How to Add a Background Image to Your Google Calendar

This brief tutorial will walk you through the steps required to add set a picture as the background to your Google Calendar.

You used to be able to upload your own photos to use as backgrounds for your calendars, and for some reason Google decided to stop that (this is from the same company that ended the wildly popular Reader service for no good reason so it shouldn’t come as a surprise). Fortunately there’s a workaround for folks who use Chrome, Microsoft Edge or Vivaldi – by way of the extension Custom Calendar Background.

  1. Visit the Custom Calendar Background extension page and click the Add to Chrome button.
  2. an arrow pointing to a Chrome Extension Add to Chrome button

  3. Once the extension has been installed, click it’s newly added icon from the toolbar and select Extension Options from the list of choices.
  4. an arrow pointing to the Extension Options item in a list of options for a Chrome extension

  5. You can add a different image to use as a background for each month of the year, or one image to use for all months of the year. For the time being we’ll add one image – so choose Single Image
  6. an arrow pointing at a radio button titled Single Image

  7. Paste in the web address (URL) of the image you want to use as a background image for your Google Calendar and then click the Save button.
  8. selecting an image to use as a background for Google Calendar

  9. Open up a Google Calendar window/tab (or refresh the one you have open already, if you do) and … ta-da!
  10. Google Calendar with a custom image as a background
    click to enlarge

  11. If you’d like to use a different image for each month of the year, return to the Custom Calendar Background options and this time select Monthly Images and then one by one set the image for each month.
  12. That’s it!

ps. did you know you can have the weather automatically added to your Google Calendar?


If this article helped you, I'd be grateful if you could share it on your preferred social network - it helps me a lot. If you're feeling particularly generous, you could buy me a coffee and I'd be super grateful :)

buy a coffee for simplehelp.net


Home » Office » How to Add a Background Image to Your Google Calendar

3 thoughts on “How to Add a Background Image to Your Google Calendar”

  1. Would love to be able to do this in the app. No labs link so have to use ugly pictures from google. I have loads of pics on my iPad that are much nicer.

  2. Cool! This simple tutorial makes sense to me. It’s important that I always update my Google calendar. I usually update it whether in my desktop or laptop computer. I can edit anywhere since I have easy access. Thanks for these tips.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published.