Calendar
Most people's schedule is spread across two or three calendars that don't talk to each other, and answering "am I free Thursday?" means checking all of them. Pepper reads across every calendar you've connected and answers the question — and when the answer is "no, move it", you say that instead of opening a calendar app.
Connect Google Calendar first (see Connecting your accounts); everything below works from there.
What you can ask
-
What's coming up: "What's on my calendar today?", "What do I have this afternoon?", "Am I free tomorrow at 3?"
-
A few days out: "What does my week look like?", "What's on for the next month?" Pepper can look ahead (a day by default, up to about a month).
-
Find a free slot: "Find me an hour this week", "When could I fit a 30-minute call tomorrow?" Pepper works out the gaps across every calendar that counts as busy — inside your work hours unless you ask otherwise — and tells you which calendars it checked, so a calendar it couldn't read is never quietly taken as free.
-
Check other people's free/busy: "Is Sam free Thursday at 2?", "Find a time next week that works for me and Jenna." Pepper asks Google for each guest's free/busy alongside yours. Google only answers for people whose calendar it can read (usually people in your own organization), so a guest it can't see comes back as unknown, never as free, and Pepper says to check with them. Times it suggests are free for you and the guests it could read.
-
Block out of office or focus time: "Put me out of office Monday through Wednesday", "Block 2 hours of focus time tomorrow morning." Pepper makes Google's own out-of-office or focus-time event, on your main calendar, with a start and end time. Out of office declines only new invitations unless you say otherwise ("decline everything that conflicts"), with a message you can set. Google only offers these on some accounts (typically Workspace): if yours doesn't, Pepper tells you what Google said and doesn't make an ordinary event in its place.
-
Find a specific event: "When's my meeting with Jane?", "Find the dentist appointment."
-
Add an event: "Put coffee with Jenna on Friday at 9", "Block 2–4 Thursday for the dentist."
-
Add a repeating event: "Add a workout every Thursday 9:45 to 10:45", "Standup every weekday at 9 for the next month." Pepper makes it as a series in Google Calendar and says how it repeats when it confirms. Changing or cancelling one later asks which you mean when it's unclear: just that occurrence (the default), this and all following, or the whole series ("move my standup to 10 from next week on", "rename the weekly sync for all of them", "cancel my standup from next week on"). Pepper never assumes the whole series. Changing the whole series with a new time moves every occurrence by the same amount, and occurrences someone edited on their own keep their edits. "This and all following" works the way Google Calendar's does: the old series ends before that occurrence and a new series starts from it, so the guests get a new invitation, and Pepper says so (it can't be done to a series someone else organizes). You can also ask it to change how an event repeats ("make that every other Thursday", "stop it repeating") or to make a one-off event repeat; for a repeating event that needs "all" or "this and following".
-
Add a video call: "Set up a Meet with Sam on Tuesday at 2." Ask for a Meet, a video call, or a call with someone who isn't in the room, and Pepper puts a Google Meet link on the event, so the invitation everyone gets is one they can join from. Only Google Meet works this way — for Zoom or Teams, give Pepper the link and it goes on the event as-is. If your account or that calendar doesn't allow Meet links, Pepper still makes the event and tells you there's no link rather than pretending there is one.
-
Move or change an event: "Push my 2pm to Thursday", "Make the team meeting 30 minutes instead of an hour", "Rename it to 'design review'.", "Mark it free" (so it doesn't block your time) or "mark it busy". The same works when you ask Pepper to add an event: "add it as free".
-
Cancel an event: "Cancel dinner tonight." If the event has other attendees, Pepper will warn you that cancelling notifies them before going ahead.
-
Answer an invitation: "Accept the 3pm with Priya", "Decline Thursday's review and tell them I'm out." Pepper sets your Yes, No or Maybe on an event someone else organized and invited you to, and the organizer is told, so it checks which event and which answer (and your note, if any) with you first unless you've just said both. On a repeating event it asks whether you mean that one occurrence or the whole series, and never assumes the whole series. There's nothing to answer on an event you organize, and a scheduled task can't send one, since the organizer would be told with nobody there to confirm it. Pepper's reply is the same as pressing the buttons in the event's panel.
-
Read an event's notes: "What's the agenda for the 3pm?", "What does the invite say?" Whatever's written in the event's own description comes back with it, so you don't have to open the calendar to find the dial-in or the agenda someone pasted in. A long one is shortened, and Pepper says so rather than letting a trimmed version look complete.
-
Add to an event's notes: "Add 'bring the Q3 numbers' to the agenda for Thursday." Pepper reads what's there, adds to it, and writes it back — so you're extending the notes rather than replacing them. Where the notes were long enough that Pepper only saw a shortened version, it's told not to write that shortened version back as the whole thing; if you want to be certain nothing was lost on a very long agenda, check the event afterwards.
Pepper reads the details — times, titles, who's invited, and the event's own notes — and summarizes them in your own time zone.
