Hidden Google contacts birthday calendar

I finally found how to add birthdays from my Google contacts to Google calendar. It is deeply hidden within Google calendar, whereas I would expect this to be a simple check-box setting.

Google calendar contact birthday

Treasure or Beta Design?

Why is it so hidden? Is it not yet fully functional? I can’t imagine Google want to keep this hidden…!? Still in Beta maybe?

On the calendar page go to:

• “Settings” / “Calendar Settings” (top right)
• “Calendar” Tab
• “Browse interesting calendars »” (hidden half way the page on the right)
• “More” Tab
• “Contacts’ birthdays and events” (finally!!!)
• “Subscribe”

Google Android OS

One big advantage is, when one uses Google Android, these Birthdays are added as a separate calendar. If you can’t find the calendar on your device, you probably need to include or select it in your calendar application.

Other Calendars

When browsing “interesting calendars”, you probably saw some other calendars passing by, Holidays, Sports, Moon Phases, Week Numbers and even Stardates… nice!

Sports

The Sports calendars unfortunately are not synced with Google Android :(

Another strange thing with the Sport calendar, Google probably re-used ‘what’ and ‘where’ for the ‘home’ and ‘away’ clubs, his results in a strange markup. While normally a match is displayed as “Feyenoord – Ajax“, Google calendar will show “Ajax @ Feyenoord“. It’s actually correct when using the @ sign as a location abbreviation, but it looks weird and is confusing!