Google Calendar and Meet are finally playing nice with Outlook and other calendars

We’ve all been there. You get a calendar invite from a client or a colleague who works in a different ecosystem, and you spend the first minute of the meeting frantically digging through the event description to find the link to the video call. It’s a small but constant point of friction in our cross-platform world.

Well, Google is now rolling out a couple of smart, simple updates to Google Calendar and Google Meet that are designed to solve this exact problem, making it much easier to collaborate with people who live in different calendar apps like Microsoft Outlook.

Making Meet links more visible for Outlook users

The first part of this update addresses a common issue when a Google Calendar user invites someone who uses a different calendar app. Now, when you create a Google Calendar event with a Meet conference and invite an Outlook user, Google will automatically add the Google Meet link to the location field of the invite.

This is a brilliant little change that makes the link prominent and easy to find for the recipient, so they don’t have to go hunting through the event description just to join your call.

Smarter link detection for Google Calendar users

The second part of the update fixes the reverse scenario. When someone sends you an invite from another calendar app (like Outlook) that has a Google Meet link in the description or location, Google Calendar will now automatically detect that link. This makes it far easier for you to join the meeting, likely by creating the familiar, one-click “Join with Google Meet” button right in your Calendar event.

This is a fantastic quality-of-life improvement for anyone who regularly works with clients, partners, or colleagues who aren’t in the Google Workspace ecosystem. It’s a small but very welcome step in breaking down the walls between different productivity suites. The feature is on by default and is currently rolling out to all Google Workspace customers and users with personal Google accounts.