Your calendar in the web app
Your schedule is also a Calendar app you can open — tap the grid button next to the message box, or just say "show me my calendar". It opens inside the conversation, so you can keep talking to Pepper about what you're looking at, and closes with the ✕ or the Escape key. See Apps.
It shows one day at a time, drawn against the clock: midnight to midnight, with every event sitting at the hour it starts and standing as tall as it lasts. Two things at the same time are drawn side by side rather than one after the other. When one event is on your calendars more than once at the same time (the same dinner on your calendar and a family one, say), it is drawn once, with a count beside its title. Opening it lists each copy, and each one opens with its own details and buttons. Use the arrows to move between days, or Today to come back. It opens at the current hour, so you start where the day is rather than at 3am — the rest of the day is a scroll away in either direction, and the morning you have already been through is still there, faded.
Day, Week, or List. Switch views at the top of the page — Week lines up several days side by side, and List reads your events down the page, loading more as you scroll. Under Calendar preferences, Calendar view, you can pin the week to a weekday (Monday, say) instead of starting it on the day you're looking at, and make Week show fewer days: 2 to 7, or just your work days. Day and Week shade the time outside your work days and hours, so the working day reads as the lighter part (set those under Work & commute). Whichever view you're in, there's no edge to it: step the arrows beside the date as far back or forward as you like (a day at a time in Day view, a week at a time in Week and List), or click the date itself to open three months — with arrows of their own to page to earlier or later months — and jump straight to any day.
Daylight, weather, and your commute. The day view shades where the sun is — night, and the sunrise/sunset in between — using your saved location if you've set one under Calendar preferences, or your approximate location when it can tell one. Neither shows up without a location either way — set one in preferences if the day looks flat. Weather lays a summary over the shading — a high and low, what it's doing hour by hour, and any stretch of rain or snow along the way. Turn weather off entirely from preferences, or leave it on and hide just its humidity range or its wind/UV marks; a stretch of rain or snow has no switch of its own and stays visible whenever weather is on. Tides are off until you turn them on under Calendar preferences: then the day view draws the day's tide as a curve down its outer edge, with each high and low marked, from the NOAA station nearest your home (US coasts, within 15 miles). To follow a beach instead, search for it under Tides at — a place, address or station name — and pick one of the stations listed within 100 miles of it. Set a home and a work address under Calendar preferences, with commute's own switch on, and Pepper also draws your morning and evening commute as ordinary travel rows, the same as the trip between two events below.
Anything with no time of its own — an all-day event, a conference that runs to Friday, a to-do due "Thursday", a workout you have planned but not scheduled — sits in a rail above the clock rather than being given an hour it doesn't have.
An event's look tells you your answer. On your own calendars, an event you've accepted (or one you made yourself) is filled in that calendar's colour from Google Calendar. An invitation you haven't replied to is only outlined in that colour, so it stands out among the filled ones, and one you said Maybe to is striped. Events on calendars other people share with you are plain cards with a coloured dot showing which calendar they came from; hover or focus the dot to see the name, and the event's briefing names the calendar for every event.
Tap any event for its full briefing. A panel opens beside the day with everything the block itself has no room for: both ends and how long, where it is (an address opens in Google Maps, a join link opens the call), the journey there, everyone invited and who organized it, the event's description (a long one folds to a few lines with More), why it's on your calendar, and a way to ask Pepper about it in your own words. Escape closes it and puts you back where you were. From there, Open in Google Calendar takes you to the event itself in a new tab, for the things the page doesn't do, such as opening an attachment.
Reply Yes, Maybe or No from the same panel. On an event someone else invited you to, the briefing has your reply as three buttons; tap one and the organizer is told, the way Google Calendar would. On a repeating event, picking one asks This event or All events first, as Google Calendar does. Add a note opens a short email to the organizer — Pepper can draft it, you can edit both subject and body, and nothing goes until you press Send, which sends your reply and emails the note from your own Gmail. Without Gmail connected for sending, the note rides along with your reply in Google Calendar instead, and the panel says so. An event you organized has no reply to give, so it shows no buttons. You can also ask Pepper in chat to reply for you (see Answer an invitation above).
A meeting — an event with a video link or other people on it — also keeps its own note, files, and a recording, on its own page, opened from the event. See Meetings.
Tap an empty stretch of the day to start an event there, at the half hour you pointed at, with the date and time already filled in.
Set when it ends. The new-event form shows the whole thing on one line, a date and a start time to an end time, so an event can run past midnight. + end date adds an end day for an event over several days (it appears by itself once the event spans days); All day and the 15m, 30m and 1h length buttons sit under it. Type a time the way you'd say it — 3p, 3:30pm, 15:45, noon — or pick from the list, which steps by five minutes. Moving the start carries the end along so the event keeps its length; the end-time list instead shows each choice's own length (3:30pm (30 min)), so picking from it changes how long the event runs. An end at or before the start isn't accepted. A new event shows on the calendar and opens as soon as you press Add event, unless it went to a calendar you don't show here, in which case Pepper says so and points you to Settings → Calendars.
