How to set up a shared family calendar (when everyone uses something different)

In most households, the calendar situation looks something like this: one person lives in Google Calendar, one uses the iPhone calendar, one has everything in Outlook for work, and the kids’ activities are on a school newsletter stuck to the fridge.

Here’s how to get everyone onto the same page, whatever they use.

Option 1: A shared Google calendar

This works well if at least one person uses Google, and it plays nicely with iPhones too.

1. In Google Calendar on a computer, create a new calendar called “Family”.
2. Share it with everyone in the household, giving each person permission to make changes.
3. On iPhones, add the Google account in the iPhone’s calendar account settings, and the Family calendar appears alongside the others.
4. Add everything family-related to the Family calendar: activities, appointments, birthdays, school events.

[verify: current menu names on Google’s and Apple’s help pages]

Option 2: Apple Family Sharing

If everyone uses Apple devices, Family Sharing includes a shared family calendar. Anything added to it shows up for everyone in the family group. It’s the simplest option for an all-Apple household, and the trickiest as soon as someone has an Android phone.

Option 3: Keep your own calendars, and bring them together

Sometimes the best answer is to leave everyone where they are. Work calendars often can’t be shared, and people are (rightly) attached to their own setup.

Instead, use a family app that reads everyone’s calendars and shows them together in one family view. Everyone keeps their own calendar, and the family finally sees the whole week.

Tips that make a family calendar actually work

• Give each person a colour. You’ll know at a glance whose week is busiest.
• Add “away for dinner” to events. Footy training at 6 pm means one less plate.
• Put birthdays in once, as repeating events, and never forget one again.
• Keep it where people look: on everyone’s phones, and on a tablet in the kitchen.
• Don’t put everything in it. Meal plans, for example, are better somewhere else (your work calendar doesn’t need to know it’s taco night).

Where My Tomte helps

My Tomte connects to Google, iCloud and Microsoft 365, and you choose which calendars come in. On the Family and Premium plans, sync works both ways: move swimming in Google and it moves in My Tomte, or add a birthday lunch in My Tomte and it appears in Google. And because the calendar knows who’s home, the meal plan cooks for exactly the people at the table.

Meal plans never go to your calendar. Promise.