If you organise anything bigger than a three-person meeting, you already know the problem: every guest who clicks Yes, No or Maybe generates an email, and so does every out-of-office auto-reply that bounces back. Google is finally shipping a switch for it. A new per-event setting lets organisers stop Google Calendar RSVP emails without touching the event itself — but it comes with one consequence worth knowing before you use it.
What the new setting does
Google describes it in its Workspace Updates announcement as a per-event control for organisers and their delegates covering both RSVP emails and automatic responses such as out-of-office messages and vacation responders.
“By default, this new setting, called “Get an email when guests respond,” is checked – ensuring organizers receive email responses for RSVPs.”
So nothing changes unless you act. The setting is opt-out, per event, and there is no admin control and no account-wide toggle — you decide each time you create an event.
How to turn off RSVP emails for an event
- Open Google Calendar and create your event, or open an existing event you organise and choose to edit it.
- Add your guests as usual, so the guest options become relevant to the event.
- Look just above the field where you write the event description. You will see a checkbox labelled Get an email when guests respond.
- Uncheck it. It is ticked by default on every event.
- Save the event. Responses will now land silently.
For a recurring event, Google notes the setting can only be applied to the full series — you cannot switch it off for one noisy instance and leave the rest alone.
The catch: Outlook guests disappear from your event
This is the part that is easy to miss, and it is the reason not to switch it off reflexively on every event. Unchecking the box does not behave the same way for all guests. Google spells out three separate outcomes, and the second one is not just an inbox change:
- Google Calendar guests — you stop getting their RSVP emails, but their RSVP status still shows on the Calendar event, so you can see who is coming by opening the event.
- Guests on third-party tools like Outlook — you stop getting their RSVP emails and their RSVP status will not show up on the Calendar event at all.
- Automatic replies — out-of-office and vacation-responder emails stop arriving too.
Read that middle bullet again if you invite people outside your organisation. For a Google-only guest list, unchecking the box costs you nothing except the notifications — the data still lives in the event. For a mixed list, the email was the only place that Outlook attendee’s answer was ever going to appear, and turning it off means you lose the response entirely rather than relocating it. On a 200-person invite that is exactly what you want; on a client meeting with four external attendees it is not.
When you will see it
The rollout is gradual. Google says rapid release domains started on August 28, 2026, with up to 15 days for the setting to become visible, and scheduled release domains begin on September 10, 2026, with 1 to 3 days for visibility. If the checkbox is not there yet, it is a rollout queue rather than an eligibility problem.
Availability is unusually broad: all Google Workspace customers, Workspace Individual subscribers, and users with personal Google accounts. That last group matters — this is not a paid-tier feature, so a free Gmail account organising a school group or a five-a-side football fixture gets the same control. It joins a run of Calendar and Workspace changes Google has been shipping steadily this month, and it is one of the few that removes something from your inbox instead of adding to it.
Source: Google Workspace Updates
