HN Explorer

Ask HN: How do you sync your calendars?

4 points by csomar ↗ HN
Surprisingly, I can't find any tool/script that is functional and does two-way sync between Apple, Google, Caldav, and Fastmail.

Is there such a tool (SaaS or open source) out there?

8 comments

[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 32.7 ms ] thread
verdverm
Why are you using 4 calendars? I think the thing is that most people use a single calendar, and they are already synced for the user. There's not really a market for such a tool, which would also cost a lot of money to get approved, now that GSuite approval requires a 3rd party audit. $X0,000+
csomar
If you use something like an iPhone, Gmail, and Fastmail; you can suddenly have three different calendars which you want to sync.
verdverm
Why can't you use Gmail on your iPhone? (why are you using apple's calendar when you already have others)

the short of it is you are in a very small class of users and people don't build tools for small markets, especially when it costs tens of thousands of dollars

csomar
> Why can't you use Gmail on your iPhone?

Because that's the company's Gmail + Calendar.

> the short of it is you are in a very small class of users and people don't build tools for small markets

Lots of small markets are dominated by indies and small dev shops.

verdverm
How much are you willing to pay for a solution?
toast0
Two way sync seems like it's asking for trouble. What do you do when an event is modified on both sides, etc. Even if you don't plan to modify things on both sides, you'll have it done for you when daylight savings rules change, assuming you're subject to DST.

I'm not familiar with Apple's calendar services, but Google and Fastmail both let you publish and subscribe to calendars; if you need to see everything everywhere, then I'd cross subscribe on the services. If you need to modify something, then you've got to do it at the source of truth.

Personally, I'm on Android and Google never built Caldav support into the built-in calendar, so I just put everything in their calendar. I might prefer to use Fastmail, but I don't care enough to get a calendar client.

ankush-garg
I use zapier to sync different calendars to a single calendar. I believe they allow 1000 zaps free per month. I'm way under that limit. Highly recommend!