What Happens When You Sync Your Calendar to SoKal

By the SoKal Team · March 17, 2026

"Wait, if I sync my Google Calendar, can my friends see my therapy appointment?" Short answer: no. Long answer: absolutely not, and here's why.

We get it. Syncing your calendar to a social app sounds scary. Your calendar has everything on it — work meetings, doctor visits, that embarrassingly specific reminder you set for yourself. The last thing you want is any of that showing up in a friend's feed.

So let's walk through exactly what happens when you connect your calendar to SoKal, what your friends can actually see, and how much control you have over all of it. Spoiler: you have a lot.

What Happens When You Sync

When you connect Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook, SoKal pulls in your events. All of them work the same way — there's no difference in how we treat data from different providers.

Once your events are imported, SoKal tries to figure out what kind of event each one is. We call this classification. A flight to Denver? That's travel. A reservation at a restaurant? That's an outing. A meeting with your boss? We have no idea what that is, so we leave it alone.

That last part is important: when we're not sure, we don't guess. Our classifier is intentionally conservative. We'd rather leave an event unclassified than risk getting it wrong. And unclassified events? They're completely invisible to everyone except you. No one sees them. Not in feeds, not on your profile, not anywhere.

So What Can Friends Actually See?

By default? Just whether you're free or busy. That's it. No titles, no details, no locations. Your friend looks at your calendar and sees blocks of "busy" — nothing more.

The only events that can show up in friends' feeds are travel and outings — and even those require your permission. You control this through your privacy settings when someone sends you a friend request.

Three Levels of Access

When someone sends you a friend request, you choose how much they can see:

• Free/Busy — They can see when you're available and when you're not. That's all. No event titles, no details, no locations. Just open slots and busy blocks.
• Basic — They can see event titles and types (like "travel" or "outing"), but no locations or descriptions. Good for friends you want to plan with, without sharing every detail.
• Full — They see everything, including locations and descriptions. This is the level you'd use for your closest friends, your partner, or your travel crew — people you actually want to coordinate with in detail.

And you can change this per person. Your best friend gets full access. That coworker you added gets free/busy. Your partner sees everything including errands. You set it once and forget it, or adjust it anytime.

Control What Shows Up in Feeds

Beyond the detail level, you also control which types of events appear in your friends' feeds. By default, only travel and outings are eligible. But you can customize this:

• Want your gym crew to see your exercise events? Turn on exercise for those friends.
• Want your partner to see your errands (appointments, tasks, etc.)? Turn on errands for them.
• Want to keep everything private except travel? Just leave the defaults.

You can set this globally (your default for all connections) or per-friend. Per-friend settings override your defaults, so you can be as broad or as specific as you want.

Per-Event Control: The Surprise Party Feature

Sometimes you need control at the event level. That's where per-event visibility comes in. When you create an event in SoKal, you can set who sees it:

• Everyone — All your connections can see it (subject to their access level).
• No one — Completely private. Only you.
• Everyone except... — Pick specific people to hide it from.
• No one except... — Pick specific people who can see it.

This is the surprise party feature. Planning a birthday party for your friend? Set the event to "everyone except" that friend. Invite the whole group, coordinate details, pick a restaurant — and the birthday person has no idea. It's all on your calendar, shared with the people who need to know, hidden from the one person who shouldn't.

How the Layers Work Together

If you're wondering which setting "wins" when they overlap, it's straightforward: privacy settings stack. Each layer can only make things more private, never less (with one exception — your per-friend settings can override your defaults in either direction).

Here's the order:

1. Are you connected? If not, they see nothing.
2. Your default visibility settings. Private means no one sees anything unless you've given them a per-friend override.
3. Per-friend overrides. You can widen or narrow access for specific people.
4. Feed event types. Even if a friend has access, they only see the event types you've enabled (travel, outing, etc.).
5. Per-event visibility. "Everyone except Sarah" or "no one except my partner" — this overrides everything above for that specific event.
6. Detail level. Even when an event is visible, the amount of detail depends on whether you gave that friend free/busy, basic, or full access.

The bottom line: if you're ever unsure whether something is showing up, the answer is almost certainly no. The system defaults to private. You have to actively grant access for anyone to see anything.

What About Errands?

We do classify some events as errands — things like doctor appointments, haircuts, car maintenance. By default, errands are hidden from everyone. They only show up in a friend's feed if you've explicitly turned on errand visibility for that person.

Why would anyone want that? Mostly couples. If you and your partner both use SoKal, sharing errands means you can see each other's full schedule — who's picking up the kids, when the vet appointment is, whether someone already scheduled the oil change. It's a shared family calendar without the awkwardness of a shared Google Calendar.

We'd Rather Miss Than Misclassify

Our classification system is designed around one principle: when in doubt, don't classify. A restaurant reservation is clearly an outing. A flight is clearly travel. But "Meeting with Dave"? Could be work, could be coffee with a friend. We don't know, so we don't label it. And unlabeled events are invisible.

This means some of your social events might not get classified automatically. That's fine — you can always manually set the type on any event. But it also means you never have to worry about a private event accidentally showing up as something public. The system errs on the side of hiding things, not showing them.

You're Always in Control

At any point, you can:

• Change any event's classification
• Adjust a friend's access level
• Change which event types show in feeds
• Set per-event visibility for any specific event
• Disconnect your calendar entirely (we delete all synced data)

Your calendar data is yours. We use it to help you find time with friends and to keep your schedule in one place. We don't use it for ads, we don't sell it, and we don't share it with anyone you haven't explicitly approved.

So sync your calendar. We've got you covered.

Ready to sync with confidence?

Download SoKal and connect your calendar — your events stay private until you say otherwise.