The Three Ways to Share a Calendar
Google Calendar offers three distinct sharing methods, each with different reach and control. You can share with specific people using their email address, share via a public URL that anyone can view, or generate a read-only link that shows your calendar as a webpage.
For work contexts, sharing with specific people is the most common and most controllable approach. Public sharing is rarely appropriate for professional calendars — it exposes event titles and times to anyone with the link.
Permission Levels Explained
Free/Busy Only
When you share with a specific person, you choose one of four permission levels. 'See only free/busy' shows availability without event details — the safest option for broad sharing. 'See all event details' shows full event information including titles, descriptions, and attendees. 'Make changes to events' allows the recipient to add and edit events on your calendar. 'Make changes and manage sharing' gives full administrative control.
See All Event Details
For most workplace sharing, 'See all event details' is the right default. It gives colleagues enough information to schedule around your commitments without giving them edit access.
Make Changes to Events
Full Administrative Access
If you share your calendar at the 'See all event details' level, personal events like medical appointments or family matters will be visible. Use a separate personal calendar with 'free/busy only' sharing for those events.
Best Practices for Calendar Sharing
- Share your work calendar at 'See all event details' with direct teammates.
- Share at 'free/busy only' with the broader organization.
- Keep a separate personal calendar with restricted or no sharing.
- Use 'Make changes to events' only for team calendars managed by multiple people.
- Regularly review who has access to your calendar, especially after team changes.
Managing Team and Shared Calendars
For teams, a separate shared calendar (not your personal calendar) is often the better approach. Create a calendar called 'Team Events' or 'Engineering Sprints,' share it with the team at 'Make changes to events,' and use it for group events without exposing individual schedules.
For Google Workspace organizations, administrators can configure organization-wide calendar sharing defaults. Individual users can override these defaults for their own calendars within the bounds the admin allows.
How Schedule Calendar helps
Schedule Calendar reads your Google Calendar data — including calendars shared with you — and displays all events in the browser popup. If you manage or view a team calendar alongside your personal calendar, both show up in the extension's event list. This makes it easy to see your own schedule and team events together from the toolbar without switching between calendar views.
Frequently asked questions
Open Google Calendar, find your calendar in the left sidebar, click the three-dot menu next to it, and select Settings and sharing. Under Share with specific people, click Add people and enter the email address of the person you want to share with. Then choose the appropriate permission level and click Send.
There are four levels: See only free/busy (shows availability without event details), See all event details (shows full event information), Make changes to events (allows adding and editing), and Make changes and manage sharing (full administrative control). For most workplace sharing, See all event details is the appropriate choice.
You cannot selectively share specific events from one calendar — sharing applies to the entire calendar. The practical workaround is to maintain multiple calendars: a work calendar shared at 'See all event details,' a personal calendar shared at 'free/busy only' or not shared at all, and any project-specific calendars shared with relevant team members.
Go to Settings and sharing for your calendar (three-dot menu next to the calendar name in the sidebar). The Share with specific people section shows everyone with access and their permission level. You can change or revoke access from this same page by clicking the X next to any person's entry.
Free/busy sharing shows others whether you are available or occupied during a time slot without revealing any event details — no titles, descriptions, or attendees. This is useful for letting colleagues schedule meetings around your existing commitments while keeping the content of your calendar private. It is the appropriate level for broad organizational sharing.
Yes. In Settings and sharing, under Access permissions, you can make the calendar available to the public. This generates a shareable link anyone can view. For professional calendars, this is rarely appropriate — it exposes all event details, titles, and times to anyone with the link. Public sharing is more suited to event calendars or organizational schedules intended for broad audiences.