Google Calendar Integration
Connecting Google Calendar gives RescueTime a full picture of your day alongside your tracked time.
Once connected, your meetings appear in the Assistant, daily summaries are added to your calendar, and Focus Sessions can be triggered automatically from calendar events.
Connect your Google Calendar
Open Calendar Integration settings
Go to Account Settings → Calendar Integration and click + Add a new calendar integration.
Select Add Google Calendar
Choose Add Google Calendar from the options.
Grant permissions
Click See Permissions. Google will ask you to grant: See, edit, share, and permanently delete all the calendars you can access using Google Calendar.
These permissions are required so RescueTime can create a dedicated RescueTime calendar for your daily summaries. RescueTime will never add, edit, or delete anything from your existing calendars. The integration will not work if these permissions are not granted.
Choose your account and allow
Select the Google account you want to connect and click Allow.
Your RescueTime calendar is created
A calendar named RescueTime will appear in your Google Calendar. It shows daily summaries of your total logged time and meeting time, and stays in sync with your Assistant.
Meeting forecast
Each morning, the Assistant shows a list of the day's meetings and their times in your morning forecast.
Shortly before a meeting starts, the Assistant displays a pinned alert for the upcoming meeting. If the calendar event includes a Zoom or Google Meet link, a Join Meeting button appears so you can join directly.
Automatic Focus Sessions Solo Focus & Solo+
You can trigger a Focus Session automatically from a calendar event in two ways: add #focustime or #focussession to the title or description of an event, or use Focus Time for Google Calendar to schedule blocking directly from your calendar.
Daily summaries
RescueTime adds a daily summary event to your calendar each day, showing your total logged time, meeting time, and Focus Work progress. To view it, open your Google Calendar in day, week, or monthly view.
Today's summary isn't available until tomorrow. The current day's summary appears once the day has ended.
Click the timer or calendar icon on a summary event to see the full breakdown. Each summary includes:
🗓 Calendar Summary
Total meeting time from your primary calendar.
⏱ RescueTime Summary
Total time RescueTime logged, plus the percentage of that time dedicated to Focus Work.
🎯 Your Focus Work Goal
Whether you exceeded or missed your Focus Work goal for the day.
Multiple calendars Solo Focus & Solo+
Connecting multiple calendars gives RescueTime a complete picture of your availability, making Focus Zones more accurate. We recommend connecting every calendar that covers part of your day:
Your work calendar (e.g. G Suite)
Your personal calendar (e.g. Gmail)
Shared work calendars (e.g. a team calendar)
Sharing a calendar with your connected calendar
The calendar you want to add needs to be shared with your connected calendar with full access before you can add it to RescueTime. To do that, follow these steps:
Open Google Calendar on a computer and click the gear icon → Settings.
Under Settings for my calendars, select the calendar to share, then click Access permissions.
Under Share with specific people, click Add people and enter your email address.
Set permissions to Make changes AND manage sharing. This level of access is required for RescueTime to connect with the calendar.
Click Send. Once you accept the share, you can connect the calendar to RescueTime. Once connected, RescueTime will pull meeting information from all of your shared calendars.
Regenerate daily summaries
If your daily summaries aren't showing up in Google Calendar, you can regenerate the last 7 days:
Go to Account Settings → Calendar Integrations.
Click the gear icon next to your calendar and select Settings.
Scroll down and click Regenerate daily summaries.
Other common issues
Daily summaries still not appearing after regenerating
Disconnect and reconnect your Google Calendar. Accept the permission to "See, edit, share, and permanently delete all the calendars you can access using Google Calendar."
#focustime or #focussession didn't trigger a Focus Session
Disconnect and reconnect your Google Calendar, making sure to accept the full permissions when prompted.
Scheduled meetings not showing in Timesheets or the Assistant
Disconnect and reconnect your Google Calendar, making sure to accept the full permissions when prompted.
Disconnect your Google Calendar from RescueTime
Go to Account Settings → Calendar Integration.
Click the gear icon next to your calendar and select Settings.
Click Remove Google Calendar.
Open Google Calendar Settings. Under Settings for my calendars, click RescueTime, then choose Remove calendar.
This completely disconnects your Google Calendar from RescueTime. Meeting forecasts, automatic Focus Sessions, and daily summaries will stop until you reconnect.