One family calendar from Google, iCloud and Outlook
Aaron Simo ยท 2026-09-13
The most common reason a shared family calendar fails is that it asks one parent to give up the calendar they already use. Work lives in Outlook. One phone is on iCloud. The other is on Google. Nobody wants to enter things twice, so the "family" calendar goes empty in about a week.
The fix is to leave everyone on the calendar they have and pull those calendars into one view. Every major calendar can publish a private feed link (an "ICS" or "webcal" address). Anything that can read that link stays in sync as things change.
Get the feed link from each calendar
Google Calendar: on a computer, open Settings, pick the calendar under "Settings for my calendars", scroll to "Integrate calendar", and copy the "Secret address in iCal format". Keep it private; anyone with the link can read that calendar.
iCloud: in the Calendar app on a Mac, right click the calendar, choose "Share Calendar", turn on "Public Calendar", and copy the webcal link. Despite the name, the link is unguessable. On iPhone it is under the little info icon next to the calendar name.
Outlook: in Outlook on the web, open Settings, then Calendar, then "Shared calendars". Under "Publish a calendar", pick the calendar, choose "Can view all details", and copy the ICS link.
Subscribe once, keep it synced
Paste each link into whatever app is going to be the family view and choose to keep it synced rather than importing once. A one time import gives you a snapshot that is wrong by Thursday. A subscription refreshes on its own.
In HomeForge this is the Import button on the Calendar page. Paste the link, tick "keep this calendar synced", and it refreshes each time someone opens the calendar. Each person gets a colour, so the week reads at a glance: who is out, who is driving, what night is free.
What to put where
Keep personal and work items on your own calendar as always. They flow into the family view automatically. Put the things that belong to the household on the shared calendar itself: practices, appointments for the kids, the night someone is out, grandparents visiting. That way anyone can add to it, including a teenager.
Two rules that make it stick
If it is not on the calendar, it did not happen. Say it out loud in the house until it is a joke. Then it becomes the rule.
Look at the week together once, on Sunday, for three minutes. That is the whole habit. Everything else follows from it.