Welcome to Reclaim! Learn how to set up the basics of your Reclaim account.

For best results, we recommend completing each step as you go. You can use the blue buttons to open a new tab in the Reclaim app without losing your place here.

If you’ve already signed up, then you’ve successfully completed this step! If not, head to the signup page to get started with Google Calendar in just a few clicks. Reclaim runs on Google Calendar, so you must connect your account to use the app.

Sign up with your work calendar for the best experience (we’ll show you how to add your personal and/or other calendars in the next step).

If you haven’t already, customize your local settings in Google Calendar to leverage the same preferences in Reclaim:

Reclaim pulls from your Google Calendar settings for these specific preferences, and will use them to schedule events to your calendar.

Reclaim is a web app. You can access Reclaim from any desktop browser or from your mobile device at app.reclaim.ai, or by clicking Log in from the Reclaim website.

Install the free Reclaim Google Calendar add-on to manage your schedule right from your Google Calendar sidebar.

When you open the Reclaim app, you’ll see your Planner. This calendar view provides your complete schedule of all Reclaim smart calendar events, as well as your existing Google Calendar events. Just like in Google Calendar, you can drag-and-drop events or click an event to view details or make edits in the Planner (though Google Calendar is the place where you’ll want to create non-Reclaim calendar events).

Here are the main pages in the Reclaim app:

Check out Reclaim keyboard shortcuts you can use within the app for quick and easy actions.

If you work across multiple calendars, use Reclaim’s Calendar Sync and Connected Calendars features to manage your time across all of your schedules. Here’s how they work:

Block events across calendars to merge your availability.

If you're in a company where your colleagues use Google Calendar's "Find a Time" feature to book time with you, and you're concerned about them not seeing your availability from other calendars outside of your company (e.g., your personal calendar), then use Calendar Sync.

Tell Reclaim to schedule around events on other calendars

If you aren't in a company where people use Google Calendar to find time with you, or if you aren't concerned about getting overbooked by them for events from other calendars, and you only want Reclaim to know your combined availability from multiple calendars, use Connected Calendars. Find your Connected Calendars in the Planner sidebar to view or hide events from different source calendars.

While Reclaim currently only offers full support for Google Calendar, you can work around connecting your Outlook and Apple/iCloud calendars as well. Learn more about connecting non-Google calendars here.

Customize your Hours and availability preferences for the days and times you want Reclaim to schedule different events.

Working Hours: Set the days and times you’d like Solo “Work” Tasks, synced calendar events (if you've opted to sync events only during working hours), and Scheduling Link meetings (selected as Working Hours) to be scheduled.

Personal Hours: Set the days and times you'd like your Personal Tasks and Scheduling Link meetings (selected as Personal Hours) to be scheduled.

Meeting Hours: Set the days and times you'd like your Smart 1:1 meetings and Scheduling Link meetings (selected as Meeting Hours) to be scheduled.

Habits are smart recurring events you can create, customize, and prioritize at the best time around your existing and incoming calendar events.

You can set up your Habits to schedule on a daily, weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, and customize your time window to schedule, min-to-max duration, ideal day, visibility preferences, and how aggressively you want to defend them via Time Defense settings.

If a Habit is over-scheduled (or you choose to prioritize another event), Reclaim will automatically reschedule your Habit to the next best time. Once you start to run out of available openings in the rime window to reschedule your Habit, or you have Auto-lock enabled, Reclaim will lock in this time to protect it on your calendar.

Here are some of our popular Habit templates:

🍱 Lunch

🔎Focus time

💻 Coding

📝 Weekly status report

💭 Sprint planning

📈Metrics review

🏋️ Exercise

📖 Reading

Once you create your Habits, visit your main Habits page to stack rank your Habits by dragging-and-dropping in order of priority to schedule (including priority scheduling above Tasks). You can learn more about enabling/disabling, prioritizing, and advanced settings in the Habits Overview help doc.

Smart 1:1s allow you to automatically schedule your recurring one-on-one meetings at the best time for both attendees, and automatically reschedule to the next best time if a conflict comes up (such as PTO, another meeting, etc.).

For each Smart 1:1, you can customize the frequency, length, ideal days and times, add video-conferencing links, and link important meeting notes or agendas.

A Smart 1:1 invitee is not required to be a Reclaim user, though we recommend they create a free account to set their own meeting hours so Reclaim can better schedule across work hours and timezones.

Here are two ways you can set up your Smart 1:1s:

You can learn more about how Smart 1:1s work in the Smart 1:1s Overview help doc.

Reclaim Scheduling Links allow you to create shareable links that people can use to book time with you.

One of the main advantages of using Reclaim’s Scheduling Links is that you can create “high-priority” links that offer up more availability to get the right meetings scheduled sooner, and use “flexible durations” that offer multiple meeting lengths so your invitee can choose how much time they need with you.

Visit your Scheduling Links page to automatically create your three default Scheduling Links and Booking Page with a custom URL (you can create more and customize them at any time):

You can also create new custom meetings to add to your booking page by clicking + New Scheduling Link, and set up Link Groups for specific collections of meetings.

If you need to set up meetings with your coworkers, you can easily create Team Scheduling Links to find the best time around everyone’s busy schedule. Team Scheduling Links can be created with anyone that’s in your Reclaim account.

