Google Calendar · 5 min read

How to create a shared family Google Calendar.

A working family Google Calendar setup — color-coded per person, accessible on every phone, free forever. Takes about 30 minutes the first time.

Tej Tandon

Founder, HomeHQ

The short answer

To create a shared family Google Calendar, sign in to Google Calendar on a computer, open Settings → Add calendar → Create new calendar, name it "Family", and share it with each family member's Google account with "Make changes to events" permission. Each person then subscribes to that calendar on their phone.

That's the short version. The steps below cover the full setup — sharing permissions, per-person colors, school-calendar imports, and what to do when one of your kids still uses an iCloud calendar instead of Google. This guide is only about getting the calendar built; the weekly habits that keep it alive past month three are covered in our family-scheduling guide.

Step by step

How to do it.

Open Google Calendar on a computer.

Go to calendar.google.com and sign in with the Google account you want to own the family calendar — usually a parent's personal Gmail, not a work Workspace account (Workspace admins can sometimes restrict external sharing).

If you only have phones in the house, you can do this from a phone browser by requesting the desktop site — but a laptop is much easier the first time.

Create a new "Family" calendar.

In the left sidebar, find "Other calendars" and click the + → Create new calendar. Name it "Family" (or something more descriptive like "Patel Household"). Pick a time zone. Click Create calendar.

A few seconds later, the new calendar appears in your sidebar. Click its name to open its settings.

Share the calendar with every family member.

Scroll to "Share with specific people or groups" and add each family member's Google account. For partners and older kids, set permission to "Make changes to events" so they can add and edit. For younger kids, "See all event details" (read-only) is fine.

Each person gets an email invitation. They click "Add this calendar" and it appears in their own Google Calendar.

For kids without their own Google account, create a calendar entry "for" them but have a parent add the events. Many parents create one shared "kids" calendar that lives in the family's grown-ups' accounts.

Set a per-person color (the part most setups skip).

Color-coding is what makes a shared family calendar actually readable. The recipe most working families use: one shared "Family" calendar for events involving multiple people (dinners, vacations, holidays), plus one calendar per family member for their personal stuff (work schedules, the gym, each kid's activities).

In Google Calendar, hover over each calendar in the left sidebar, click the three-dot menu, and pick a color — one distinct color per person, never reused. For the palette logic (which colors survive a sunlit kitchen, what to avoid for color-blind family members), see our color-coded family calendar guide.

Subscribe to the calendar on every phone.

iPhone: open Settings → Calendar → Accounts → Add Account → Google. Sign in with the Google account that owns the family calendar. Make sure "Calendars" is toggled on.

Android: open the Calendar app → Settings → Add account → Google. Sign in.

After a minute, the new family calendar shows up on every phone, and any event added on any device appears on all of them.

Add school and after-school calendars.

Most schools publish a calendar in .ics format. From the school website, copy the calendar URL. In Google Calendar, click Other calendars → From URL. Paste. The school calendar appears alongside your family one — and updates automatically whenever the school updates theirs.

Do the same for kids' sports teams, music programs, scout troops. Anything published as a calendar URL can join the family view.

Tips and gotchas

A few things that'll save you time.

!Decide on one source of truth. Either Google or iCloud — not both. If half your household is on iCloud Calendar and half on Google, pick one and have everyone subscribe to the other through it.
!Keep the "Family" calendar for shared things, not for personal commitments. Personal stuff belongs in each person's own calendar.
!Color-code by person, not by category. You want to glance at the calendar and know whose day is busy, and a "Sports" color can't tell you that.
!Don't share work Workspace calendars with your family. Subscribe to them with read-only permission on a personal Google account if you want the events visible.

When Google Calendar isn't enough

When you need more than a shared calendar.

Google Calendar handles the schedule. What it doesn't do: color-code automatically, plan meals, rotate chores, show kids only their own slice, run as an always-on kitchen display. HomeHQ does all of that — and uses your Google Calendar under the hood, so nothing you set up above is wasted.

See the family calendar guide →

Common questions

Questions families ask.

In Google Calendar on a computer, click Other calendars → Create new calendar, name it "Family", then share it with each family member's Google account with "Make changes to events" permission. Each person subscribes to that calendar on their phone in Settings → Calendar → Add Google account.

Yes, Google Calendar is free for personal Google accounts. You don't need a paid Google One or Workspace subscription to share calendars with family.

Open Google Calendar on a computer, click the three-dot menu next to the calendar name → Settings and sharing → Share with specific people. Add each family member's Google email and set their permission level (read-only or edit).

Only if you share it with them. Work calendars (especially Google Workspace) should stay private; create a separate personal "Mom's schedule" calendar with only the events you want the family to see, and share that one.

Two options. (1) Have them subscribe to the Google family calendar on their iPhone — Settings → Calendar → Add Google account — and add events to that calendar from their phone. (2) Have them share their iCloud calendar with the family separately. The cleanest path is to pick Google as the single source of truth and have everyone add to it — that's exactly what HomeHQ is built on, so the shared family calendar stays in one place.

Unlimited. You can share with any number of Google accounts. Practically, families of 4–8 work well; larger groups end up with too much noise on the calendar.

Tej Tandon

Founder, HomeHQ. Building HomeHQ from Vancouver — bootstrapped, no investors. I write these guides from running my own family on the same tools.

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