ahead. Don’t be afraid.
8. The window that appears is a web browser that will automatically open to Google Calendar. Â Log in (if necessary).
9. Go to the Calendar menu and hover over User Agent. Â Select “Mobile Safari 1.1.3 – iPhone”.
10. Go to the File menu and select Close Window.
11. Go to the File menu and select New Window.
12. Go to the Calendar menu and select “Convert to MenuExtra SSB…” Â Click OK in the warning window and you’ll have a new item in the menu bar: a tiny calendar icon. Â Click on it to see the mobile version of your Google Calendar. Â You can drag the lower-left corner to resize the window.
Repeat for Google Tasks
For Google Tasks, follow the same steps (you obviously don’t have to download Fluid again). The URL you will use is gmail.com/tasks.
Note: For Google Apps users it’s mail.google.com/tasks/a/[your domain name].
Tasks will not properly load until you perform step 9 and set the User Agent to “Other”. Â Enter the following text into the window:
Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 2_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/525.18.1 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/3.1.1 Mobile/5H11 Safari/525.20
You’re done! Now you can quickly and easily view upcoming appointments and manage your tasks list.
If you have any questions leave a comment. Â Good luck getting organized!
Tweet This (37)
sbimos on April 22nd, 2009 at 12:16 pm
I’ve been playing with calendars and subscriptions a lot lately, with the intent of publishing one online for members of an organization I work with. Why did you choose Google Calender for yourself (and doing all this work to make an easy access app), when you have iCal already? What were your pros/cons?
CP Staley on April 22nd, 2009 at 12:46 pm
I’m sorry if I’m missing something, but doesn’t the google notifier already do this for Mail and Calendar? To the best of my knowledge tasks are not included in the notifier, but it does work for Calendar….
Staff Comment David Klein, TheAppleBlog on April 22nd, 2009 at 12:48 pm
I’ve been playing around a lot too. I settled on MobileMe for a long time, and it worked pretty well with over-the-air synchronization of contacts and calendar information. My issue was the MobileMe’s calendar site. It was extremely buggy and limited in functionality.
I read about Google Sync, and learned that (for free) I could have all of my contacts and calendar information synchronized between my iPhone and computer(s) automatically over-the-air. I don’t even need to use iCal anymore (although it is automatically synced because of CalDAV). I use Fluid (obviously!) instead.
Staff Comment David Klein, TheAppleBlog on April 22nd, 2009 at 1:00 pm
Hey CP Stanley. Yes, Google Notifier does accomplish the same goal for calendar. Fluid just has a different way of going about it by using the mobile calendar site. Try it out! If you don’t like it just delete the app. :)
Also, Fluid has a ton of cool customization options if you really want to dig in.
Eric on April 22nd, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Has anyone actually gotten this to work with a Google Apps hosted calendar? It prompts me to login but when I enter my username and pw it opens a “login error” page in my main browser. Even entering username and pw on that page fails.
Staff Comment David Klein, TheAppleBlog on April 22nd, 2009 at 1:21 pm
Hey Eric. Try this:
Go to Preferences.
Click on Advanced.
Click “Allow browsing to any URL”.
Try logging in again.
Eric on April 22nd, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Thanks, David – that did it.
Staff Comment David Klein, TheAppleBlog on April 22nd, 2009 at 2:07 pm
Great!
Schell on April 22nd, 2009 at 2:55 pm
Been using this as an iCal replacement for a while. It’s a great alternative. My only grip is that I can’t see today’s date at a glance like I could when I had iCal in my dock.
I have istat set up in the menu, but it’s not the same.
Any ideas?
Andrew Bednarz on April 22nd, 2009 at 3:56 pm
I use the combination of Google Calender (multiple Calendars for various groupings with most shared with my wife) and Spanning Sync to sync these (and my contacts) to iCal. These then get to my iPhone via iTunes syncing (bi-Directional syncing). Its been working beautifully.
Bryce C on April 22nd, 2009 at 6:03 pm
In fact you don’t even have to change the user agent… I use the iGoogle URL to serve a more compact and computer-friendly (as opposed to touch) interface.
https://mail.google.com/tasks/a/domain.com/ig
https://mail.google.com/tasks/ig
You can also replace ‘ig’ with ‘android’ for the Android’s interface, or ‘iphone’ for the iPhone’s (though it may display a message that it’s not compatible with your browser).
I would also suggest assigning a shortcut key (mine is Alt-T) to make access lightning-quick.
Mike on April 23rd, 2009 at 7:27 am
Thanks David you helped me!
Philip Johnson on April 23rd, 2009 at 6:28 pm
How does one undo this?
Staff Comment David Klein, TheAppleBlog on April 23rd, 2009 at 6:30 pm
You can right-click on one of the new menu bar items and convert back to a standard application. Then it won’t be in your menu bar.
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Noah Coad on July 22nd, 2009 at 3:21 am
For a standalone Google Tasks app for your PC that provides Google Tasks inside an application window, check out taskalone at http://code.google.com/p/taskalone/
Simone on November 9th, 2009 at 4:25 am
“taskalone” is also for mac?I believe that it’s only for windows.