Trying to make your shit work with Google is and always will be a fruitless endeavour, because they do not want it to work, and will actively prevent it from working.
this post was submitted on 20 Aug 2026
32 points (97.1% liked)
Selfhosted
61624 readers
616 users here now
A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.
Rules:
-
Be civil.
-
No spam.
-
Posts are to be related to self-hosting.
-
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or readme if you're providing a link.
-
Submission headline should match the article title.
-
No trolling.
-
Promotion posts require active participation, with an account that is at least 30 days old. F/LOSS without a paywall has exceptions, with requirements. See the rules link for details. Tags [CBH] or [AIP] are required, see the links in Rule 8 for details.
-
AI-related discussions and AI-involved promotional posts have additional requirements for tagging, as noted in Rule 7 and the AI & Promotional Post Expanded Rules post, and find example disclosures here.
Resources:
- selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
- awesome-selfhosted software
- awesome-sysadmin resources
- Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting
Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.
Questions? DM the mods!
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
You need to use google calendar api to sync back to google. To sync from google calendar to anything, you can use secret address ical format that you can obtain in calendar settings. Go to calendar -> settings -> settings of my calendars -> click on calendar you want and you will see "secret address ical format". you can use this url in any modern calendar software
Thank you for the tip, but this does not allow writing events to the Google Calendar from other clients. Google iCal links, including the secret link, are read only which is the problem I'm trying to solve.
The easy way is to use a calendar client and not try to inject the calendar into your server.
Definitely easy, but not really a relevant response given the community we're in. Plus there's a lot of use in having your calendar synced to multiple places, not just your phone.
I never found an easy solution to set up for caldav and carddav yet personally. Most are either very complex to set up or they are no longer maintained which is bad for security vulnerabilities. So, I'm still stuck with Google because I need my reminders everywhere I go...ADHD.
Radicale was easy enough for me. Davx5 on android to connect to it, and that's it.
Should specify, I need it exposed to the internet as well so I can sync it to those multiple devices when I'm at my partner's place or traveling and so my partner can use it from her place.
And I'd prefer something that allows some type of SSO or external authentication mechanism so it can handle multiple logins with different calendars and I can put some layers of security in front of it. Radicale requires addon applications to do that and most aren't maintained.
Supposedly Radicale can do it with a WSGI server, but I never found one I got working.
Only one that came close was Baikal, but it had some issues and development has been really slow on it. It's been quite a few years though, maybe I will try that one again.
Someone else mentioned just using a calendar client that can connect to different calendars.
I use Fossify to connect to calendars through Davx, which includes my Google calendar (configured it through DavX).
This way all entries remain independent. And I can filter my calendar view based on source calendar, and all entries are color coded (automatically) by which calendar they're on.
I know it's not exactly what you were asking for, buy it's one way to approach it.
Why don't you just subscribe to their shared calendars and have your own calendars hosted by yourself? I mean, I have around 10 to 20 calendars subscribed for different topics.
If you sync the Calendar with Google, you don't have privacy anyway. So I would at least protect my own private info, if they don't want.
I have issues with how often google and microslop allow to be refreshed.
There was a script workaround but new meetings or cancellations were what didnt work out - over a day to get across.
That's my post, and that's exactly what I was going to suggest :)
Looks promising
@KingDingbat I don't have a good answer for you (I'm in a similar situation, with my wife stuck using both google calendar and microsoft's extremely shitty calendar, while I use radicale). However, depending upon your goals for self-hosting your calendar, I'd ask whether you really *want* google seeing your calendar entries. If your goal is independence, then fine. If one of your goals is privacy, then sharing your calendar entries w/ google messes that up.
Hahah hello friend. No, I don't want Google to have my calendar entries. I'm just trying to achieve baby steps peacefully with the family. If it were my choice, we'd cut off Google without a second thought, but ooooh no. We've been using Google Calendar for 20 years. We don't WANT to change. 🙄
Give everyone a login to nextcloud and share a nextcloud calendar with everyone, use devx5 on android to inject the calendar into the Google calendar app?
Yea, getng people to do something is a challenge, let alone connecting a calendar to your server.
That's where we should be today, but people really don't understand how this stuff works, and won't even try to learn even if you explain it in simple terms.
Why won't they ditch Google for the calendar? Maybe they just need your help transitionning, and they won't complain once you've sorted that for them.