Invite people when you add it. The new-event form has a Guests field: start typing a name and matching people from your Google Contacts — and, on a work account, your organization's directory — come up to pick from (this needs Contacts switched on for the account, under Settings → Accounts), or type a full email address and press Enter. Each guest has a Required | Optional switch (optional guests are invited too, and Google marks them as optional). When you press Add event with guests on it, the form asks Send updates to guests?: Send (each guest gets an invitation from Google), Don't send (they're added silently). The form also takes notes, an All day switch and, under More options, Show as Busy or Free (an all-day event starts as Free, as in Google Calendar) beside Visibility (Default, Private or Public: who a calendar you share it with can see the details to), the same as editing. The Meet button beside Where puts a Google Meet link on it.
See who's free, and find a time that works for your guests. Each guest in the form shows Free, Busy or Can't tell for the time you've set, and it updates as you change the time. Busy is only a warning: you can still save. A guest whose calendar Google won't show is Can't tell, never free. When you're editing an event, the event itself doesn't count against you, and since free/busy can't say which event a busy block is, a guest busy at the event's own time shows Busy? (maybe with this meeting). Once the form has a guest, Find a time appears under Guests: tap it and a few suggested times of the same length open underneath, spread over at least two days, on the hour or half hour, inside the work hours and days in your calendar settings, and each with a short reason ("Everyone free · 1h clear before"). Times when every guest is free come first; if there aren't enough, times when some guests are busy follow, labelled Some guests busy. Tap one to set the start and end; the suggestions stay put while you try them.
Out of office and focus time. On a new event on your main calendar the form's More options has a Type: Event, Out of office or Focus time. The other two need a start and end time, show you as busy, and have no guests or Meet link, so those fields go away. Declines chooses new invitations only (the default), all conflicting invitations, or nothing, and Decline message is the reply sent. If your Google account doesn't offer them, the form shows Google's own message and adds nothing.
Choose which calendar it goes on. When you can add events to more than one calendar, the form has a Calendar field, grouped by account when you've connected more than one; it starts on your main account's own calendar. Pick a guest who's in one of your other accounts' contacts (or type their address, if a search just showed them, or a work address on another account's domain) and the calendar moves to that account, with a short note saying so, so the invitation comes from the address they know you by. It moves once: after that, or once you've picked a calendar yourself, guests leave it alone. Cancel throws the event away; closing the form any other way keeps it for next time, calendar included. Editing an event offers the same field to move it to another calendar on the same account. A repeating event can't be moved this way, nor can a meeting someone booked through one of your booking pages (the page keeps track of it where it was booked), and an event can't move between accounts.
Drag an event to a new time, or tap Reschedule for the same thing without dragging. Pick a block up and drop it where you want it (it snaps to five-minute steps). In Week you can drop it on another day too. Dropping an event with nobody else on it moves it straight away, and an Undo appears for a few seconds. Dropping one with guests opens the event's edit form instead, titled Reschedule event, because moving it emails them: the time is set to where you dropped it, and Or another time above it offers a few suggested times, the same kind Find a time suggests. Tapping Reschedule in an event's full briefing opens the same form with the event's own time still in it and Suggested times on top; nothing is picked for you, so you can see when it was. Each guest shows whether they're free at the time in the form, and nothing moves until you press Save. Only events you're allowed to move offer this: a colleague's calendar you subscribe to is read-only and its events stay put, and an event someone else organized doesn't offer it either. Something already over can't be moved this way.
Change an event's length, or start one from a range, in Week. Pull the top or bottom edge of a block to change when it starts or ends (not offered when guests are on the event: change those in Edit, so you see that they'll be told). Drag across empty time in a day's column to open the new-event form with that range filled in; a plain click on a slot starts one there.
Undo. A move, an edit or a delete shows an Undo for a few seconds. For an edit it puts back what you changed among the title, place, time, time zone, notes, Show as, Visibility, Guest permissions and Reminders; for a delete, it makes the event again with the same title, time, place and notes (it comes back as a new event, without its video link, reminders or attachments, which is why a delete is only undone for a single event with no guests: a repeating event or one with guests stays deleted, and its guests have already been told). If the event was changed by anyone after yours, the undo refuses rather than overwrite that change. There is no undo for an edit that changed the guests, the Meet link or the calendar, one that applied to This and following or All events of a repeating event, or one that told the guests (a Send answer to Send updates to guests?), nor for notes that were written in Google Calendar or Outlook, which Markdown can't put back exactly as they were.
Search. The box at the top of the calendar searches the titles, notes, places and guests of events on the calendars you picked in Settings: the past week and the next 90 days, the same search Pepper uses in chat. Pick a result to go to its day and open it.
Show or hide calendars. Calendars, beside the search, lists each calendar and each calendar you follow with a tick. Unticking one only takes it off this page: Pepper, your busy time and Planning still count it, and it stays picked in Settings. The choice is kept with your account, so it follows you to another device.
