How to share your Google Calendar with friends and colleagues

Google Calendar tops our list of favorite calendar apps for Android because it offers excellent features to keep track of your schedule and stay organized. When you have everything sketched, sharing your calendar is a convenient way to inform your coworkers or family members about upcoming meetings, events, and appointments or show them when you're busy or free. Depending on why you want to share a Google calendar and who you're bringing in, you can make it public or restricted to selected people. You'll need at least an inexpensive Chromebook or a desktop browser to share a Google calendar and manage permissions accordingly, but the process is straightforward.

Creating a shared Google calendar

There are different ways to share a Google calendar. It can be done privately with specific people, allowing you to control who sees your schedule and whether they can review your availability or meeting details. You can also share a Google calendar publicly using a link, making it accessible to anybody with the URL. Each calendar can be shared independently, so you can keep your personal calendar private and only share relevant ones with your family or coworkers. Whichever way you prefer, the process is easy and only takes a few minutes.

We recommend having access to a computer, as the iOS and Android apps don't allow you to create a shared Google calendar. If you don't have access to a PC, use a desktop browser on your mobile phone or tablet, but the experience won't be great.

You'll benefit more from creating an appointment calendar with Google Calendar if you're in a business setting.

Sharing your calendar with specific people gives you control over who sees it and can alter it. You'll manually select the participants and configure what they can access or change. Use it when sharing work, family, or any schedule not meant for the public.

Open Google Calendar in your desktop browser.
Locate the calendar you'd like to share under My Calendars on the left side of the screen.
Hover over the calendar and click the three-dot button.
Click Settings and sharing.
On the left side, click Share with specific people or groups.
Select Add people and groups.
Enter the email address of the person or their name. You can share your calendar with several people at once and don't have to repeat the process for each person.
Click the box under Permissions to configure the appropriate level of access for your guests:
- See only free/busy works best when sharing your schedule with coworkers who don't need meeting details. It shows them your appointments without the details.
- See all event details allows them to review the meeting title and components, including the location, agenda, potential links, and attachments.
- Make changes to events allows the person to edit events, meaning they can create meetings on your behalf and change appointments without having access to your Google account. Use this setting for your assistant or collaborative scheduling with your team members.
- Make changes and manage sharing grants the participants full access to the Google Calendar permissions. Use it cautiously, as they can share or unshare the calendar, respond to invitations, manage events, be notified about subsequent changes, and delete the calendar. So it's best for people who co-manage a calendar with you.
Click Send to confirm the process and share your calendar with them.

While you can't share a Google calendar using the mobile app, you can invite guests to an event there. When creating or modifying the event:

Tap Add people.
Enter their email addresses.
Click Done in the upper-right corner.
They'll receive an invitation with the Google Meet video conferencing details.
You can modify their permission or remove the video conferencing details.

Sometimes, making your calendar public makes more sense (and is easier) than manually sharing it with specific people. Once shared, anyone with the link can join. For example, it's useful for venues that share upcoming events with clients. However, use it cautiously, as anyone off Google can access the calendar.

Open Google Calendar in a desktop browser.
Locate the calendar you want to share under My Calendars on the left side panel.
Hover over the calendar and click the three-dot button to show an overview menu.
Click Settings and sharing.
On the left side, click Access permissions for events.
Click the checkbox beside Make available to public and select whether people can see the full event details or whether you're free or busy.
Click the Get shareable link button to generate it.
Select Copy Link to share your public link. The link can be transferred to others and may end up on a search engine, so pay attention to what's on that calendar.

Unsharing a Google Calendar

Regardless of the method you used above, unsharing a calendar is simple.

Open Google Calendar in your desktop browser.
Locate the calendar you want to share under My Calendars on the left side of the screen.
Hover on the calendar and click the three-dot menu button.
Select Settings and sharing.
For privately shared calendars, tap the X icon next to the person's name under Share with specific people.
For publicly shared calendars, clear the checkbox next to Make available to public under Access permissions for events.

Change event visibility of shared Google calendars

Every participant in your shared Google calendar can access new and existing events in the calendar according to the permissions you gave them. However, you can change the visibility of an individual event to control who sees its details. Participants permitted to make changes to events will still know what the event is about, but people with lower permissions will see the event slot as Busy.

Change individual event visibility on the Google Calendar app for Android and iOS

Open the Google Calendar app.
Click the event you want to edit on the timeline.
Tap the pencil icon in the upper-right corner to edit it.
Scroll down, then tap Default visibility.
Tap an option to make the event Public or Private. Making an event private hides it from people you shared the calendar with.

Change individual event visibility on a desktop browser

Navigate to Google Calendar in your browser.
Click the event you want to change its privacy.
Select the pencil icon at the top of the info card.
Select Default visibility, then click Public or Private to change the visibility.
Click Save at the top to implement the changes.

Let Google help you make planning a breeze

Google Calendar sharing can help you streamline appointment scheduling and keep others posted about upcoming events and appointments. To be even more productive and stay on top of your schedule, here are the top tips and tricks to get the most out of Google Calendar.