Get Desktop Notifications from Google Calendar

Web apps have certainly evolved in the past few years, but there are still a few things that make them inferior to desktop apps. Thankfully, the gap is shortening all the time.

The latest example is desktop notifications in Google Calendar. As a web app, Calendar has no way of accessing the OS's notifications system.

It also has just one way of grabbing your attention when you're not viewing its tab, pop up notifications.

These work, since it's pretty hard to ignore them, but it's hardly the best way to go about things.

Thankfully, there is another option. With the Gentle Reminders extension, available in the Calendar Labs, annoying pop-ups are gone, replaced by a blinking Calendar tab or window.

But if you're using Google Chrome, there's another neat trick, Gentle Reminders can access Chrome's built in notifications system for web apps and display persistent notifications even if you're not using Chrome at the time, as long as it's running in the background.

This way, any reminder you've set up will show up in the corner of your desktop ensuring that you never miss a meeting again.

The system is not as smooth as some might want it to be. The notifications are persistent and have to be closed manually. Most operating systems now have notifications that fade out after a period of time. There is an upside to this, you're guaranteed not to miss any notification.

There are other websites that use Chrome's notifications system, which was introduced early this year. Later it was made available to extension developers as well.

The solution is not ideal, but it's certainly better than nothing. And for Google it also solves the problem of having a notifications system in Google Chrome OS. [via HowToGeek]