Declined events. Events you've declined are left off by default. Turn on Show events I've declined under Calendar view and they come back faded and struck through, never counted as busy; open one to change your answer. Pepper in chat, Planning and your free time still leave them out.
Edit or delete an event from its briefing. On an event you organized, on a calendar you can change, the briefing has Edit: change the title, the start and end (or make it all day), where it is, its notes, whether it shows you as busy or free, and who's invited — it is the same form as adding an event, so guests are picked the same way, tapping Required / Optional on a guest switches it, and each one's ✕ takes them off. Save changes only what you touched, and if the change would email anyone, the form asks Send updates to guests? first: Send or Don't send. Delete asks first, says how many guests will be told it's cancelled, and asks the same question. Asking Pepper in chat to change an event tells its guests as usual; say "don't email them" and it holds the mail back. The Repeat list, on a new event and on an edit, offers Google's presets (every day, every week on that weekday, every month on the nth weekday, every year, every weekday) and Custom…. Three things to know: Save on a repeating event asks This event, This and following events or All events in the same step as Send updates to guests?, and Delete asks the same three (This and following on an event whose organizer is someone else is refused, since it would cut or split their series); This and following starts a new series, so guests are invited to it again, which that step says; and Notes are Markdown: what you type (# heading, - list, **bold**, [link](https://…)) is saved to Google Calendar exactly as typed and shows formatted here, but anyone reading the event in Google Calendar or Outlook sees the Markdown characters. Pasting from a web page or document converts it to Markdown (a pasted image is refused). Notes that were written with formatting in Google Calendar or Outlook show as plain text, and when you edit them the form turns them into Markdown, keeping links, lists and emphasis; if the original has something Markdown can't hold (underline, colours, fonts, alignment, images, merged table cells), the form says which, once you've changed the notes, before you save. A save that doesn't touch the notes never rewrites them. An event with no video link also has Add Google Meet video call when you edit it; it only adds a link (Pepper can't take one off), and guests are told, since the event they were invited to changed. An event someone else organized has no Edit; reply to it instead, or use Suggest a change (next).
Custom repeat. Repeat is a row of one-click choices (Once, Daily, Weekdays, Weekly, Monthly, Custom…) with a line under it spelling out the rule; yearly is a Custom… rule. Custom… opens Google Calendar's own custom dialog: Repeat every a number of days, weeks, months or years; on a weekly one, which weekdays; on a monthly one, the day of the month or the nth (or last) weekday, taken from the event's first day; and Ends never, on a date, or after a number of occurrences. Editing a repeating event shows how it repeats now: if the dialog can show that rule it can be changed there, and a rule it can't (an unusual monthly rule, say) shows as read-only text with Replace rule. Choosing a new rule for a series is a change to all of it or to this and the following, never to one occurrence; the days the series skips or adds on top of its rule are kept as they are. Once turns a series into a single event.
More options (folded away at the bottom of the form, for a new event or an edit; while it is folded its title lists what in it isn't the default, such as "More options · Free · Private"): Time zone (shown as its name with change beside it; click it and type a few letters of a city to find the zone. One zone for the start and the end, yours unless you pick another; the times you type are that zone's, so picking a new zone keeps the clock times and moves the event. An event that starts and ends in different zones in Google Calendar shows "Keep as is" and is left alone unless you pick one; only the organizer can change the zone), Reminders (the calendar's default until you press + Add, then your own, with Reset to default to go back: up to five, each a notification or an email, from minutes to four weeks ahead; they're yours alone, so changing them tells nobody), and Guest permissions (whether guests can modify the event, invite others, and see the guest list; Google's defaults are no, yes and yes). Changing any of them doesn't email guests; visibility and guest permissions are the organizer's to change.
Duplicate an event you organized. The briefing's Duplicate (next to Edit, on your own events only) opens the new-event form filled in from it: title, time, place, notes, who's invited, busy or free, the options above, and a new Meet link if it had one, on the same calendar. Change what you want, then Add event; nobody is invited until you do, and then you're asked Send updates to guests? as for any new event. A repeating event duplicates as a single event (set Repeat if you want it to repeat), and closing the form leaves nothing behind. For someone else's event, Copy to my calendar is the way to take it.
Suggest a change to an event someone else organizes. On an event on one of your calendars that somebody else organized and you're a guest on, the briefing has Suggest a change instead of Edit. It opens the same kind of form — title, start and end (or all day), where — plus an optional message, with no guests, notes or delete. Preview shows what the organizer will get: the event and its current time, each change as "Time: old → new", then your message, with times in your time zone (on a repeating event it says it's about that one occurrence). Nothing on the event changes: the organizer decides whether to make the change. How it reaches them depends on who they are:
- They're in a room with you on Pepper: it goes to them inside Pepper, not by email, so you don't need Gmail connected. The preview is read-only and the button says Send in Pepper. They get a notification and a card at the top of their Planning saying who suggested what, which occurrence it's about, each change as old → new, and your message, with Accept and Decline. Accept makes the change to their event, after checking that the event still matches what you saw (if they've edited it since, Accept says so and they can decline instead) and, for a new time, whether it overlaps something else on their calendar (it says so and offers Accept anyway). Either answer sends you a short message, and your own Acted on in Planning shows it waiting, then accepted or declined, until it's a month old. A message on its own, with nothing on the event changed, goes by email even to someone in a room with you, since there would be nothing to accept.
