How to Only See Google Calendar Invites From People You Know

Would you like invitations to appear automatically on your Google calendar, but are suspicious of spam? Instead of blocking all events from appearing automatically, you have another option. You can only view events from people you know.

This addition to Google Calendar settings was announced in July 2022. So if you haven’t tried it yet, now is the time to do it!

How it works

Turning on the option to automatically see events from people you know includes senders in your organization who use the same domain. It also includes those in your contact list and people you have interacted with in the past.

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After enabling the feature, you will continue to receive invitations from unknown senders. However, these appointments will not appear in your Google Calendar until you accept them.

You can turn on this setting on the Google Calendar website and in the mobile app on Android and iPhone.

View invitations from people you know on the web

To enable this setting on the web, go to Google Calendar in your browser and sign in. Click the gear icon in the top right and select “Settings”.

Expand the “General” section on the left and select “Event Settings”.

Select the Add invitations to my calendar drop-down box and select “Only if the sender is known”.

You should see a pop-up message informing you that the change will not affect any invites you’ve already received and that you will receive future email invites from unknown senders.

Select “OK” to acknowledge the message and save the change.

Restrict invites to people you know on the mobile app

To change this setting in the Google Calendar mobile app, follow the same process on Android and iPhone.

Open Google Calendar and select the menu icon in the top left. Select “Settings” and then tap “General”.

Scroll down and select Add Invites, then tap Add Invites to My Calendar.

Select “Only if the sender is known” and confirm the change in the pop-up window with “OK”.

If you have more than one Google Account in the Google Calendar app, follow the same process for each one if you like.

You can then use the arrow in the top left to exit Settings and return to your main Google Calendar screen.

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It can be handy to have invitations automatically added to your Google calendar, but you’ve turned off the unknown sender option. Advanced settings allow you to see these events again, but only from people you know.

For more information, see How to propose a new time for an event or how to restore deleted events in Google Calendar.