How to Share a Calendar Between iPhone and Android (2026)

The short answer. Create a Google Calendar and share it with everyone by email. It's free, it has a real app on both iPhone and Android, and it's the calendar most groups already have. iPhone users who prefer Apple Calendar can add their Google account to the phone and the shared calendar shows up alongside their own. Apple Calendar can't do the reverse: iCloud has no Android app, so the most an Android friend gets from an iCloud calendar is a public link they can look at but can't add to.

Method 1: a shared Google Calendar

Try this first. It's free, it works on both phones, and everyone can add events instead of only reading them. The cost is that everyone needs a Google account, and everyone on the calendar sees everything on it.

Create the calendar and share it

1. On a computer, open Google Calendar. New calendars can only be created in a browser, not in the phone app.
2. In the left sidebar, click the plus next to Other calendars and choose Create new calendar.
3. Give it a name, then click Create calendar. Something plain like "Roommates" or "Hiking crew" is easier to find later than something clever.
4. Back in the sidebar, find the new calendar under My calendars, click More (the three dots beside its name) and choose Settings and sharing.
5. Under Shared with, click Add people and groups, type each person's email address, and click Send.
6. Set what each person can do. See event details is read-only. Make changes and see event details lets them add plans of their own, which is usually what a group wants.

On an Android phone

Nothing to do beyond accepting the invitation. The shared calendar shows up in the Google Calendar app once they open the link in the email while signed in to the same Google account.

On an iPhone

Two routes, and the second is the one most people want:

1. Install the Google Calendar app from the App Store and sign in. Google's own instructions stop here, and everything syncs.
2. Or keep using Apple Calendar. Go to Settings → Apps → Calendar → Calendar Accounts → Add Account, choose Google, sign in, and make sure Calendars is turned on. Then open Apple Calendar, tap Calendars, and check the shared calendar so its events draw next to your own.

Older iOS versions put account settings somewhere else, so search Settings for "accounts" if the path on your phone looks different. The last step is the same either way: the calendar has to be checked in Apple Calendar's calendar list, or its events stay hidden even though the account is connected.

Method 2: an iCloud public calendar link

Use this when the calendar already lives in iCloud and you'd rather not rebuild it somewhere else. It's the only way to get an iCloud calendar in front of an Android phone at all, and it comes with a real limit: Android friends can look, and that's all.

Sharing an iCloud calendar privately requires an Apple Account and iCloud on the other end, which rules out Android. A public calendar is the exception, because Apple says someone doesn't need to be an iCloud user to view one.

Publish the calendar

1. Sign in at icloud.com/calendar.
2. Select the info button next to the calendar you want to share.
3. Turn on Public Calendar.
4. Copy the link, or send it by email from the same panel.

Add it on Android

1. On a computer, open Google Calendar.
2. Next to Other calendars, click Add other calendars and choose From URL.
3. Paste the link and click Add calendar.
4. It appears in the sidebar under Other calendars, and then in the Google Calendar app on the phone.

Two things to know before relying on this. Only the owner can change a public calendar, so nobody you send the link to can add anything. And a calendar added from a URL is a copy Google fetches on its own schedule, not a live connection, so a new event can take a while to appear. Google doesn't publish the interval, so treat it as "sometime today" instead of "now", and don't use it for a last-minute change of plan.

Where do the free methods break?

Both methods above work. They stop working well at the same four points.

• Privacy is set per calendar. Everyone you share a calendar with gets one level for all of it. Google lets you mark a single event Private, so anyone below "Make changes and see event details" sees it only as Busy, but that hides it from everyone, and it's opt-out: every event shows unless you remember to hide it. You can't show one friend Saturday's hike and keep it from another. The usual workaround is a second calendar for shareable things, which means remembering which one you're adding to every single time.
• Read-only links are a dead end. The iCloud route gives Android friends a view and nothing else. Nobody else can add a plan, so the calendar only ever reflects what one person put there.
• Updates aren't always quick. A calendar added from a URL refreshes when Google decides to refresh it, which is fine for a class schedule and wrong for tonight.
• Everyone has to set it up. Each person needs the right account, the invitation accepted, and the calendar checked on their own phone. One friend who skips a step is invisible to the group and usually doesn't know it.

Method 3: a shared calendar app

A shared calendar app is built for exactly this. I should say plainly that I built SoKal, so weigh the next paragraph accordingly and read the comparison linked below for the alternatives.

SoKal has native apps on iPhone, iPad and Android, a Mac app, and a web calendar at sokal.app/calendar that installs from the browser on Windows. Nobody has to move: iPhone users keep Apple Calendar, which SoKal syncs with on iPhone, iPad and Mac, and Android users connect Google Calendar, which syncs both ways from the phone or the browser. Events synced in are private by default. Sharing is per event, not per calendar, so each event can go to everyone, to no one, or to specific people, and anything you haven't shared reads as Busy instead of vanishing. Friends you invite to a plan RSVP from a link with no app and no account, by SMS, WhatsApp or whatever link you send them. It's free for personal use and runs in 8 languages.

Several apps occupy this space with different trade-offs, and some of them beat SoKal at particular jobs. I compared eight of them, SoKal included, in the best shared calendar apps for friends and family, which is the place to go for the full set of options. If your group is already standardized on Google, the narrower question of what Google's own sharing does and doesn't cover is in Google Calendar sharing: what it does (and doesn't do).

The three methods compared

One calendar, both phones

SoKal is free for personal use. Open it in your browser, or install it on your phone, and share a plan with friends on either platform.

Open SoKal in your browser