- Anyone else: you can edit the subject and the text, then Send — it goes by email from your own Gmail, so Gmail has to be connected with send access; if it isn't, Pepper says so and points you to Settings rather than sending it some other way. Pepper responds the same way whether or not the organizer's address is a Pepper account, so it never tells you which; an organizer who has an account just also gets a notification that the email is on its way to them.
If where it goes changes between Preview and Send (say the organizer's calendar couldn't be read when you previewed), nothing is sent: Pepper asks you to go back and preview it again, so an email you edited never turns into something you didn't see.
Ask Pepper in chat to suggest a change. Tell Pepper "ask the organizer if we can move this to 3pm" about an event someone else organizes and it drafts the same email as a card in the chat: who it goes to, the subject (which you can edit) and the text. Nothing is sent until you press Send on the card, and it goes the same way as one sent from the event's panel, from your own Gmail with the same notification to an organizer who has an account. Pepper never sends it by itself, and a scheduled task can't draft one. The card has no Save to drafts, since there is no Gmail draft behind it. The trash icon at its top right discards the suggestion without sending it. If the organizer is in a room with you, the suggestion would go to them inside Pepper rather than by email, which the card can't show, so Pepper tells you to use Suggest a change on the event in the Calendar app instead.
Copy someone else's event onto your calendar. On an event you didn't organize and aren't invited to (a colleague's calendar you subscribe to, say, or a family calendar), the briefing has Copy to my calendar. It opens the same form as adding an event, already filled in from the original: its title, time, place and notes, shown as Busy, on your main account's own calendar. Change anything you like: the title, the time, Show as Free instead of Busy, or the Calendar it goes on, which can be any calendar you can add events to on any connected account. The copy is private, and nobody is invited unless you add guests, who then get an invitation from Google as usual. Its notes start with where it came from. The copy's briefing shows what it was copied from and has Remove copy. A copy doesn't follow the original by itself. If the original moves, Planning offers to update it, and an update leaves alone anything you changed when you made the copy.
Links in an event are links. A join URL sitting in the location field — where Zoom and Teams invitations usually put theirs — and any link in the event's own notes are clickable where they're written, instead of being text you have to select and copy. Only ordinary web links become clickable; anything else in someone's notes stays as plain text. A link is exactly the address as it's written, so you can see in the link itself where it goes — Pepper doesn't guess where someone's address ends. Quotation marks around a link aren't part of it, but a full stop written against one is, so a link at the end of a sentence may carry it.
If you've connected more than one Google account, the Join button knows which one the meeting belongs to. A Google Meet link from your work calendar opens as your work account and one from your personal calendar opens as your personal account, instead of as whichever Google account your browser happened to be using — so there's no switching accounts in the thirty seconds before a call. It picks between accounts you're already signed into; if you aren't signed into that one anywhere, Google still asks, as it would have before. Zoom, Teams and other links are untouched — they have no equivalent, so Pepper passes them through exactly as they came.
One calendar can belong to both of your accounts — a family or team calendar you've ticked on each. There, "which calendar is it on" has two answers, so Pepper goes by which of your addresses is on the invitation and opens the link as that one. If you're not on the guest list at all, it leaves the link alone: no account of yours has a claim on that meeting, so there's nothing to pick.
The day also shows things it contains that aren't meetings: the meals you've planned (see Meals) at the time they're for, the scheduled tasks that run for you — your morning brief, a weekly digest — marked at the moment they fired or will fire, and anything that's due (see Todos). Tapping any of them takes you to where it lives. They're drawn with a texture that says "planned, not agreed to", so they never read as commitments. Your commitments are unaffected: what counts as a busy day, and which event leads the page, is still your calendar's answer alone.
On the day it is due, only a to-do you gave a time to is drawn on the Calendar tab, at that time. A to-do with only a date, or one Pepper found for you, is a suggestion instead, and suggestions live in Planning. Once a to-do of yours is past its day, dated or timed, it leaves the calendar and comes back as an ordinary suggestion in Planning ("Due Sep 10 — free Thu 2pm"), which you can dismiss with the ✕. Nothing is labelled late or overdue.
When you have to get from one place to the next, the day says so. Where two events have real addresses and a gap between them, a narrow Travel block is drawn from when you can leave to when you'd arrive — so a drive that runs past the start of the next thing is something you can see, not something you have to work out. Beside it sits a card with the route: how long, how much slack, a map, and drive / transit / walk / cycle to switch between. Switching moves the Travel block too, because that's the part that's a length of time. Journeys are only drawn where Pepper can route them; an event that's only a video link is somewhere you already are, and a location like "Conference room B" names no place a map can find.
