How to add a webcal/ICS calendar feed to Apple or Google Calendar

A calendar feed (you'll see the terms webcal, ICS, or calendar subscription used interchangeably) is the quiet workhorse of the calendar world. It's how your phone shows your team's game schedule and national holidays without you typing anything — and it's how Home Board delivers your handwritten calendar to Google and Apple Calendar without ever touching your account.

Here's how to subscribe on every device your family owns.

What a feed actually is

A feed is just a URL that serves a standard calendar file (.ics format), kept up to date by whoever publishes it. Your calendar app checks the URL periodically and shows whatever events it finds. Subscribing means "check this address for events" — nothing more. The publisher never gets access to your calendar, and you can unsubscribe any time.

A webcal:// link is the same thing with a nudge attached: it tells your device "open this in the calendar app and offer to subscribe."

iPhone and iPad (Apple Calendar)

1. Tap your feed link — if it starts with webcal://, iOS opens the subscribe dialog directly.
2. Or manually: Settings → Apps → Calendar → Calendar Accounts → Add Account → Other → Add Subscribed Calendar, then paste the URL.
3. Give it a color, choose whether it appears on all devices (it should), and save.

New events appear automatically whenever iOS refreshes subscriptions.

Google Calendar (web — do this once for Android)

Google Calendar subscriptions are added on the web, not in the phone app:

1. Open calendar.google.com on a computer or in a mobile browser (request desktop site if needed).
2. In the left sidebar, click the + next to "Other calendars" → From URL.
3. Paste the feed URL (if it starts with webcal://, swap that prefix for https:// — Google wants the plain URL) and click Add calendar.

Once added, the feed syncs to the Google Calendar app on every phone signed into that account. On Android, make sure the new calendar is toggled visible under Settings → your account → calendar name → Sync.

macOS (Apple Calendar)

File → New Calendar Subscription, paste the URL, and set auto-refresh to daily or better. If you use iCloud, set the location to iCloud so the subscription follows you to your phone.

How fast do new events show up?

The publisher's side is instant — the moment Home Board confirms a snap, the events are in your feed. The lag, if any, is your phone's refresh cycle: Apple lets you pick the interval per subscription, and Google refreshes subscribed URLs on its own schedule (typically within a few hours). For a family calendar planned days or weeks ahead, that's more than fast enough.

Keeping a private feed private

Feeds like Home Board's put a long secret directly in the URL — that's the access control. Treat the link like a house key: share it with your household, nobody else. If a link ever leaks (an old phone, a forwarded email), rotate the secret from Home Board's settings; the old URL dies instantly and your calendar apps just need the new one.

Why feeds beat account linking

The alternative — granting an app OAuth write access to your Google or Apple account — works, but it means a third party can create, edit, and delete events across your calendar. A subscription can only ever offer events, which your app displays. For a family wall calendar where the board is the source of truth, that one-way property isn't a limitation — it's the design.