How To Make Google Calendar Private | A Step-by-Step Guide

If you use Google Calendar to keep track of your personal or work schedules, it's important to know about its privacy settings and the risks of keeping your calendars public.

Understanding how to adjust your Google Calendar settings is key, especially if your calendar has private information.

In this article, we'll talk about how to keep your Google Calendar private, and other key settings to make sure your calendar is safe and your privacy is intact.

How to Make Google Calendar Private

To make Google Calendar private and ensure that your calendar won’t be accessible through Google Search, via URL, or other means, follow these steps:

1. Open Google Calendar: On the web, you can access Google Calendar through this URL: https://calendar.google.com/calendar
   
2. Hover over the Google Calendar you want to make private: The calendars are located on the sidebar on the left of the page, the section is called "My Calendars".
   
3. Click the three dots icon (⁝): Clicking the three dots icon lets you see the calendar options.
   
4. Click “Settings and Sharing”: This menu contains all the settings related to this calendar.
   
5. Click “Access permissions for events”: This section is where you can choose to make the calendar public, or private.
   
6. Uncheck the “Make available to public” checkbox: If your calendar was available to public, uncheck the “Make available to public” checkbox. Unchecking this setting makes sure that the calendar is not available to the public, Google Search, or through any other means.
   
7. Your Google Calendar is now private.

How to securely make your Google Calendar Public

If you need to share your Googe Calendar and make it public, you have to be cautious about which settings you check when doing so. To securely make your Google Calendar public, follow these steps:

1. Open Google Calendar: On the web, you can access Google Calendar through this URL: https://calendar.google.com/calendar
   
2. Hover over the Google Calendar you want to make private: The calendars are located on the sidebar on the left of the page, the section is called "My Calendars".
   
3. Click the three dots icon (⁝): Clicking the three dots icon enables you to see the options for that calendar.
   
4. Click “Settings and Sharing”: This menu contains all the settings related to this calendar.
   
5. Click “Access permissions for events”: This section is where you can choose to make the calendar public, or private.
   
6. Check the “Make available to public” checkbox: This section enables you to make the Google Calendar public, allowing you to get a sharable link, and allowing others to view your calendar.
   
7. Confirm that the Google Calendar will be available to the public: When checking the “Make available to public” checkbox, Google Calendar warns you that by doing so, your calendar will be available to the public, including Google Search.
   
8. Select “See only free/busy (hide details)”: After checking the “Make available to public” checkbox, it’s crucial to select “See only free/busy (hide details)” on the dropdown on the right of the “Make available to public” checkbox. This makes sure that even though others can see your calendar, they can only see the busy slots, not the event details.
   
   - If you want also to make the event details public, you can select “See all event details”. Proceed with caution, as by selecting this option, everyone can see all your events along with private details.
   

How to privately share Google Calendar with other Google or Outlook calendars

You might be inclined to export a Google Calendar and import it to Outlook or another Google Calendar, to streamline the schedule and prevent double bookings. By doing so, you have to make the Google Calendar public, even available to Google Search. This puts the security and privacy of your Google Calendar at great risk, as private events and their details are made available to the world.

The most secure way to share your Google Calendars with other calendars, while keeping the events private is by using OneCal. Using OneCal, you can securely share your Google Calendar with Outlook or Google Calendars, without worrying that others might see your private event details.

Here is how to sync your Google Calendars using OneCal:

1. Connect your Google Calendars: The amazing thing about using OneCal is that you can connect as many Google Calendars as you want, and you can share them at once, without the need to repeat the same steps for each calendar.
   
2. Choose which calendars to sync: Using OneCal you can Sync one calendar to another, to many, or multiple calendars simultaneously. The platform is fully configurable and modular.
   
3. Configure how events are copied: This is the major difference between OneCal and sharing manually via Google Calendar: Google Calendar allows two options: either share every event detail (make the calendar public), or none. OneCal allows you to pick each property of your events that you want to share, enabling you to choose what you want to sync.
   
4. Your Calendars are synced! It only takes a couple of seconds for OneCal to sync your calendars.
   

Keep Your Google Calendar Private and Secure Using OneCal

OneCal is the go-to platform when it comes to managing Google Calendars. It allows you to sync your Google or Outlook Calendars while keeping your calendars private, and secure.

You can sign up for a 14-day free trial, with no credit calendar required, to try sync your calendars using OneCal. Avoid meeting conflicts, and privacy concerns, save time, and focus on what matters.