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Shared family calendar

Sync a shared family calendar with work. Without sharing the details.

Bath time goes in the family calendar; your work calendar goes busy. Two calendars that finally agree about time without agreeing about content. What the household commits you to blocks your working hours, so nobody books over it. What you commit to in the evening shows up at home, so nobody has to ask whether you are on duty.

Jakub Beneš

Jakub Beneš

Founder, CalendarPipe · Updated August 14, 2026

Use this templateRead the rules first

Free forever plan · 14-day Pro trial · no card to start

A day, end to end

One Tuesday, both rules running.

  1. 07:30Family calendar

    School run

    Added at home, on the calendar you both keep.

    Work calendar

    Personal Commitment

    Busy at work before anyone opens your booking link — and it says nothing about the school.

  2. 09:15Work calendar

    Sprint planning

    Daytime work has no business at home. It stays where it is.

  3. 13:00Work calendar

    Lunch — marked free

    Free rather than busy, so nothing crosses in either direction.

  4. 18:30Family calendar

    Bath time — your turn

    The duty is on the shared calendar, so it is not a negotiation.

    Work calendar

    Personal Commitment

    Your working hours are blocked. A late meeting cannot land on top of it.

  5. 19:30Work calendar

    Dinner with investors

    An invitation you accepted, starting after the evening cut-off.

    Family calendar

    Work event

    Lands at home as plainly as that — the evening is spoken for, and nobody has to decode it at 19:25.

The glowing blocks are the ones a rule wrote. Nobody typed them, and nobody has to keep them up to date — if the original moves, they move.

Why the two calendars drift apart

The household plans, and work never hears about it
Someone adds the school run or bath time to the calendar you share at home. Your colleagues are looking at an entirely different calendar, and book you straight through it.
Your evening is invisible at home
You accept a seven o’clock call sometime in the afternoon. The person who is now doing bedtime alone finds out at 18:55.
Sharing whole calendars is the wrong shape
The choice on offer is usually all or nothing: either the household reads your client meetings, or work reads your family’s business. You wanted to share the time, not the contents.
Typing it into both decays within a fortnight
Double entry survives until the first reschedule. Nobody re-types a change, and from then on neither calendar can be trusted.

The rules

The calendar sync rules that do this, in full

Small enough to read in one sitting.

Busy Events as "Personal Commitment"

In the app: Only sync events marked as busy and strip identifying details — title becomes "Personal Commitment", description and location are cleared. Ideal for sharing availability across work and personal calendars without leaking meeting topics, notes, addresses, or video links.

Family calendarWork calendar

Every busy event on the shared calendar becomes a block at work. The title, the notes and the address stay at home.

function gate(event: GateEvent): GateResult | boolean {
  if ((event.showAs === "busy")) {
    return { pass: true, transform: { title: "Personal Commitment", description: "", location: "" } };
  }
  return { pass: false };
}

Evening Events Only, adapted

Starts from “Evening Events Only”, a shipped template: Only sync events starting at 6 PM UTC or later. Perfect for sharing after-work plans on a personal or family calendar without exposing daytime meetings.

Work calendarFamily calendar

Narrowed to invitations you have accepted, so the blocks the first rule wrote do not bounce back, and re-titled “Work event” — the shared calendar is read by someone who should not have to work out what “Personal Commitment” means.

function gate(event: GateEvent): GateResult | boolean {
  // Only invitations you accepted. Blocks written by the other rule
  // have no attendees, so they arrive as "organizer" and stop here.
  if (event.responseStatus !== "accepted") {
    return { pass: false };
  }

  // event.hour is UTC: 16 is 18:00 in Prague in summer.
  if (event.hour < 16) {
    return { pass: false };
  }

  return {
    pass: true,
    transform: { title: "Work event", description: "", location: "" },
  };
}

What moves

What crosses between the two calendars, and what stays

Both rules move the same thing: the hours, not the contents. Field by field, in either direction, this is what that means.

What crosses between a shared family calendar and a work calendar, and what stays on the original
DetailCrosses over?What that means
Start and end timeCrossesThe block covers exactly the hours the original does.
Event titleStays putWork sees “Personal Commitment”, home sees “Work event”. Both are yours to change.
Description and notesStays putCleared before the event is written.
Location or addressStays putCleared before the event is written.
Attendees and organiserStays putBlocks arrive with no attendee list — which is also what stops the two rules copying each other back and forth.
Video call linkStays putIt travels in the description, so it stays where it was.
Events marked freeStays putOnly busy events are copied. A lunch flagged free never leaves the calendar it is on.
Reschedules and cancellationsCrossesSynced events are tracked, so the block moves with the original rather than stranding.

How to set up this calendar sync

About two minutes, most of which is the provider's consent screen.

  1. 01

    Connect the shared calendar and your work calendar

    Google Calendar, Outlook and Microsoft 365, Apple Calendar over CalDAV, or any ICS feed. About two minutes, and nobody else in the house installs anything.

  2. 02

    Pipe one: home to work

    Busy events on the shared calendar arrive at work as “Personal Commitment”. The time is protected and the details never leave the house.

  3. 03

    Pipe two: work to home, evenings only

    Narrow the evening template to invitations you have accepted and label what crosses “Work event”. Daytime meetings stay at work; the evenings you have committed to are legible to whoever reads the shared calendar.

  4. 04

    Then stop maintaining it

    Reschedules, cancellations and edits follow on the next sync, in both directions. There is nothing left to keep up to date by hand.

“My partner adds bath time or the school run to our family calendar, and by the time I look at my work calendar it is already blocked off — no standup on top of it, no awkward reschedule. That is how we schedule our family now, and neither of us retypes anything.”
Jakub Beneš · Founder, CalendarPipe

Common questions

Does my partner need a CalendarPipe account?

No. Only you connect anything. Events land on the calendar the household already keeps, or arrive as ordinary calendar invitations — there is nothing to install on anyone else’s phone.

What exactly counts as “evening”?

The evening template filters on the hour in UTC rather than your local time, so pick the number that matches your evening — in Prague that is 16 or 17 depending on the season, to catch things starting at six. It is one number in the rule, and the builder shows you the code before you save it.

Why “invitations you have accepted”?

Because the blocks CalendarPipe writes are events too. Without that filter, an evening block created by the first rule would be picked up by the second and copied back, and you would see it twice at home. Events CalendarPipe writes have no attendee list, so filtering to invitations you accepted keeps the two directions from talking to each other.

Do the blocks show what the meeting actually is?

No, in either direction — the description, location and attendee list are dropped before anything is written. Only the label differs, because the audience does: work sees “Personal Commitment”, which says the hour is taken and nothing else, and home sees “Work event”, which is the thing your household actually needs to know. Both are yours to change.

Do I need a paid plan?

Two calendar connections and one rule is the free plan, which covers one direction — syncing every 15 minutes, 14 days ahead. The two-way setup on this page is two rules, so it needs Pro, which also syncs every 5 minutes and looks 90 days ahead: $4/month, or $40 a year, with a 14-day free trial.

Does this work with Apple Calendar and iCloud?

Yes, over CalDAV, alongside Google Calendar and Outlook. Households running two different ecosystems are the normal case rather than the exception.

Start with this setup

Connect the calendars, pick the rule, and stop thinking about it. Free forever plan, no card. Pro is free for 14 days.

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