Calendar Subscriptions and iCalendar Feeds

What is a calendar subscription?

A calendar subscription (also called an iCalendar feed, iCal feed, or .ics feed) is a live link between two calendars. Instead of importing a one-time copy of someone’s events, you subscribe to a feed URL — and whenever the source calendar changes, your calendar updates automatically. Subscribe once to a group’s calendar and every meeting, game, or event appears in your own Google, Apple, or Outlook calendar, and stays current as the schedule changes.

After a subscription has been established, the other calendar system will periodically request updates to refresh the calendar. Some systems, such as Apple Calendar (iCal), allow you to specify how often the refresh should occur.

To create a subscription, all you need is the subscription feed URL for your calendar. This is accessible from the Hunt Calendars Calendar Administration page. The subscription feed URL/address looks something like this:

webcal://www.huntcal.com/subscribe/YOUR_GROUP_ID/YOUR_CALENDAR_ID/cal.ics

A subscription can only be established with public calendars. From the Calendar Administration page, make sure the calendar permissions allow anyone to view the calendar.

Instructions for creating a calendar subscription:

• iCloud Calendar (Look for "Set up a new iCloud calendar subscription on your Mac".)
• Google Calendar (Look for instructions under "Add using a link".)
• Microsoft Outlook (Look for "Subscribe to a calendar".)
• Yahoo Calendar (Look for "Follow other calendars".)

• Some features of the Hunt Calendars system are not supported by other calendar systems, such as customizable event categories with colors, private events and HTML event descriptions. Other calendar systems may not accept all of the event data sent from Hunt Calendars, so imported events may not include these features.
• To improve performance, iCalendar feeds from Hunt Calendars include events for 3 months starting with the current month. To include events from earlier months in your feed, add a start month to your subscription feed URL. For example, to include events for the two previous months, add ?m=now-2 to the end of your subscription feed URL.

  To include events beyond the 3 month period, add an end month to the URL. For example, to include events for the next 5 months, add ?m2=now+4 to the end of your subscription feed URL. If you combine the start month and the end month options, use a semicolon to separate the two options. For example: ?m=now-2;m2=now+4
  You can also specify a start month/year and an end month/year. For example, add this to the end of your subscription URL to start Feb. 2016 and end Dec. 2018: ?m=2;yr=2016;m2=12;yr2=2018

  Visit the URL parameters page to find additional options. For example, events can be filtered by category or keyword.

How to subscribe to a calendar feed, step by step

Google Calendar

1. Open Google Calendar in a web browser (subscriptions can’t be added from the mobile app, but they will appear there afterward).
2. In the left sidebar, next to Other calendars, click the + and choose From URL.
3. Paste the subscription feed URL. If the URL starts with webcal://, change that part to https:// — Google Calendar requires it.
4. Click Add calendar. The events appear under Other calendars, on the web and in the mobile app.

Apple Calendar

1. On a Mac: in the Calendar app, choose File → New Calendar Subscription, paste the feed URL, and click Subscribe. Choose how often it should auto-refresh.
2. On an iPhone or iPad: tapping a webcal:// link offers to add the subscription directly. You can also go to Settings → Calendar → Accounts → Add Account → Other → Add Subscribed Calendar and paste the URL.

Microsoft Outlook

1. Outlook on the web: open the calendar, choose Add calendar → Subscribe from web, paste the feed URL, give it a name, and click Import.
2. Outlook desktop: choose Add Calendar → From Internet and paste the feed URL.

How to create your own subscription calendar

Want to publish a schedule that your members, teammates, or community can subscribe to from their own calendars? Any Hunt Calendars calendar can be a subscription calendar:

1. Create a calendar — start a 30-day free trial (no credit card required) and set up your group’s calendar in minutes.
2. Make it public and enable exports — from the Calendar Administration page, set permissions so anyone can view the calendar, and check Allow exports.
3. Share your feed URL — your calendar’s subscription URL is shown on the Calendar Administration page. Members subscribe once, and every event you post or change shows up in their own calendars automatically.

Calendar subscription FAQ

What is the difference between subscribing to a calendar and importing one?

Importing copies the events once — if the source calendar changes later, your copy is out of date. A subscription is a live connection: your calendar program periodically re-reads the feed URL, so added, changed, and canceled events update automatically.

Why isn’t my subscribed calendar updating?

Each calendar system refreshes subscriptions on its own schedule — Google Calendar can take up to a day, Outlook typically refreshes every few hours, and Apple Calendar uses the refresh interval you chose when subscribing. Changes to the source calendar appear after the next refresh; this delay is normal and is controlled by your calendar program, not by the feed.

How do I unsubscribe from a calendar feed?

Remove the subscribed calendar from your calendar program’s list (in Google Calendar, hover over it under Other calendars and click the X; in Apple Calendar or Outlook, right-click the calendar and delete it). Unsubscribing only affects your view — the source calendar is untouched.

Can I subscribe to a calendar on my phone?

Yes. On an iPhone or iPad, add the feed as a subscribed calendar in Settings (see the Apple Calendar steps above). For Google Calendar, add the subscription from a web browser and it will then appear in the mobile app.