Ask "what's on my calendar today?" in the web chat and Pepper answers with a card rather than a paragraph — the next few things on your day, which calendar each is on, and a way into the full app. Ask a question about your schedule instead ("who's at the 3pm?", "am I free Thursday?", "what does my month look like?") and you get a plain answer, because that's what actually answers it. On text message and WhatsApp there's no card, so you always get the written version.
The card is a glance, not the whole day — a busy day is trimmed, and the app has the rest.
Planning
Planning sits first under Calendar in the sidebar. It is the same calendar, Day or Week, with everything Pepper thinks might deserve your time drawn alongside what is actually on it — so the Calendar tab stays a record of your commitments, and Planning is where you decide what becomes one.
- Suggestions, drawn where they'd go: events from the teams, shows, schools and people you follow; events and deadlines Pepper found in your email; your meal windows from Calendar preferences, on the right beside your commute; and to-dos that have a due date but no time. None of them count as busy.
- Add puts one on your calendar. Each suggestion has an Add in its corner. Press it and it becomes a real event on your Google calendar right away, and the card moves to Acted on, under the cards. A to-do with no time gets a suggested half hour before it's due, inside your work hours. An all-day event from your email, like a conference week, is added as Free, the way Google adds all-day events, so it doesn't block every hour it spans.
- Assign to… asks someone else to go. A suggestion Pepper found in your email (or an email card about an event already on your calendar) has Assign to…: pick someone from your rooms or the people on the email, or type any address, then check the message and press Send. You can ask more than one person (Invite someone else…) and tick Add to my calendar too if you're going as well. The invitation goes out from your Google calendar a few seconds after Send, so an Undo right away tells nobody; after that, Withdraw takes the invitation back. Each person's answer from Google shows beside the ask, and your copy of the event turns green once someone says yes, and red if everyone asked says no.
- A suggested change from someone you share a room with (see Suggest a change above) sits at the top of the cards with Accept and Decline. The answer is final: it can't be undone from here, but you can edit the event as usual.
- Acted on lists what you've done from Planning, newest first, with the way back for each: Undo for an Add or a No thanks, Withdraw for an ask that went out, and Invite someone else… on an event you added. It's still there after a reload.
- Cards on the right flag what needs a decision: two things at the same time, a commute that runs into a meeting, a followed event on top of a commitment, a shared-calendar event you might want to mirror onto your own, an email that changes the time or place of something already on your calendar, setup gaps (no home address, nothing followed yet), and a nudge to connect a second calendar account once you've only got the one. Each card has one action, No thanks, and Talk it through, which puts a sentence about it in the message box for you to send. Hovering a card lights up the event it's about, and the other way round.
- From your email: Pepper reads recent mail for invitations, confirmations, school newsletters and the like, along with ordinary mail that names a weekday or a month ("see you Monday", "the November meetup"), keeps everything it finds (even months out), and shows what falls in the day or week you're looking at — or the next few coming up if nothing does. It skips anything already on your calendar, and when an email adds something your event is missing, like a location, or moves it to a new time or place, it offers to update the event instead. Every card links to the email it came from (Open email), so you can check before you change anything. The first look happens when you open Planning; after that it's once a day.
- Flights and hotel stays from airline and hotel confirmation emails come through the same way, with the booking's details kept on the suggestion: flight number, airports, times and confirmation code, or the hotel's address, phone and check-in/check-out. Pepper takes these from the booking details the airline or hotel builds into the email (the same ones Gmail uses to add flights to your calendar), so a confirmation without them is read like any other email. A flight Gmail has already put on your calendar isn't suggested a second time. Details are kept until 30 days after the trip.
- Flight status on the day: from a day before departure until it lands, a flight on your calendar (added from Planning, or one Gmail put there) shows a line like "✈ UA 1234 · On time · Gate B12" — amber when it's delayed, with the new time, and red when it's cancelled. Pepper looks the status up on the web, so when it can't find an answer it's confident in, it shows nothing rather than a guess; check with the airline for anything that matters.
- Mirror a shared event (a family or team calendar you don't own) to put a private busy copy on your own calendar in one tap; Undo removes the copy. To change the title, time or calendar first, use Copy to my calendar on the event's briefing instead.
- How the week looks, at the bottom: how much of your waking hours is committed, split by calendar, and your longest open stretch. It reports; it doesn't suggest.
In a room's calendar, the room's own follows are listed under Following beside the calendars, read-only, and Planning shows them the same way, plus your own email suggestions; Add puts the event on your calendar, not everyone's, and Assign to… offers the room's members. A room's calendar goes back and forward a week at a time like your own, and your own events in it show in full, whatever the room is allowed to see of them.
List, Next up, and suggestions
Switch the Calendar app to List view to read your events down the page.
