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How to add school dates to Google, Apple or Outlook Calendar automatically

Term dates, trips, INSET days, non-uniform days — subscribe once and they appear in the calendar you already use, and keep appearing. This guide covers Google Calendar, Apple Calendar on iPhone, iPad and Mac, Outlook, and anything else that accepts a subscription URL.

A calendar subscription is not the same as importing a file. Importing an .ics file copies whatever it contained on the day you imported it, and then it is frozen. Subscribing points your calendar app at a URL it re-reads on its own schedule, so new dates keep arriving without you doing anything. Every set of steps below sets up a subscription, not an import.

Every method below starts by pasting in your family's calendar feed URL. Yours is on your dashboard: open Calendar setup and copy the feed URL shown there. Don't confuse it with your Quiet Loon forwarding address — the forwarding address is for sending emails in, the feed URL is for reading events out. Don't have an account yet? Start your free trial to get both.

Which calendar do you use?

Google CalendarWeb & AndroidApple CalendariPhone & iPadApple CalendarMacOutlookWeb & desktopAny other appwebcal or iCal URL

Google Calendar

Add the subscription once on a computer and it follows your Google account everywhere — Android, the Google Calendar app on iPhone, and Gmail.

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Add the calendar by URL

The only way to add a subscription to Google Calendar — it must be done in a browser

  1. 1Copy your calendar feed URL from your Quiet Loon dashboard, under Calendar setup
  2. 2Open calendar.google.com in a browser on a computer
  3. 3In the left-hand column, find “Other calendars” and click the + next to it
  4. 4Choose “From URL”
  5. 5Paste your feed URL into the “URL of calendar” box
  6. 6Click “Add calendar”, then close the settings screen with the back arrow
Google Calendar often takes several hours — typically 5 to 12 — before events from a newly subscribed calendar first appear, and it refreshes on its own schedule after that. This is Google's behaviour and there is no setting to speed it up. If the calendar looks empty an hour after you added it, that is expected; check again the next day before assuming something went wrong.

Android phones and tablets

Nothing to install, but there is one setting that catches people out

  1. 1Add the calendar on a computer first, using the steps above — the Google Calendar mobile app has no “add by URL” option at all
  2. 2Open the Google Calendar app on your Android device
  3. 3Tap the menu (☰) at the top left and scroll down the list of calendars
  4. 4Find the new calendar and make sure its checkbox is ticked — a subscribed calendar is added to your account but is not always switched on for display on each device

Google Calendar on an iPhone

If you use Google Calendar rather than Apple's own Calendar app

  1. 1Add the calendar on a computer first, using the “Add the calendar by URL” steps above
  2. 2Open calendar.google.com/calendar/syncselect in a browser and sign in
  3. 3Tick the new calendar in the list and tap “Save” — iOS only syncs Google calendars you have selected here
  4. 4Open the Google Calendar app; the events appear once Google's own refresh has run

Apple Calendar on iPhone and iPad

Both devices use the same steps, but a subscription added this way lives only on the device you added it to — iOS gives you no choice of where to store it. Repeat the steps on each iPhone and iPad you want it on. If you also have a Mac, subscribing there once with the location set to iCloud is the only way to get one subscription onto all of them; see the Mac section below.

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Subscribe from Settings

Works on every recent version of iOS and iPadOS

  1. 1Copy your calendar feed URL from your Quiet Loon dashboard, under Calendar setup
  2. 2Open the Settings app and tap “Apps”, then “Calendar” (on older versions of iOS, tap “Calendar” directly in the main Settings list)
  3. 3Tap “Accounts”, then “Add Account”, then “Other”
  4. 4Tap “Add Subscribed Calendar”
  5. 5Paste your feed URL into the “Server” box and tap “Next”
  6. 6Leave the username and password boxes empty, then tap “Save”
Leaving the username and password empty is correct — the feed URL already carries the token that identifies your family, so there is no separate login. That token is what keeps your calendar private, which is why the URL should be treated like a password and not posted anywhere public.
Quickest

The one-tap shortcut

Quicker, but only from the device you are subscribing on

  1. 1Open your Quiet Loon dashboard in Safari on the iPhone or iPad itself and go to Calendar setup
  2. 2Tap “Subscribe” under iPhone or iPad
  3. 3iOS asks whether you want to subscribe to the calendar — tap “Subscribe”
  4. 4Choose which account to add it to, then tap “Add”
This works because the Subscribe button hands iOS a webcal:// link, which the Calendar app registers itself to handle. A Mac handles that link the same way — see the Mac section below for its own one-click route. It is Windows PCs and Chromebooks that have nothing registered to open a webcal:// link, which is why the manual routes exist.

