Notifications when events are added/changed/deleted on shared Google Calendar

[jakesterpdx]

Hello,

Apologies if this has been answered before - my question has so many common keywords that searching for it has been very difficult.

Here's the situation: my family all have iPhones and have relied heavily on some iCloud-based shared calendars for many years. The calendars were mine, and I shared them with my wife. Over the last year, my wife's iPhone started to lose these shared calendars. They would just disappear out of the blue. If I unshared/re-shared them with her, they would come back for a while, and then disappear again. I spent hours troubleshooting this with Apple Support, and they never could figure it out.

So, it's with sadness that I'm abandoning the iCloud shared calendars and moving to another system. I experimented with a lot of them, and Google seems to be pretty good, but I can't figure out how to get the nice notifications that iCloud would send me when my wife added, deleted, or changed an appointment on our shared calendar.

Here is our setup: I created a Google Calendar on my Google account and added it to my iPhone's Calendar.app. I also shared it with my wife's Google account via the web. I then went to the Sync Calendar Select website on my wife's account and set it to sync the shared calendar. Then I went to her iPhone's Calendar.app and verified that she can see it there and can add appointments. When she adds them, I see them in my calendar, but I don't get an alert when this happens, and I really miss that feature from iCloud.

So, to recap: shared Google Calendar is working fine on both my iPhone's Calendar.app and my wife's iPhone's Calendar.app, except that I don't get alerts when she adds/changes/deletes things, nor does she get alerts when I add/change/delete appointments on the calendar.

I have also tried using the Google Calendar app for iOS, and don't get notifications from it, either. I know that I can get emails when these things happen, but that can really clog up inboxes. Any ideas for how to get the iCloud-like alerts without using iCloud?

 

[Sherry_B]

So, to recap: shared Google Calendar is working fine on both my iPhone's Calendar.app and my wife's iPhone's Calendar.app, except that I don't get alerts when she adds/changes/deletes things, nor does she get alerts when I add/change/delete appointments on the calendar.

Hi, welcome to iMore!

To be honest with you, I don't ever recall getting notifications when my husband changed things on our shared Google calendar. I just asked him and he doesn't recall getting any notifications from me either. Up until two years ago we had been using Gmail with Google Calendar since it came out in beta. Is it supposed to send notifications for changes, is there a setting for that? I still use Gmail, but I don't use their calendar anymore.

 

[Not Quite Right]

If calendar sharing is important maybe it's time to think outside the box and use an app like Cal https://www.any.do/cal/
or Cozi Cozi Family Organizer | Must-Have App For Families
From my experience a glitch in iCloud can take weeks, possibly months to straighten it's self out and your head gets plenty sore from banging it against the wall by that time ...

 

[Ledsteplin]

Contact Apple Support. They can help you sort this out.
Apple Support
http://expresslane.apple.com/

Website
https://forums.imore.com/e?link=htt...F%2Fwww.apple.com%2Fcontact%2F&token=MYAj2Ldi

Apple Support Number:
(800) 275-2273

 

[Lee_Bo]

My wife and I have shared our Google calendars with each other for years and I never remember any settings to notify me when a calendar event is added or modified.

 

[Lee_Bo]

I stand corrected. I just looked at the Google Calendar settings for my wife's calendar and found thee notifications:



Turning them on now to see if I start getting notified of additions or modifications.

 

[jakesterpdx]

Thanks for all the replies!

I did try other calendar alternatives including Cozi and ruled them out because I really like the native Calendar app - we get smart alerts from Siri about leaving in time for events, plus it's what my family already knows.

Regarding contact Apple Support, I worked with them for months and they never could solve this issue. I get it, intermittent stuff is hard to troubleshoot.

Regarding the Google Calendar notification options, they exist, but they are all email notifications. I was hoping to avoid getting bombarded with emails and/or setting a rule that puts them in a folder that I never remember to look at. I think we'll just live without the push notifications.

 

[beausoleilb1]

I've considered leaving iCloud calendars for Google several times but never ended up doing it. The deal breaker for me each time I looked was losing the push notifications when someone added, changed or deleted an event in the shared calendar.

I'm with you, I don't want all the extra email coming in to me when someone changes the calendar, and I want to use the native calendar for all the Siri and app integrations. A simple push notification will do for me.

The only difference between your setup and mine is I created a completely separate iCloud account and share that family calendar with myself, my wife and my two kids. No one actually logs into that iCloud account on our devices because the calendar shows up in each of their calendar lists on their individual iCloud accounts.

 

[dusted12]

Thanks for all the replies!

I did try other calendar alternatives including Cozi and ruled them out because I really like the native Calendar app - we get smart alerts from Siri about leaving in time for events, plus it's what my family already knows.

Regarding contact Apple Support, I worked with them for months and they never could solve this issue. I get it, intermittent stuff is hard to troubleshoot.

Regarding the Google Calendar notification options, they exist, but they are all email notifications. I was hoping to avoid getting bombarded with emails and/or setting a rule that puts them in a folder that I never remember to look at. I think we'll just live without the push notifications.

Hi there. Did you ever figure this one out? I am in the same position. I’d love for mobile devicE notifications when my wife adds or edits events in our shared calendars.

J