- Next up, at the top, counts down to whatever's coming within the hour — "In 12 min" — with Join or Directions right there when the event has a video link or an address to go to (neither shows up if it has none of those), and an address also gets a small map of the place; further out it's a one-line "Next: Design review with Priya at 11:00." For a place you drive to, it counts down to when to leave instead.
- Scrolling up in List goes back through past weeks, and scrolling down goes forward. A past event with a note or a recording carries a Notes or Recording chip; open it and choose Open meeting to get back to them. See Meetings.
Your to-dos aren't on the calendar: they stay on your to-do list, and Pepper doesn't put them into the gaps in your day.
Multiple calendars
If you've connected more than one calendar (personal, work, family, shared), Pepper looks across all the ones you've chosen to include and tells you which calendar each event is on. Connecting starts you off with your main calendar; you change the set in Manage calendars, one table with a row per calendar: Include (whether Pepper reads it), Counts as busy (the one definition of busy — scheduling, answering and new booking pages all use it) and Rooms see (what group rooms see of it). Handy for adding a shared family calendar, muting a noisy holidays or birthdays one, or focusing on just work and personal. The Calendar app links it too: Manage calendars, at the top of the calendar, opens the same page right inside the calendar, so you don't have to go looking through Settings to change what it reads.
Your main personal calendar is treated as the one your day is really "about"; events on family, sports, or informational calendars are treated as context.
An account with nothing ticked is named rather than skipped quietly. If you've connected a second Google account but never picked any of its calendars, Pepper doesn't read that account — which is the picker working as intended — but it now says so instead of handing you an agenda that looks complete. Ask what's on your day and it names the account it didn't look at; the Calendar app shows the same line with a Choose them in Settings link. Nothing is broken and there's nothing to reconnect: it's a different message from the one you get when a connection has actually stopped working (see Connecting your accounts), and the fix is picking calendars under Settings → Calendars.
A calendar that was read and had nothing on it says so too, whenever the day has anything else in it. Alongside the events it did find, Pepper names the calendars it looked at that came back empty — so a quiet shared calendar reads as checked and clear rather than leaving you wondering whether it was checked at all. On a day where nothing is on any of your calendars you get one answer for the whole day instead, because there's nothing there to be ambiguous about.
That's most of the answer to "why isn't my family calendar showing up". If it's named as empty, it was read and there was genuinely nothing on it. If your day has events but that calendar is neither one of them nor named as empty, it isn't one of the ones you've picked — Settings → Calendars is where you add it.
The same gap has a write side worth knowing about. Ask Pepper to put something on the calendar of an account with nothing ticked and it will create the event — on that account's own calendar, which is almost always what you meant — but it tells you the event won't come back when it reads your calendar afterwards. That's expected rather than a failed write, so don't ask for it again; pick that account's calendars and it shows up like anything else.
Following things as calendars
You can follow things whose events you want on your calendar without adding them one by one: a sports team, a TV show, a school, a venue's website, a person, an event series. Each one becomes its own read-only calendar, listed in the Following app (open it from the grid button next to the message box). Manage calendars keeps a row for each one too. Its events show on your calendar in a read-only style, marked "Following", and you can add one to your own calendar from its sheet or from Planning.
- Adding one: type what you want in the Following app's box — "49ers", "BYU football", "Severance", a school's name — or paste a website or calendar link. If it could mean more than one thing, Pepper shows the matches and you pick. You can always follow exactly what you typed, and Pepper searches the web for pages that list its events. You can also just ask: "follow the Giants", "follow Malcolm Gladwell's talks".
- Where the events come from: teams from ESPN, shows from TVmaze, a calendar link as-is, and anything else from web pages Pepper reads for dated events.
- Keeping up to date: a new follow is checked straight away, then about every 12 hours. When a game is rescheduled or an air date moves, the event moves with it rather than leaving a stale copy behind, and cancelled events disappear.
- Busy or free: followed events don't block your time unless you say so — press Add on one to put it on your calendar, or set a follow's Counts as busy to Yes — in its row in Following, or in the Manage calendars table — so its events count for your availability and Booking without being added. Rooms never see your own follows, and a room's follow never makes anyone in the room look busy.
- Schools: when a school's events differ by grade, Pepper asks which grades apply and shows only those (plus school-wide events).
- Sports: a team is one follow, whether you add it by asking, from the Sports chip or from here. Each follow's row in Following also has Show X on my calendar, which draws its games on your calendar, with a name and colour.
- Rooms: a room's follows show on that room's calendar, and are managed in that room's own Following.
Followed events live in Pepper and are only written to your Google calendar when you press Add. Pages that only show their events after running scripts in a browser, or that block automated visitors, can't be read.
Time zones
Everything Pepper shows you is in your local time zone (from your profile). All-day events stay on their day no matter where you are. If your time zone is wrong, fix it in Settings or under Locations in the Calendar app's Preferences — they're the same setting.