Apple Calendar on Mac

Quickest

One-click subscribe

The fastest route, if you are already at the Mac you want the calendar on

  1. 1Open your Quiet Loon dashboard on the Mac itself and go to Calendar setup
  2. 2Click “Subscribe” under Mac
  3. 3Apple Calendar opens and asks whether to subscribe to the feed — confirm
  4. 4Set the location and refresh interval when prompted, using the guidance in the next section
If nothing happens when you click it, your Mac may not have Apple Calendar set as the handler for webcal:// links. Use the manual steps below instead — they end up in exactly the same place.
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New Calendar Subscription

Add it by hand, and choose how often it refreshes

  1. 1Copy your calendar feed URL from your Quiet Loon dashboard, under Calendar setup
  2. 2Open the Calendar app
  3. 3In the menu bar, click “File”, then “New Calendar Subscription”
  4. 4Paste your feed URL and click “Subscribe”
  5. 5Give the calendar a name and pick a colour
  6. 6Set “Location” to iCloud if you want it on your iPhone and iPad too, or “On My Mac” to keep it on this computer only
  7. 7Set “Auto-refresh” to “Every hour”, then click “OK”
“Auto-refresh” defaults to “Every week” on some versions of macOS, which is long enough that a date added on Monday might not appear until the following weekend. Changing it to hourly costs nothing and is the single most useful setting in this dialog.

Change the refresh interval later

If you skipped it, or picked the wrong one

  1. 1Open the Calendar app and find the calendar in the left-hand list
  2. 2Right-click, or Control-click, its name
  3. 3Choose “Get Info”
  4. 4Change “Auto-refresh” and click “OK”

Outlook

Covers Outlook.com, Hotmail, Live and MSN addresses on the web, plus the installed Outlook app on Windows and Mac.

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Outlook on the web

outlook.com — the subscription follows your account onto every device

  1. 1Copy your calendar feed URL from your Quiet Loon dashboard, under Calendar setup
  2. 2Go to outlook.com in a browser and open the Calendar (the calendar icon in the left-hand bar)
  3. 3Click “Add calendar” at the top of the calendar list
  4. 4Choose “Subscribe from web”
  5. 5Paste your feed URL into the box
  6. 6Give the calendar a name, pick a colour, and click “Import”
The button says “Import”, but “Subscribe from web” creates a live subscription rather than a one-off copy — Outlook re-reads the URL on its own. The wording is Microsoft's, not a sign you picked the wrong option.

Outlook desktop app

Windows or Mac, if you use the installed app rather than the website

  1. 1Copy your calendar feed URL from your Quiet Loon dashboard, under Calendar setup
  2. 2Open Outlook and switch to Calendar view
  3. 3In new Outlook, click “Add calendar”, then “Subscribe from web”. In classic Outlook for Windows, click “Home”, then “Add Calendar”, then “From Internet”
  4. 4Paste your feed URL and confirm
  5. 5If Outlook asks whether to add the calendar and subscribe to updates, choose Yes
If your Outlook desktop app is signed into the same account as outlook.com, subscribing on the web is the better route — the calendar then appears in the desktop app, on your phone, and on the website, instead of only on the one computer.

Any other calendar app

Thunderbird, Fantastical, Cron, Proton Calendar, Notion Calendar — anything that supports webcal or iCal subscriptions.

Paste the feed URL wherever it asks for a subscription

The wording differs by app; the URL is the same one every time

  1. 1Copy your calendar feed URL from your Quiet Loon dashboard, under Calendar setup
  2. 2In your calendar app, look for “Subscribe”, “Add by URL”, “New network calendar”, “From URL”, or “Subscribe from web” — apps name it differently but they all mean the same thing
  3. 3Paste the feed URL and confirm
  4. 4If the app asks for a username and password, leave them blank — the URL already identifies your family
  5. 5If there is a refresh or update interval, set it to hourly
A few apps insist on a webcal:// address rather than an https:// one. If yours rejects the URL, swap the leading https:// for webcal:// and leave the rest of the address exactly as it is — it points at the same feed.

What to expect once you have subscribed

How quickly new events appear

Your calendar app decides this, not Quiet Loon

  1. 1Apple Calendar refreshes on the interval you chose — hourly if you followed the Mac steps above
  2. 2Outlook refreshes roughly every few hours, and there is no user-facing setting for it
  3. 3Google Calendar is the slowest, typically 5 to 12 hours for the first events and on its own schedule after that
  4. 4Nothing you do in Quiet Loon can make a calendar app poll sooner — the events are published the moment they are extracted, and the wait is entirely on the app's side

What does and does not reach your calendar

Dated things you attend go to the calendar; things you have to do stay on your dashboard

  1. 1Events go to your calendar — trips, matches, performances, appointments, parents' evenings, anything happening at a particular time
  2. 2So do dateable notices — INSET days, non-uniform days, school closures, early finishes
  3. 3Deadlines and to-dos do not — paying a ParentPay balance, returning a consent form, booking a club place. These stay on your Quiet Loon dashboard and come to you as email or WhatsApp reminders instead
This split is deliberate. A payment deadline is not an appointment, and putting one in a calendar as an all-day entry is how calendars turn into noise. If you want a deadline in your calendar as well, add it there yourself from the item on your dashboard.

Getting events into the feed in the first place

The calendar reads events out; forwarding is what puts them in

Subscribing is only half of it. The feed fills up as Quiet Loon reads the school and club emails you forward to it, so if your calendar is subscribed but empty, the next thing to set up is forwarding.

Our step-by-step email forwarding guide covers Gmail, Outlook, Apple Mail, Yahoo, AOL and work email — one rule, set once, and the dates start arriving on their own.

Subscribe once, stop typing in term dates.

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