Share an iCloud Calendar

Once you Connect Calendar to iCloud, you can use Calendar to share an iCloud calendar with others using two different methods:

• Share with other iCloud users: With this technique, you invite people by email address. By default, each invitee can edit the calendar, but you can turn off that privilege on a person-by-person basis.

• Share a public calendar: Create a URL that you can share and anyone with the URL can access in any calendar app that can subscribe to it. However, a subscriber to a public calendar can only view it—editing is not possible. (Apps that can subscribe to calendars include Apple’s Calendar, Google Calendar, and Microsoft Outlook for Mac or Windows.)

To share an iCloud calendar, here’s the general outline:

1. Working in the Calendars list, hover your pointer over the calendar’s name to see and click a Share Calendar icon.

2. Add names in the Share With field to invite iCloud users, or check Public Calendar to generate a URL you can share with anyone. (You may do both.)

3. When finished, click Tap.

Now let’s get into specifics.

Share a Calendar with iCloud Users

Here’s what you need to know to share a calendar with iCloud users:

• Share with iCloud users: Click the Share With field in step 2 above, type an iCloud email address of a person who you want to invite, and then press Tab or Return (Figure 53). You can also start typing an email address or name of a contact, and Calendar automatically suggests matches you can select from.

  

• Invite additional people: Click below the last name and then click in the new Shared With field that appears. Now you can enter more email addresses or names for auto-suggestion.

• Limit modifications: Each person you’ve added may view and edit the calendar. To restrict any invitee to just viewing, hover over their name, click the arrow, and choose View Only.

• Re-invite: If someone didn’t receive the invitation or lost it, you can hover over their name, click the arrow, and choose Invite Again.

• Remove: Click the Share Calendar icon next to the calendar’s name, select the person’s name in the list, and then press Delete. The calendar remains shared.

An iCloud user receives both an email message and a Calendar notification asking them to join the shared calendar (Figure 54). They can accept the invitation on any device that uses their iCloud account or at iCloud.com.

Share Calendars Hosted in CalDAV

Just as you can share an iCloud calendar with other iCloud users, you can also share a calendar hosted using CalDAV with other people who have accounts on the same calendar server.

Follow the same steps as in Share an iCloud Calendar, but make sure both the calendar you want to share and the people that you want to share it with all belong to the same calendar server.

Subscribe to a Calendar

Whether you’re looking for your favorite sports team’s schedule, your children’s school-year calendar, or a calendar of regional events, it’s always worth checking to see whether there’s a calendar you can subscribe to before entering events by hand.

First, you have to obtain the URL in the correct format to subscribe. For sites that automate the process, follow these steps:

1. Go to the website and find a link that says Sync to Calendar, Add to Calendar, or something similar. On the Portland Trailblazers site, there’s a Schedule menu with an Add to Calendar item. Select it.

2. Select the calendar format if prompted. Many sites list Apple, Google, Microsoft (or both Outlook and Exchange), and Other (Figure 55). Select Apple or Other. You may need to click a confirmation button to proceed.

   

3. The site sends a URL in the format webcal://path-to-public-calendar-ics-file (Figure 56). After approving Safari (or another browser) to open the URL in Calendar, the browser passes the URL along to Calendar.

For sites that provide the webcal URL instead of offering it as a downloadable link or something you can click, choose File > New Calendar Subscription and enter the Calendar’s URL as in Figure 56, above.

Now for either a directly downloaded file that automatically opened in Calendar as in step 3 above or for a URL you copied and pasted in:

1. Click Subscribe.

2. Type a name in the Name field (if it’s not already filled in) and then click the color-coded pop-up menu to choose a color (Figure 57).

   

3. Click the Location pop-up menu to choose an account for the subscription. Choose iCloud if you want the calendar to appear on all your iCloud-connected devices, or choose On My Mac if you prefer to keep it local.

4. If you want events to include their original alerts and attachments, deselect the Remove Alerts and Attachments checkboxes.

5. To determine how frequently the calendar updates, choose an option from Auto-refresh, which ranges from every five minutes to every week. You can disable Auto-refresh by selecting No.

6. If you don’t want to get alerts from this calendar, select the Ignore Alerts checkbox.

7. Click OK.

To rename or make other changes to your calendar subscription later, Control-click or right-click its name in the Calendars list and choose Get Info.

To stop sharing a calendar you subscribed to, Control-click or right-click its name in the Calendars list, and select Unsubscribe.

Share a Family Calendar

There’s one final kind of special shared calendar that works only with Family Sharing groups. If you’ve set up or are part of a Family Sharing group, you know that you can share purchases, downloaded music, location, photos, and other elements.

This includes a shared family calendar, called Family, which is automatically added to every member of a Family Sharing group at its creation. New members also gain access when they accept an invitation.

All family members can add or delete events. When they do, the family organizer gets a notification on their iCloud-connected devices. The Family calendar has no special features, other than being automatically generated and linked.