How to Share a Calendar with a Family Member Who Has an Android

Ammar Khatib · 17 September 2026

You are on an iPhone. Your partner, or your mother, or your co-parent is on Android. You tap share on your calendar, and it asks for an Apple account they do not have and are not going to get.

There are three ways through this. They are not equivalent — one of them is read-only, which changes everything about whether it solves your actual problem.

Here they are, with the trade-off stated plainly for each.

First, decide what you actually need

Before the methods, one question, because it eliminates two of the three answers immediately.

Do they only need to see it, or do they need to add things?

If your Android family member only needs to know what is happening — a grandparent keeping track, a co-parent seeing the school schedule — a read-only share is fine and it is the least work.

If you want to stop being the only person who enters anything, read-only is not a solution, it is the problem with extra steps. Go to method two or three.

Method 1: Apple's public calendar link

Apple can publish an iCloud calendar as a link anyone can subscribe to, on any device.

On a Mac: in Calendar, share the calendar and choose Public Calendar. On iCloud.com: open the calendar's info, turn on Public Calendar, then email or copy the link. Your Android family member adds that link in Google Calendar as a calendar "from URL".

The limitation, in Apple's own words: "People who subscribe to your public calendar can view it, but can't change it." iCloud's help says the same thing from the other side — only the calendar's owner can share and make changes to a public calendar.

There is a genuine editing option in Apple's sharing — the Allow editing setting, which lets an invitee create, edit and delete events. It only works when you invite another Apple account, so it is not available to the person this article is about.

One more thing worth knowing: a public calendar link is public. Anyone who has the URL can see it. Do not put a public link somewhere it can be found, and do not use this method for a calendar containing things you would not want a stranger to read.

Use it when: they only need to look. Skip it when: you need them to add anything.

Method 2: Everyone on one Google Calendar

This is the workhorse answer and usually the right one.

Create a calendar in Google Calendar, share it with their Google address, and give it edit permission. On Android it appears natively. On your iPhone, add the Google account under Settings → Calendar → Accounts, and the calendar shows up in Apple's Calendar app.

Now both of you can add events. That is the thing method 1 cannot do.

What Google says will not work when you use a Google calendar inside Apple's Calendar app, in their own words: email notifications for events, creating new Google calendars, and Room Scheduler. Only the first usually matters to a family — if you were relying on emailed reminders, they will not arrive by this route. Using Google's own Calendar app on the iPhone avoids that, at the cost of running a second calendar app.

Use it when: both people need to add things and neither minds a Google account. Skip it when: the other person will not create one, which does happen.

Method 3: An app both platforms run properly

The third route is to stop using either platform's system and use a family app where iPhone and Android are both first-class — everyone can add, everyone sees the same thing, no read-only tier.

The honest trade-off: it is another app, and everyone has to actually open it. That is a real cost and it is the reason plenty of families stay on method two despite the rough edges.

Use it when: it is a whole household rather than one person, and when shopping lists and to-dos need to be shared too — that is where methods 1 and 2 run out entirely.

Why it takes so long to update

The most common complaint about cross-platform calendars is delay: something is added and the other person does not see it for hours.

This almost always means you are subscribed rather than sharing.

A shared calendar — method 2, with edit rights — updates quickly, because both devices are talking to the same calendar.

A subscribed calendar — method 1, or any ICS link you add on an iPhone — is a copy that the receiving app refreshes on its own schedule. Google does not publish how often it refreshes subscribed calendars, and in practice people report delays of many hours. There is no setting to make it instant.

So if the delay is the thing bothering you, the fix is not a setting. It is moving from method 1 to method 2.

Which to choose