How to share a calendar between iPhone and Android

Why this is harder than it should be

Apple's calendar sharing is built for Apple. You can share an iCloud calendar with another person and let them add and change events, but they need an Apple Account to accept it, which your Android partner does not have and should not have to get. Google's sharing is friendlier about it, because a Google account works on any phone, including an iPhone.

That one asymmetry decides everything below. The household calendar wants to live in the system that both phones can reach, and today that is Google, an app that supports both, or nothing.

Option 1: put the shared calendar in Google (the free, two-way answer)

This is the one to try first. You are not moving your whole life to Google, you are creating one extra calendar that holds the things you both need to see. Your own work calendar stays exactly where it is.

1. Make the calendar. On a computer, open Google Calendar, and under "Other calendars" choose to create a new one. Call it something obvious like "Us" or "Home", not "Calendar 2".
2. Share it with the other person. In that calendar's settings, go to "Share with specific people or groups", add their email address, and set the access level to Make changes to events, which Google describes as letting people edit events on your calendar (Google's sharing instructions). Anything less and one of you is a spectator.
3. Accept the invite. They get an email with a link. It has to be opened, which is where roughly half of all attempts quietly stop. Do it together, in the same room, in one minute.
4. Put it on the iPhone. Either install the Google Calendar app from the App Store and sign in, or add the Google account under Settings and turn Calendars on so the shared calendar appears in Apple's own Calendar app.
5. Give it a colour you both recognise. Shared events need to look different from your own at a glance, or nobody trusts the view.

That is it. Both of you can add, edit and move things, reminders fire for whoever set them, and it costs nothing. If dates are genuinely all you need to share, you are finished.

Option 2: publish the iPhone calendar as a link (read-only, and slower than you think)

If the calendar has to stay on iCloud, Apple can hand out a public link. Open the Calendar app on the iPhone, tap the circled "i" next to the calendar, turn on Public Calendar and share the link. An invitee does not need to be an iCloud user to view it, and anyone with the URL can subscribe in a compatible app (Apple's own guide to sharing iCloud calendars). On the Android side, open Google Calendar on a computer, choose "Other calendars", pick From URL and paste it in (Google's instructions for adding a calendar by link).

Two things to know before you rely on it. It is read-only: the Android person can see everything and change nothing, so every edit still funnels through the iPhone, which is usually the imbalance you were trying to fix. And the subscription refreshes on Google's schedule rather than yours, so a change made on the iPhone can take hours to surface. Fine for a school term calendar. Not fine for "I have moved dinner to seven".

The same warning applies in reverse. Subscribing to a Google calendar's private address inside Apple's Calendar app also gives you a view, not a vote.

Option 3: use an app that was built for two phones

The third route is to stop asking two rival ecosystems to be friends and use something that treats both phones as equals. Any decent shared planner will sync in seconds rather than hours, let both people edit, and push a reminder to the other person's phone rather than only to the one that typed the event.

That last part matters more than the calendar itself. A shared calendar that only reminds its author is a diary with extra steps, and it is exactly the hole that people fall into with option 2.

We build one of these, so take the recommendation with the appropriate pinch of salt: Cria Planner runs on iPhone, Android and the web, shares a calendar with the people you choose, nudges the right phone, and carries the tasks, notes, meals and shared costs that never fitted in a calendar in the first place. Free for two people. If you want the wider field first, we compared the main options in the best shared calendar apps for couples.

Which one should you pick?

• You only need dates, and nobody is precious about Google: option 1. Free, two-way, fifteen minutes including the arguing.
• The calendar must stay on iCloud and the other person only needs to look: option 2, and set expectations about the delay.
• You need both people editing, reminders landing on both phones, or anything that is not a date: option 3.

Four things that quietly break

1. Notifications belong to the person, not the event. On most shared calendars, an alert you set is yours alone. Check that a reminder reaches the other phone before you trust it with the school run.
2. All-day events can drift a day. Across time zones and platforms this is a classic. Put a flight in, then check the date on both phones.
3. Invitations are not the same as sharing. Inviting someone to a single event puts one dot in their calendar. Sharing a calendar gives them every future dot. People mix these up constantly.
4. Only one of you owns the thing. With Apple's public calendars, only the owner can change or unshare it. If that account goes quiet, so does your household calendar.

The five-minute test

Whatever you set up, run this before you rely on it. Add an event from the Android phone for tomorrow evening. Check it appears on the iPhone. Change the time on the iPhone. Check the Android phone agrees within a minute or two. Set a reminder and confirm both phones buzz. If any step fails, you have a viewing arrangement rather than a shared calendar, and it is better to find that out now than on the day of the dentist.

Once the dates are sorted, the rest of the household tends to follow. The tasks, the shopping, the "who is picking up whom" all want the same treatment, which is the subject of how a shared planner keeps a household organized.