Embed a Google Calendar on your website: public details or free/busy only
A calendar embedded on a website still follows Google’s sharing rules. To let everyone view it without an individual sharing grant, make it public deliberately. An embed does not turn a private calendar into a public one. Arte Soft, the developer of Cloud Calendars, publishes this guide.
Pick the publishing setup
| Goal | Calendar | Public setting | Share via |
|---|---|---|---|
| Public events list on a website | Dedicated secondary calendar | Public, full details | Embed code |
| Show when booked to the general public | Dedicated calendar | Public with See only free/busy | Embed or public link;anyone may see the published busy pattern |
| Let people follow in their own calendar app | Same public calendar | As above | Public iCal address |
| Share with specific people only | Dedicated or appropriate existing calendar | Keep restricted and grant named access | Named sharing;an embed remains access-controlled |
What most people assume
Embedding a calendar only shows it on my website.
Choose the audience before the embed
Google says an embedded calendar is visible only to people with whom it is shared. Public sharing is needed for an everyone-access audience;it is not a technical prerequisite for every restricted embed. A viewer of a restricted embed still needs appropriate calendar access, and embedding does not bypass sign-in or browser restrictions. For anonymous public visitors, use a dedicated public calendar rather than broaden a private one accidentally.
Google lists what public allows: people can find your public calendar on a website, and if that website is searchable, find it in search results; they can also sync it with other applications and subscribe to it in Google Calendar. Treat everything on a public calendar as published.
Choose details or free/busy
When making a calendar public, Google offers See only free/busy (hide details) if you don’t want people to read event details. A clinic-style “we are booked on these afternoons” page needs free/busy; a club fixtures page needs details.
Use a dedicated calendar for anything you embed. A new secondary calendar that only ever holds public items is far safer than making your primary calendar public and hoping each event is marked appropriately.
Get and customise the embed code
In Settings, click the calendar, then Integrate calendar, and under Embed code click Customize. Google asks for width and height of at least 500 each. If you turn off navigation buttons, Google notes visitors can only use keyboard shortcuts to move around the calendar. Visitors can click Add to Google Calendar at the bottom left to subscribe.
Google also offers a shareable link and a public iCal address. They expose the same public calendar, so choose the format your audience needs rather than publishing all three.
Worked example: a community choir
A fictional choir secretary wants concerts visible to anonymous website visitors, while a partner venue only needs rehearsal busy times. They create Choir concerts as a dedicated public calendar with suitable event details and embed that calendar. They keep Choir rehearsals restricted and use named free/busy sharing for the venue. Publishing its free/busy calendar would make that information available to anyone, not only the venue.
The secretary’s primary calendar, which holds personal appointments, is never made public. After saving, they open the website in a private browser window and confirm only concerts appear.
When a concert moves, the secretary checks the saved source event and the actual embedded view without assuming a documented event-refresh deadline. Google’s up-to-four-hour tip is under stopping public sharing;it is not a promise that every concert edit or embed error resolves within that interval.
Undo and restrictions
To stop public access, open Settings and sharing and uncheck Make available to public. Google says this access change usually takes minutes but may take up to four hours. Check an appropriate visitor’s view;the change does not recall screenshots, independent copies or information already read.
Google notes sharing settings can only be edited from a computer, not the mobile app, and that a Google Workspace administrator may restrict sharing. If the public option is missing on a work account, ask the administrator rather than copying events into a personal calendar.
What it looks like
Cloud Calendars overview, using our product images. Provider settings and protocol examples described in this guide are separate from the screens shown here.
What to do
- Create a dedicated calendar for anything you will publish.
- For an anonymous public audience, enable public sharing with the intended detail level. For a restricted audience, use appropriate named sharing instead.
- Copy the embed code from Integrate calendar and set width and height of at least 500.
- Check the page as a logged-out visitor.
- When stopping public sharing, note Google’s documented possible access-change delay and verify the visitor result;do not use that timing as an event-edit refresh guarantee.
Questions
- Can I embed a calendar without making it public?
- Yes, an embed can remain restricted to people with appropriate access. Google says public sharing is needed to make it visible to everyone. Do not make a private calendar public just to bypass an embed-access problem.
- Can people find my public calendar in search?
- Google says that if the website showing it is searchable, people can find your calendar in search results.
- I made it public but the website still shows an error.
- Check the intended audience, the saved calendar sharing and the calendar chosen in the embed. The source’s up-to-four-hour note concerns stopping public sharing, not every error after publication or event edit.