How to Share a Google Calendar on iPhone in 2026: Step by Step

You can share a Google Calendar straight from the Google Calendar app on iPhone. Tap Menu, then Settings, pick the calendar, tap Add people or groups under Shared with, choose what they can do and tap Save. They get an email and click the link to add it. Sharing is a Google setting, so do this part in Google's app rather than Apple's Calendar.

“Are you free Thursday?” should be an easy question. Then you remember the dentist appointment you haven't mentioned and the school event someone posted in a group chat. A shared calendar gives those plans one home. Below is how to share one from your iPhone, which permission I'd pick for whom, and what to do when the other person says, “I can't see it.”

How to share a Google Calendar from the iPhone app

These steps are from Google's iPhone sharing guide. You'll need the Google Calendar app from the App Store, signed in with the account that owns the calendar.

1. Open the Google Calendar app.
2. At the top left, tap Menu, then Settings.
3. Tap the calendar you want to share.
4. Under Shared with, tap Add people or groups.
5. Type a name or email address and choose the person or Google group. You can add several at once.
6. Choose what they can do (more on that below).
7. Tap Save.

The person gets an email, and the calendar only appears for them once they click the link in it. You can share any calendar you own, or one where the owner gave you Make changes and manage sharing. On a work or school account, your administrator decides whether you can share at all.

Before you tap Save, check the calendar's name. If you keep work and personal accounts on the same phone, “Family” and “Work” can sit side by side in the menu, and sharing the wrong one is much easier than undoing it later. I'd also share with a Google group rather than five individual people whenever a group exists. Say Marcus, an operations manager with a team split between New York, Denver and San Francisco, shares his team's on-call calendar with the team's group address. Google's tips for sharing with a group say people removed from a group lose access to content shared with it, so when someone leaves the team, taking them off the group takes care of the calendar too.

Which permission should you choose?

Google gives you five levels. My rule is simple: pick the lowest one that lets the other person do what they need to do. You can always raise it later, and nobody notices. Lowering it after someone has edited your week is a much more awkward conversation.

Two things catch people out, both from Google's permissions guide. First, broader settings win: if the calendar is public with event details, someone you shared it with as free/busy can still see those details. Second, you can hide a single event by setting its visibility to Private. Everyone else sees a block labeled “Busy,” and only you and anyone with Make changes and see event details or higher see what it is (Google's visibility guide).

Say Megan shares her Home calendar with her partner at Make changes, and there's a surprise 40th birthday dinner on it for the second Saturday in November. She sets that one event to Private and leaves everything else as it is. Her partner can still add the plumber's visit, but sees only a busy evening, not the reservation.

Before and after: one studio, three people

Here's where the permission choice really matters. Megan runs a small design studio in Denver on her own, with a part-time freelance designer, Nate, who helps on bigger projects. The easy mistake is to share everything with everyone at the top level, because it's the fastest way to make the “I can't see it” messages stop.

Studio calendar  → Nate: Make changes and manage sharing
Home calendar    → Nate: See event details (shared by mistake)
Home calendar    → partner: Make changes and manage sharing
Result: Nate can see her doctor's appointments and could reshare the studio calendar with a client.

Studio calendar  → Nate: See event details
                   (he needs to know when the client reviews are, not move them)
Home calendar    → partner: Make changes
                   (adds the dentist and the plumber, can't reshare)
Home calendar    → Nate: removed
Client work      → clients get event invitations, not calendar access

Same three people, same phone, ten minutes in the Google Calendar app. The after version is what you want to be living with a year from now, when Nate has moved on and nobody remembers what he could see.

Only sharing one event? Invite them instead

A shared calendar is for people who need an ongoing view. For a single dinner or a one-off appointment, open the event, tap Edit, add the person as a guest and tap Save. They get an invitation, and the details stay with the event rather than getting buried in a chat.

On a personal Google account there's also a shortcut. Open a future event on your primary calendar that you organized and tap Invite via link, then paste the link into any messaging app. Google's event sharing page lists the catches:

• Anyone with the link can add themselves and others as guests and see the full guest list, even if “Guests can invite others” is off.
• The link expires after 90 days.
• For a repeating event, you need a new link for each occurrence.

I'd use it for a casual get-together, not for anything you wouldn't want forwarded. Say Kayla, a junior at Ohio State, is organizing a Sunday 7 p.m. study session before a marketing midterm. Dropping an invite link in the class group chat is exactly right: people add themselves, and if a friend of a friend shows up with flashcards, nobody minds. Her internship interview the next week is a different story, and it stays on her own calendar, where it belongs.

How to share a Google Calendar with family on iPhone

If you set up a family group on Google, you already have a shared calendar. Google creates one called Family automatically, and everyone in the family group can add and change events on it and manage how it's shared (Google's family calendar guide).

