Google Calendar is the most popular calendar in the world, and with billions of users, it’s no surprise that people want to use their calendars in a variety of different ways.
One of the most popular customer requests for Google Calendar is the ability to share a calendar. There are several reasons why someone might want to share their calendar. For example, you may want to:
- Collaborate with coworkers by viewing one another’s calendars
- Set up meetings on behalf of someone else
- Manage a shared calendar with a family member or teammate
- Create visibility on upcoming events and meetings
In each of these cases, you will likely want to share your calendar in a different way to accomplish your goal.
For example, if you are trying to share your calendar with a client for visibility purposes, and they don’t use Google Calendar, you will probably share it differently than adding a calendar for a colleague with whom you are regularly scheduling meetings.
Here is a comprehensive guide on all of the methods for sharing your Google calendar, along with an explanation of how different permission settings work for your shared calendars.
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Step-by-step video guide
Share your calendar with full access permissions
Sharing your calendar with full access permissions gives another user full control of your calendar. That means they can create events, view details of private events, respond to invites, and even delete your calendar.
To share your calendar with full access permissions, follow the steps below:
Step 1: Click the three dot menu next to the calendar you’d like to share and click “Settings and sharing”
Step 2: Scroll down to “Share with specific people or groups” and click “Add people and groups”
Step 3: Type the email or name of your sharing recipient and select “Make changes and manage sharing” as the permission setting
Step 4: The recipient will receive a link; once they accept your invitation, your calendar will be added to their calendar list
Note: You will not be able to share a calendar unless you have full access permissions to the calendar. In the Sharing interface, this permission level is called “Make changes & manage sharing.”
Sharing your calendar with full access permissions is a popular option for work calendars at smaller companies and for sharing calendars with family members. However, because it gives the recipient full control over your calendar, you should be careful to only share with people you trust.
Share your calendar with limited access permissions
If sharing your calendar with full access permissions doesn’t seem like the best method for you, Google Calendar also gives you the ability to share your calendar with more granular access permissions.
You can grant the recipient of your calendar three different levels of access without giving them full permissions:
- See only free/busy: This allows the recipient to see when you have events booked on your calendar, but it does not allow them to see specifics of each event like name, description, or attendees
- See all event details: This allows the recipient to see all of the event details for most things on the calendar, like name, description, and attendees. But if an event is marked as private, it will not show any details
- Make changes to events: This allows the recipient to create new events and edit existing events. One thing that is slightly less obvious is that it also gives the recipient of your calendar the ability to access the details of private events
To share your calendar with limited access permissions, follow the steps below:
Step 1: Click the three dot menu next to the calendar you’d like to share and click “Settings and sharing”
Step 2: Scroll down to “Share with specific people or groups” and click “Add people and groups”
Step 3: Type the email or name of your sharing recipient and select the level of permissions you want
Step 4: The recipient will receive a link; once they accept your invitation, your calendar will be added to their calendar list
Share your calendar as a public Google Calendar
Sharing your Google Calendar as a public calendar creates a public URL that anyone can visit in a browser or subscribe to in Google Calendar. This is a common way for groups to share calendars with their members, and it is also a common way to quickly add public information to your calendar.
For example, you can subscribe to the Reddit AMA calendar to quickly see all upcoming Reddit AMA events within your Google Calendar app. You can also subscribe to public calendars with holidays, TV show schedules, and other major events.
To share your calendar publicly, follow the steps below:
Step 1: Click the three dot menu next to the calendar you’d like to share and click “Settings and sharing”
Step 2: Scroll down to Access permissions for events and check “Make available to public”
Step 3: Google Calendar will warn you that making your calendar public makes it available for anyone on the internet to see it
Step 4: Scroll further down the page to Integrate calendar and copy paste the Public URL to send your calendar link to your sharing recipient
Note: This is the only native way to share a Google Calendar with someone who does not have Google Calendar, and it requires you to make your entire calendar public.
If you try visiting the calendar URL, you’ll see that it renders your calendar in a relatively unfamiliar format. If you’d like to share a Google Calendar with someone else in a more familiar format, read on to the following methods.
Share specific views of your calendar as a Snapshot
To share specific views of your calendar in a view-only format, you can use Plus. Plus gives you the ability to take a Snapshot of any app or website and automatically keep it up to date.
To use Plus with Google calendar, follow the steps below:
Step 1: Take a Snapshot of your calendar with the Plus extension
Step 2: Copy the URL of your Snapshot
Step 3: Share the URL or embed it directly in apps like Slack, Google Slides, and Notion
Using Plus, it’s easy to share the specific view of your calendar that you’d like. You can easily switch between daily, agenda, weekly, and monthly views, and creating a new Snapshot is as easy as taking a screenshot.
Note: In contrast to making a publicly shared Google Calendar, you do not need to make your calendar public to create and share a Plus Snapshot.
Share Google Calendar with someone who doesn’t have Google Calendar
There are two primary ways to share your Google Calendar with someone who doesn’t have Google Calendar.
The first is to make your calendar a public Google Calendar. This removes all of the privacy permissions to your calendar and turns your calendar into a public link that is accessible to anyone. If you send someone the public Google Calendar link, it will look like the image below.
The second way to share your Google Calendar with someone who doesn’t have Google Calendar is to use Plus. Plus lets you take a Snapshot of your calendar and share only the view you’d like to share. It also lets you embed your Snapshots on a website or in productivity tools like Slack, Google Slides, and Confluence.
Here is a comparison between what a public Google Calendar looks like compared to a Plus Snapshot. Both calendars are embedded inside of this Notion page, so you can see how they are different.
Conclusion
There are a number of ways to share your Google Calendar, and depending on who you are sharing your calendar with and what you are sharing your calendar for, you should experiment to find the right solution for you.
Using the native Google Calendar sharing functionality is the best way to create seamless connections between calendars so that you can create, edit, and delete events on shared calendars.
However, if you are looking to share specific views of your calendar, or you want to embed your calendar in other apps, you may want to explore using a tool like Plus.
Not only does Plus give you more control over exactly what your sharing recipients will see, it also allows you to use your calendars in powerful new ways like building a personal dashboard.
