Syncing with Google Calendar

Plannie syncs with the calendars your family already uses, so nothing needs entering twice.

Connect a calendar

Calendars connect per person: go to Settings → Family & access, tap the member, then Sync & calendars → Connect a calendar. A browser window opens to sign in with the provider.

• Google Calendar — two-way sync.
• Outlook / Microsoft 365 — two-way sync. If a work account blocks the connection, Plannie guides you through a view-only published-calendar fallback.
• Other calendars (ICS feeds, including Apple/iCloud) — view-only.

You can connect more than one account per provider — for example a personal and a work Google account for the same member, alongside an Outlook account and a couple of calendar feeds. Each account gets its own card in the list, labelled with its email address, and the account chooser always appears when you connect so you can pick exactly which one to add.

Apple / iCloud calendars

Apple has no direct connection, so an iCloud calendar comes in as a view-only feed. Publish it first, then paste the link:

1. On iPhone or iPad — open the Calendar app, tap Calendars, tap the ⓘ next to the calendar, turn on Public Calendar, and use Share Link… to copy the webcal:// address. On a Mac — right-click the calendar in Calendar, choose Share Calendar…, tick Public Calendar, and copy the link. You can also do this from iCloud.com → Calendar → the share icon next to the calendar.
2. In Plannie, go to Settings → Family & access, tap the member, then Sync & calendars → Connect a calendar → Calendar feed (ICS).
3. Paste the link and add it.

Apple's ready-made holiday calendars (the calendars.icloud.com/holidays/… addresses) are already public — skip step 1 and paste one of those links straight in at step 3.

Events you add in Apple Calendar appear in Plannie on the next refresh; the feed is view-only, so Plannie never writes back to it. School and club platforms that hand out a subscribe link (lunch menus, training schedules) work the same way.

Choose what shows up

Each connected account has its own card listing its calendars with an on/off toggle. Per calendar you can also choose:

• Color — show events in the member's Plannie color, or keep the calendar's own color (softened to match the app).
• Target — imported events belong to that member, or to Everyone (useful for a shared family calendar).

Switching a calendar on or off takes a moment while Plannie talks to the provider. The toggle moves straight away and the calendar shows Importing or Turning off sync next to its name until the change has gone through.

Sending Plannie events back

Every Google or Outlook calendar you switch on syncs in both directions — there's nothing to set up. Edit an event that came in from one of them and the change lands back on the calendar it came from; delete it in Google or Outlook and it goes from Plannie on the next sync, a cancelled repeating series included.

For events you create in Plannie, the "Sync to calendar" field in the event form decides which connected calendars receive a copy — tick as many as you like, or leave it empty to keep the event in Plannie only.

Default calendar for the profile

So you don't have to pick every time, each member can have a home calendar: Settings → Family & access, tap the member, then Sync & calendars → Default calendar for the profile (the ? next to it explains it in place). Choose any of that member's switched-on Google or Outlook calendars, or None to turn it off.

Assigning that member to an event then selects their calendar in "Sync to calendar" for you — assign two people who each have one and the event lands on both. The field stays yours to change, so you can add or untick a calendar for a single event, and unassigning someone drops their calendar again. Events created for a member by Plannie Assistant or through the API follow the same default.

Good to know

• A calendar can only be synced by one member at a time; Plannie tells you who has it if you try to add it twice.
• Deleting a synced event from any of the calendars it lives on removes it from Plannie too — and if Plannie had copied it to several calendars, those copies go with it.
• Partners who share calendars in Google: connect each Google account to its own member, and leave the other person's calendar switched off — their events already arrive through their own connection. If the same calendar does end up switched on for two members, its events belong to whichever member imported them first; switch it off there and they move across to the other member automatically, rather than disappearing.
• If a feed link won't add, the message tells you what the calendar server actually said — unreachable, refused, or a web page rather than a calendar file — so you know whether to re-copy the link or check its sharing settings.
• A freshly added feed shows Syncing… while its first import runs. If a feed later stops updating (for example its link was unpublished), the feed row says so and offers Retry — one tap re-syncs it on the spot — plus Fix link if you need to paste a fresh address.
• Repeating events in a feed repeat in Plannie too — a weekly training session or a yearly holiday shows on every date the feed says it should, not just the first one, and any occurrence the feed cancels stays hidden.
• If a connection fails with “You need to be signed in for this”, your session has expired rather than anything being wrong with the calendar — log in again, then retry the connection.
• Disconnecting asks whether to keep or remove the events it already imported.