1. In the Google Calendar app, tap Create, then Event.
2. Tap the calendar name and choose your family calendar.
3. Add the title and details, then tap Save.

One thing to know: by default you won't get a notification when someone else in the family adds, edits or deletes an event. You still get your usual reminders before events. To share the family calendar with someone outside the family group, Google says to do it from a computer.

If you'd rather not use a family group, a normal calendar called “Family” shared at Make changes works fine too. New calendars can only be created in a browser, so make that one on a computer first.

Families with a college student are a good case for the lowest level. Kayla's parents want to know when she's in class so they stop calling during her 10:20 a.m. lecture. They don't need to know what she's doing on a Friday night. A “Classes” calendar shared with them at See only free/busy answers that perfectly. One catch: if her schedule lives on a school account, the school's administrator decides whether and how she can share it, so a personal Google account is the more flexible home for it.

Share with someone who doesn't use Google Calendar

You can invite any email address to an event, so for occasional plans that's the simplest route. For an ongoing view, the option is a public calendar, set up on a computer:

1. On a computer, open Google Calendar, then Settings and the calendar under Settings for my calendars.
2. Under Access permissions for events, check Make available to public. Choose See only free/busy (hide details) if they only need your availability.
3. Under Integrate calendar, copy the Public address in iCal format and send it to them.
4. On their iPhone, they go to Settings, then Apps, Calendar, Calendar Accounts, Add Account, Other, then Add Subscribed Calendar, and paste the address.

Those steps come from Google's public calendar page and Apple's calendar accounts guide.

How to see a shared Google Calendar on iPhone

If you're the one receiving it, open the sharing email on your iPhone and tap Open Calendar. In the Google Calendar app, tap Menu and make sure the box next to the shared calendar is checked (Google's subscribe page).

If you'd rather use Apple's Calendar app, add your Google account first. Apple's account guide puts it under Settings, then Apps, Calendar, Calendar Accounts, Add Account, then Google. Sign in and leave Calendars turned on.

Then the step most people miss. According to Google's Apple Calendar guide, only the calendars under your own My calendars (plus Birthdays) sync to Apple Calendar automatically. Calendars other people shared with you need one extra step:

1. Open the Calendar sync page in a browser and sign in with the same Google account.
2. Check the shared calendars you want on your iPhone.
3. Tap Save.
4. Open Apple Calendar and check that the new calendars are turned on in its calendar list.

This is the step to send people before they ask. When Marcus adds a new hire in Denver to the on-call calendar, the welcome message says: accept the email, and if you use Apple Calendar, open the sync page and check the box. It saves a Monday-morning “it's not showing up” thread.

Hi Dana, I've shared the Ops on-call calendar with you (See event details).

1. Open the email from Google Calendar and tap Open Calendar.
2. If you use Apple Calendar on your iPhone, also go to google.com/calendar/syncselect, check "Ops on-call" and tap Save.

Shifts switch Mondays at 9 a.m. ET. Ping me if anything looks off.

Marcus

Shared Google Calendar not working on iPhone? Try these

There's no option to share

You can only share a calendar you own or have Make changes and manage sharing on. Check you're in the right Google account (tap your profile photo at the top right), then update the app. On a work or school account, sharing may be switched off by your administrator, and no phone setting changes that.

The invitation never arrived

Google's own checklist: confirm the email address, ask them to look in spam and trash, ask them to search their inbox for your email address, and if all else fails, remove them from Shared with and add them again. Also ask which address they actually use for Google Calendar. Plenty of people read email at one address and keep their calendar on another, and that mismatch is the first thing I'd check.

They can see it on the web but not on their iPhone

In the Google Calendar app, the calendar's box in the Menu is probably unchecked. In Apple Calendar, it's usually the Calendar sync page step above.

They only see “Busy”

That's either their permission level, which is set to free/busy, or the event is marked Private. Change whichever one you meant to.

Older events are missing

The Google Calendar app only syncs past events up to a year back. Anything older is still on calendar.google.com (Google's sync help).

Keep a shared calendar easy to live with

• Give each shared calendar one purpose. Put the kitchen remodel visits on “House project” and school dates on “Family,” and keep your own appointments on your personal calendar.
• Name events for the people reading them. “Dentist, Megan, 3:30” beats “Appointment.” The person scanning a shared week shouldn't have to open anything to know who's going where.
• Review who has access when things change. A contractor finishes, a roommate moves out, someone changes teams. To stop sharing, go back to the calendar's settings and tap Remove next to the person's name.
• Put a quick review on your calendar. Twice a year, say after the Fourth of July and after Thanksgiving, open each shared calendar's Shared with list and ask whether everyone on it still needs to be there.

If you want to plan the rest of your week around those shared dates, my Google Calendar guide covers events, tasks and booking pages.