How dates, times and numbers are written
Four choices in Settings → Profile, all of which apply everywhere Pepper writes a date, a time or a number back to you — calendar, email, todos, scheduled tasks and your daily brief:
- Time format — 12-hour (
3:00pm) or 24-hour (15:00). - Date format — month first (
Jul 28) or day first (28 Jul). - First day of the week — Monday or Sunday. This is what Pepper assumes when you say "this week" or "next week".
- Number format —
1,234.56,1.234,56or1 234,56. This is how thousands are grouped and decimals marked. Currency symbols don't move: a dollar amount stays$first.
None of these change anything you'd copy or paste: machine-readable dates stay in the 2026-07-28 form either way. Leave them alone and you get 12-hour times, month-first dates, Monday weeks and 1,234.56.
Getting between things
Open the calendar app and, where one stretch of your day ends somewhere and the next begins somewhere else, Pepper adds the trip itself as a row — how long the drive takes, how far it is, and when you'd need to leave. You can switch the row between driving, transit, walking and cycling.
The useful part is whether it fits. Most of the time the row just tells you how far it is. When the margin gets thin it flags itself instead and says how thin ("5 min spare"), and when the journey doesn't fit at all it says by how much ("40 min too long") — which is the version worth catching, because a back-to-back pair in two different places looks fine on a calendar and isn't.
A few things worth knowing:
- Pepper works from the stretches you're actually booked for, not from each row in the list. A second appointment sitting inside a longer one doesn't invent a trip, because it doesn't take any time the longer one wasn't already taking.
- Both ends need a location on the event. If either is missing an address, there's no trip to show.
- Very long gaps don't get one either — a four-hour hole in your day isn't a journey, it's an afternoon.
- Driving times account for the traffic expected at the hour you'd actually be leaving, not just the distance — so an evening drive across town is priced as an evening drive. For a trip whose departure has already passed, Pepper prices it as if you left now. Transit uses the timetable for that departure time; walking and cycling don't vary by hour.
Preferences
Under Calendar in the sidebar, Planning switches without leaving the calendar. Booking, Manage calendars and Preferences (the gear) are along the top of the calendar, beside + Create event; ← Calendar takes you back from each. Preferences is the one place for how your days work:
- Locations — your home and work addresses (checked against the map as you type) and your time zone.
- Work & commute — your work days and hours. On work days the calendar draws your drive in, arriving by your start time and leaving at your end time.
- Meals and Workouts — when you usually eat and train, and for how long. Workouts is the Workouts app's own setting, so changing it here changes it there.
- Environment — which weather details the calendar shows, and whether it draws tides and from which station.
- Booking — where every new booking page starts (see Booking pages).
One Save at the foot keeps all of it.
How Pepper handles changes
Before adding, moving, or cancelling, Pepper confirms the details with you — title, date, time, who's invited — unless you stated everything unambiguously. When someone you named ("coffee with Jenna") has a known email, Pepper asks whether to send an invite; a personal block and an invitation are different things, and Pepper never invites someone you didn't name.
Pepper also won't guess an address. If you name an invitee it can't match to a real email, it makes the change it can and asks you for their address rather than sending an invitation to one it made up — so an invite never lands in a stranger's inbox. This holds whether the invitee is named on a new event or added to one that already exists: adding someone to an existing event mails them an invitation just the same, so it gets the same check.
Events Pepper creates start with a pepper, so you can tell them apart at a glance: 🌶️ on one you asked for (in chat, with an Add button, or booked through your booking page or Pepper Answering) and ⚡️🌶️ on one Pepper added on its own, such as from a scheduled task. It's only part of the title: delete it like any other text and it stays gone. Copies Pepper mirrors from another of your calendars keep their original title.
For "remind me to…" style requests that don't need a time block on the calendar, Pepper uses the to-do list instead (see Todos). Calendar events are for time-blocked commitments.
What Pepper can't do yet
Pepper doesn't manage attachments on events, and it can't take a Google Meet link off an event once there is one. It won't answer an invitation from a scheduled task, only in a conversation where you can confirm it.
Tips
- A few events you've already declined won't show up — Pepper assumes you opted out on purpose.
- If more than ~50 events match a query, Pepper tells you how many it left off so you can narrow the request.
Things to try
- Check every calendar at once. Work, personal and family calendars all answer one question together: "am I free Thursday at 3?" checks every connected calendar, so there's no opening three apps to find out.
Try it: "Am I free Thursday at 3?" - Rescue the dentist confirmation. The dentist confirmation stuck in your inbox doesn't have to stay there: appointments, reservations and tickets Pepper finds in your email wait in Planning beside your calendar, and one tap adds them.
- Running late. Running late? "Push my 10am to 10:10 and let them know" moves the meeting and tells everyone on it. Pepper says exactly what it's about to do and waits for your go first.
Try it: "I'm running ten minutes late for my next meeting, push it and let everyone know" - Travel day. On a travel day, a flight Pepper found in your email shows on your calendar with its gate and any delay looked up that morning — nothing to check separately.
- Know when to leave. Save your home and work addresses and the calendar shows the drive between events and when to leave, and flags two meetings that are too close together to make in time.