Samsung Calendar app interferes with Google Calendar notifications

[DaveZiffer]

My A54 phone comes with a pre-installed default "Calendar" app that originally fooled me into thinking that it was Google Calendar (considering that Google Calendar is generally the default calendar on Android devices). Samsung's Calendar fooled me because somehow it has access to the Google Calendar data, and so it displays info that I had entered into (the real) Google Calendar using my PC. I finally realized that Samsung's Calendar was not the "real thing" when it occurred to me that Google Calendar has a new "Schedule" view that Samsung's Calendar doesn't support.

My response was to install Google Calendar on my phone, but upon doing this I suddenly had two copies of every event notification - one from Samsung Calendar and another from Google Calendar. So I tried uninstalling Samsung's Calendar but this is not allowed, so instead I disabled Samsung's Calendar. Well that fixed the problem, because NOW I RECEIVE NO EVENT NOTIFICATIONS AT ALL. I know that Samsung's Calendar is messing me up because I also have both a PC and a non-Samsung Android tablet, both of which run Google Calendar, and those devices display my notifications just fine.

So obviously Samsung's Calendar is interfering with Google Calendar's notifications; disabling Samsung Calendar apparently disables Google Calendar's notifications. This is very disturbing. I have two choices, apparently: receive two copies of each of my Google Calendar notifications, or receive none. This is completely unacceptable.

When I bought my Samsung phones (in October 2023) I thought I was just buying a phone, but apparently Samsung has a different conception. My Samsung A54s apparently also come with a Samsung Wallet that is intended to displace Google Wallet. There's also a Google messaging app (which in the A54 comes pre-installed but on the A03s doesn't) that is duplicated by what seems to be a Samsung messaging app. And then there's the Calendar. Oh yes and there's a pre-installed Samsung News app. I wonder what that's about? Samsung apparently wants to select what I read. I'm glad that Samsung News is not not forced upon me in the same way that Samsung Calendar is.

I didn't buy a Samsung phone to be forced into using Samsung's Calendar or any other Samsung apps. The whole point of using Google Calendar is that it's universally available on all devices, allowing me to share Calendar data with people who use Google Calendar on PCs, Macs, non-Samsung Android tablets and non-Samsung phones. I have no idea what the implications of my using Samsung's Calendar on just my Samsung phones are, and I doubt that Samsung's software engineers do either. On some future day when Samsung has totally displaced Google's Calendar on all devices, including non-Samsung devices, then maybe I'll take a look at it. Till then, please don't shove it down my throat.

It seems to me that Samsung has some sort of grand plan to displace Google in the Android app marketplace. Good luck with that. Google owns Android, which means Google has the power to bump off Samsung any time it wants. It's time that Samsung top management realizes this, stops trying to take over the Android app world, and returns its attention to making PHONES rather than irritating its phone customers with all this complexity and frustration.

[justmeagain79]

Go into your Google account and go to security> scroll down to third party access(should be after 2SV options. Remove samsung from your Google account and vice versa on your samsung account. Samsung should have a spot where you can toggle the Google link off.

[DaveZiffer]

Thanks for this suggestion.

The Google account management section (deep under "Data & privacy" in my phone's Settings) has a sub-section called "Third-party apps & services". Samsung is not listed among the third parties there. So it would seem, on my phone at least, that Samsung grants itself third-party access to Google's data without any explicit indication in the Google account management UI.

My Samsung account management section (under "Accounts and backup" in Settings, I presume) seems to contain no sub-section relating to Samsung's access to third-party data.

[realaud]

Your Samsung calendar and Google calendar sync with each other (as well as Outlook), so what you put in one will appear in the other.  You don't have to disable Samsung calendar, just don't use it.  Then go to your settings, select apps, and turn off notifications from Samsung Calendar and make sure notifications from Google calendar is on.  

I don't use Samsung Calendar, but it resides on my phone and I can access it if I choose to.  I did not disable it.  I use Google calendar exclusively and always have and all my notifications come from Google calendar. At some point right after the most recent UI update, somehow Samsung calendar choose to become primary, once I realized why I was getting double notifications for events, I just made adjustments as described above.  

[DaveZiffer]

I went to the Settings for Samsung's Calendar and re-enabled the app.

There is an "Allow Notifications" slider under "App notifications", but it is greyed out so that I cannot turn it off.

This whole screen is full of notification options, including "Lock screen", "Badge", and "Pop-up", all of which I disabled separately. Then there is a sub menu called "Notification categories". I opened this, revealing three sliders:

"General notifications",
"Ringtone notifications",
and "Other notifications".

I turned off "General notifications" and "Other notifications". Like the higher-level "Allow notifications" slider, the "Ringtone notifications" slider is greyed out, and so I cannot un-set it from its "on" position.

I then went over to the Google Calendar "App notifications" section and found a similar set of settings. On Google Calendar, the top-level "Allow notifications" slider is NOT greyed out, so there is the option to disable notifications, apparently, and my guess is that Samsung's calendar gloms onto this setting, which is why I can't un-set it in Samsung's calendar settings.

