Google Calendar for families: how to do it well, and where it falls short
How to set up one shared family calendar in Google, colour it per person, get it on everyone's phone, and the three things it will never do for a family with children at school.
By The AskBobbie team · 29 September 20262 min read
Google Calendar is free, on every device, and one of you probably lives in it already. Done well, it is a perfectly good shared family calendar. Done badly, it is a calendar one of you keeps and the other asks about. This is how to do it well, and the three things it will never do.
Set it up in ten minutes
- In Google Calendar on a computer, beside Other calendars, press +, then Create new calendar. Call it Family.
- Open its settings, Share with specific people, and add every grown-up with Make changes to events. Add older children with See all event details.
- On each phone, in the Google Calendar app (or Apple Calendar with the Google account added), make sure Family is ticked to show.
- Give each person a colour, and make Family a colour nobody else uses.
- Agree the rule: anything for the family goes in Family, not in your own calendar.
Now everyone sees the same thing and can add to it. That is more than most families have.
Make it work
- Put the due date, not the event date, for money and forms. The trip is the 14th; the money is due the 4th.
- Use the description for the detail: what to bring, the booking reference, who is picking up.
- Set reminders the evening before, not the morning of.
- Recurring events for clubs, with an end date at the end of term.
- Invite the other grown-up to anything that needs them, so it lands in their notifications too.
Where it falls short
- It does not read anything. Every date in it was typed by a person who first found it in a letter. The reading is the work, and Google leaves it with you.
- It does not know which child. A colour per child helps, but the letter said "Year 3" and somebody translated that.
- It cannot be asked. "What's on Thursday?" means opening it and looking. There is no "what do I owe the school?" at all, because money is not a thing Google Calendar knows about.
For a family whose problem is those three, a letter reader fixes them and can still feed Google. See AskBobbie vs a shared Google Calendar.
Further reading
Questions people ask
- Should we share one calendar or share our own with each other?
- One new calendar called Family, shared with everyone with edit rights, plus your own calendars kept private. Family things go in Family; work stays yours. Everyone sees the same Family calendar and can add to it.
- Can the children have access?
- A child with a Google account can be given view access, or edit if you trust them. Google's Family Link accounts under 13 can see a shared calendar but not always edit it.
- Does it work with Apple?
- Yes. Add the Google account to an iPhone and the shared calendar appears in Apple Calendar, editable.