If you want to share Scheduling Links and one-off meeting links via Gmail, install the free Reclaim Google add-on.

Reclaim Tasks allow you to block time to work on your to-dos in Google Calendar around your existing calendar events. You can automatically integrate your Task list from your project management apps, manually create new Tasks in the Reclaim app, or add Tasks in Google Calendar sidebar with the Reclaim add-on.

Create a new Task by clicking the + New Task button in the upper right corner, or via keyboard shortcut by hitting “c” anywhere in the app. You can give your Task a title and emoji, set which hours to schedule it, how long you need to complete it, min/max time blocks you want to work at a time, start scheduling and due dates, and visibility preferences for the event. You can also add notes to the Task event.

Default Task settings: Reclaim default Task settings allow you to set the defaults to use when creating new Tasks, such as the Task duration, work vs. personal scheduling hours, scheduling duration, and more - though you can adjust these settings for any individual Task upon creation. Learn more about default Task settings in this help doc, and customize these in your Settings > General > Default Task settings.

You can view and manage your Task list in the Reclaim Tasks page, in the sidebar of the Planner, or in Google Calendar with the Reclaim add-on. Learn more about prioritization and Task actions in the Managing Tasks help doc.

If you want to defend time for task work, but don’t want to integrate all of your individual tasks with your calendar, you can set up generic Focus Time blocks with Habits to protect a set amount of time for work on any day of the week.

Reclaim integrations allow you to connect with popular apps you’re already using to optimize your daily schedule and productivity workflow.

Reclaim’s native integrations:

Reclaim’s Buffer Time feature allows you to automatically schedule breaks after video meetings, Tasks, or Habits, or add travel time blocks before and after events with locations.

Here are the Buffer Time options to set up.

Task and Habit breaks: Automatically schedule 15-60 minute breaks after Task and Habit events.

Travel Time: Automatically block a fixed amount of Travel Time before and after events with a physical address location, and automatically block 2 hours before and 1 hour after flight events. You can always edit scheduled travel time blocks on your calendar after they’re scheduled.

Decompression Time: Automatically schedule 15-60 minute breaks after meetings with a video conference link.

When used with Reclaim’s Slack integration – your status will update to communicate that you’re taking a break with a customizable message.

All of these smart breaks will sync with changes in your schedule, even if events get moved around. You can manage these settings in Settings > General > Buffer time & breaks.

Automatically defend “No-Meeting Days” on Google Calendar to reduce distractions, increase productivity, and boost team morale.

You can create No-Meeting Days at Reclaim using our custom event hashtags to prevent new meetings from getting booked, but still allow Reclaim to schedule time for the Tasks, Habits, and breaks you need throughout the day. Here’s how you can set it up:

Your No-Meeting Day event will appear busy to anyone seeking time for a meeting, but still allow Reclaim to schedule your Habits and Tasks.

To set a No-Meeting Day for your entire team, simply invite your team members to the same all-day Google Calendar event.

Reclaim’s settings are completely customizable to your own calendar management needs. By the end of this guide, you’ll have already set up many of the Reclaim settings to make auto-scheduling your calendar right for you. Here’s an intro to a few more settings.

Profile: Set up your account profile with information about your role and company. This is also where you can delete your account.

Colors: Reclaim auto-color-codes your scheduled events by category so you can easily visualize your weekly plan at a glance. You can optionally customize your category colors to control how you want your calendar to look.

Notifications: Manage which notifications you want to receive, including the weekly report email which includes an overview of your productivity stats for the past week, and instructions on how to update your Reclaim alerts via Slack (if you have the Slack integration enabled).

You can always explore your settings in the app under Settings > General, and by looking for the edit icon when viewing individual Tasks, Habits, and meetings.

While Reclaim works wonders for your personal productivity, you can leverage even more benefits by inviting your team, including creating Team Scheduling Links, setting up Smart 1:1 meetings, and assigning/scheduling Tasks to your teammates through your project management integration.

Visit your Billing & Team page (found under your account tab in the upper-right corner of the app) to invite your coworkers and build your team account. When sending an invite, you’ll be able to select a plan type for them and whether they have Admin privileges on the account.

You can also customize your Team Admin Settings by clicking the gear icon above your team list to control:

If you’re loving Reclaim and want to share it with your friends or network, you can also grab your referral link from the Share Reclaim page in the left sidebar. Note - users who sign up from this link will not be added to your team.

You can earn free Reclaim credits for every referral who signs up from your link (via direct share, social, invites, calendar events, etc.), and can view your progress towards these referral tiers:

Learn more about the program in the Referrals help doc.

Getting started with Reclaim is easy, and you can adjust your settings at any time to optimize your smart calendar experience!

And while Reclaim smart scheduling can feel like magic (and we love that!) – there are a few technical core concepts that explain how the app manages your calendar effectively. If you want to learn more about how Reclaim works, check out our Core Concepts help doc.

Browse the help center for more info on features and capabilities, check out the Reclaim YouTube channel for video walkthroughs, feature breakdowns, and tips, or tweet us @reclaimai.

If you have other questions, our support team is on standby to help via chat by clicking the Help tab in the app sidebar or via the Intercom button in the lower right hand corner on the website. You can also reach us at [email protected]. We can’t wait to hear what you think!