At the lower level of "Notification categories" I see a different set of sliders under two headings ("Calendar" and "Tasks"), whereas the Samsung calendar at this level has no sub-sections (just the three sliders mentioned above). The Google calendar "categories" settings look like this:

UNDER "Calendar"
Allow notifications
Calendar notifications

UNDER "Tasks"
Allow notifications
Tasks overdue notifications
Tasks notifications

My guess is that the whole "Tasks" concept is a new feature that Samsung's calendar hasn't adopted yet, which is probably why I'm getting Task notifications but not Event notifications. My guess is that the first list above constitutes the only notification types that were available before Google added the "Tasks" concept.

Anyway thanks for the suggestion. I guess I will see what happens.

[realaud]

Here's how I have my calendar settings:

Samsung Calendar: you are correct, you cannot turn off notifications in general. Going to notification categories , I was able to turn off general notifications and other notifications. Ringtone notifications cannot be turned off.

Google Calendar:  I have enabled notifications and in the notification categories I turned everything on.  I only get notifications from the Google calendar, even though the Samsung calendar is (technically) active.  As I said, they are synced and as long as notifications are set properly, you can have as many different calendars as you want on your phone.  Even your Outlook calendar will sync if you have your microsoft account signed in on your phone.  Or maybe you like booboo's super duper **bleep** calendar (no such thing), all calendars will sync if you want them to but you will only get notification from the one you want.

[DaveZiffer]

Nice try, but it didn't work. I set up a test event for just a little over 12 hours ahead, with a 12-hour advance notification. The notification shows up just fine on my Android tablet, which is not blessed with Samsung's calendar, but my Samsung A54 remains silent - no notification. I double checked my Settings to be sure Samsung calendar is enabled (it is). As far as I can see, my notifications are set up the same as yours.

So apparently on my A54 phone, either disabling the entire Samsung calendar app or disabling its notifications kills the Google calendar notifications. So I am still stuck with: two event notifications or none.

But Samsung's calendar doesn't know about Google's "tasks", and so it doesn't interfere with their notifications. I'm sure Samsung is working on messing those up too.

[DaveZiffer]

So now I looked, maybe 15 minutes later, and the event notification appaeared. But my thought is that it appeared only because I had created a task, whose notification also appeared. So ... it seems that if I have only an event notification pending, it won't appear, but if a task notification is also pending, the task notification somehow makes the event notification also appear.

[TimOlaf]

Hi, I've been having the exact same issue, in fact that's what brought me to your thread.  Anyway, I have also tried every permutation I can think of.  I wonder, how exactly are you entering the Event into your calendar during your testing.  The reason I ask is, I have found a difference in notification functionality depending on which platform I enter the Event.  

So, I'm using Google Calendar on my Samsung phone.  I have now turned OFF all notifications for Samsung Calendar, although the Samsung Cal is still "enabled".  Google Cal notifications are ON.  My second device is my desktop browser, where I'm signed into my Google account (the same Google account linked to my Samsung phone).  I would normally get double notifications, but again, I have turned off Samsung Cal notifications completely.

If I enter a new Event in Google Cal on my phone, and give it a notification to occur in a minute or so from now (i.e., let's say an event in 5 minutes, but a notification "3 min before", you get the idea, I'm sure you've done that for testing), then I in fact DO get the notification on the phone!  This is the Google Cal notification, without the Samsung Cal notification (because they are OFF).

HOWEVER, and here's the interesting part:  If I create the event on my computer, in Google calendar, and do the same thing, THEN (it's weird) the notification does NOT occur on the phone, even thought the Event DOES show up on my phone calendar.  In trying to figure out why, I noticed something strange.  The notification "timing" does not translate over in the sync.  So, my "3 min before" timing for the notification shows up as "1 day before" on the phone, and thus, there is NO notification on the phone.

It's just a thought, because if you are entering the event somewhere other than your phone, you could run into this issue, where the notification timing changes, and thus, it WOULD produce the notification IF the notification timing translated over, but if it's wrong, you would just not get any notification.  Something is wrong in syncing the details, when entering the Event elsewhere besides on the phone itself.  

At this point, I'm am simply only entering events on my phone itself.  But, it is still clearly a problem, as I would like to enter events on my computer as well and have them sync properly.

Tim

[DaveZiffer]

Thanks for your input here. Actually my setup is similar to yours, where I am using Google Calendar on my PC and also on my phone. Additionally, I have Google's calendar on an Android tablet , so that is my standard for comparison when evaluaing my phone. I have been creating events on both my PC and my phone without paying attention to which were created where, so I can't say whether there's a correspondence to that.

At this point I actually have Google's calendar working properly on my phone (i.e. delivering notifications of both Events and Tasks correctly). I don't know if it is because of something I did, or because of some change Samsung made via an update. My current configuration is to have absolutely every Setting relating to notifications in the Samsung calendar app turned ON, but I've disabled the Samsung calendar app itself. 

Despite my having achieved success, at least momentarily, I am not marking this problem SOLVED until either Samsung automatically replaces its calendar app with Google's calendar, or until Samsung eliminates its Calendar app or otherwise publicly indicates that this problem has been fixed. It's entirely possible that Samsung "fixed" this problem accidentally, and may equally accidentally "unfix" it in some future update.