A real alarm for your Google Calendar events on iPhone

Updated October 8, 2026

Google Calendar warns you with notifications: one sound, a banner, and only a vibration in silent mode. To make a Google event ring like an alarm clock, connect your calendar to Tellendar and put an alarm on the event. It rings on the Lock Screen, even in silent mode, and it follows the event if you move it in Google.

What Google Calendar already does on iPhone

The Google Calendar app: notifications, per calendar or per event

In the Google Calendar app, each calendar has default notifications for its new events, and each event can have its own. To set them: open the menu, tap Settings, pick a calendar, then "Add another notification". For a single event, open it, tap Edit, and adjust the "Notifications" section. You can also ask for an email. These settings are yours alone: they change nothing for other people who see the calendar.

On iPhone, these notifications are notifications like any other. The phone plays a sound once, shows a banner, then files the alert in Notification Center. In silent mode, it only vibrates. A Focus can hold it back. These causes are covered in Why you miss calendar alerts on iPhone.

Apple's Calendar: the same events, the same limits

You can also add your Google account to the iPhone: in Settings, tap Apps, then Calendar, then "Calendar Accounts" and "Add Account". Your Google events then show in Apple's Calendar app, with its alerts. But a Calendar alert is a notification too, subject to silent mode. And if both apps are installed, you get every reminder twice; Google then suggests turning off one app's notifications in Settings.

Neither offers an alarm: something that rings until you stop it, whatever the phone's settings.

Putting an alarm on a Google event with Tellendar

Tellendar is a calendar app for iPhone that only warns you with alarms. Connected to Google Calendar, it shows your Google events and lets you add one or more alarms to them.

1. In Tellendar's settings, open Google Calendar and tap "Connect Google Calendar". The iPhone asks you to allow Tellendar's notifications: they are used to move an alarm when the event changes in Google while the app is closed. Google then asks for access to your calendar.
2. Tick the calendars to show, and choose the one where events you create in Tellendar will go. Your Google events appear in the list, with a dot in their calendar's color.
3. They arrive without an alarm. Tellendar does not read the notifications set in Google, and never adds an alarm you did not ask for. To add one, say it in the conversation: "add an alarm one hour before the team meeting". Or tap the event's card and, in the form, the "Add a reminder" row.
4. At the right time, the alarm rings like an alarm clock, on the Lock Screen, even in silent mode, with the event's name and a "Snooze 10 min" button.

You can put several alarms on the same event, the day before and one hour before for instance. Multiple alarms for one appointment on iPhone goes into the details.

The alarm follows the event

If you move the event in Google Calendar, on your computer or on the phone, Google tells Tellendar. The app wakes up and moves the alarm. If the app does not answer, a notification arrives within five minutes and moves the alarm in its place. An event deleted in Google loses its alarm.

The other way round, what you do in Tellendar goes to Google Calendar: a new event, a move in one sentence ("move the meeting to 3pm"), a deletion. An event created in Tellendar lands in Google without its default notifications, so you are not warned twice.

The alarms themselves stay on your iPhone. Tellendar writes no reminder into Google, and leaves the notifications you set there untouched. You can keep them, or delete them in the Google Calendar app if you would rather be warned by the alarm only.

Your iPhone is what talks to Google. Tellendar's server sees neither the titles nor the details of your events. The Privacy page describes exactly what it keeps.

Frequently asked questions