Show work meetings on your family calendar without the details

Copy your work calendar into the family calendar as busy blocks. Each meeting shows up as a block of time under a title you choose, such as "At work", with no meeting name, location or notes. Your family sees when you're free, and the details stay at work.

What the built-in options give you

• Sharing the work calendar. Exchange and Microsoft 365 can share your free/busy times, but usually only with people in your organization. Your family isn't, and many companies turn off sharing outside it.
• Publishing a busy-only link. Outlook on the web can publish a calendar as a link that shows only when you're busy. Each family member has to subscribe to it themselves, the feed is read-only and refreshes on a schedule, and your organization may not allow publishing at all.
• Adding the blocks by hand. Works anywhere, but it's a second calendar to keep up, and it's out of date as soon as a meeting moves.

Where the family calendar lives

If you use Family Sharing, iCloud already has a shared calendar called Family that everyone in the group can see. You can also share any iCloud calendar with specific people: in Apple Calendar, Control-click the calendar and choose Share Calendar. A shared Google calendar works just as well.

Whichever you use, the copies are ordinary events in that calendar. They show up on everyone's iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, and in whatever calendar app they use.

Set it up with Syncom

Syncom is a Mac menu bar app that copies events between any calendars your Mac can see. Every sync has its own privacy level, and busy blocks are one of them.

1. 1
   Add your work account. In System Settings › Internet Accounts, add your work account so its calendar shows up in Apple Calendar. If you use classic Outlook, Syncom can read its calendars directly while Outlook is open.
2. 2
   Add a sync to the family calendar. From Syncom in the menu bar, add a sync with your work calendar on one side and the family calendar on the other, going one way, from work to family.
3. 3
   Choose Busy blocks only. The preset replaces each title with one you choose, leaves out location and notes, and shows every copy as Busy. Type the title your family should see, such as “Busy” or “At work”.

What your family sees

Say you have a review called "Q4 budget" from 2 to 3 PM in a meeting room. On the family calendar it's a block titled "At work", from 2 to 3 PM, and nothing else: no title, room or notes. If the review moves to 4 PM, the block moves with it. If it's cancelled, the block goes.

Have more than one work calendar? Add a sync for each, all pointing at the family calendar.

Fine-tune what shows up

• Skip all-day events, so they don't fill the top of the family calendar.
• Skip events marked Free, such as reminders and optional holds.
• Tag an event #nosync, or a tag of your own, in its title or notes to keep it off the family calendar.
• Add an alert to the copies, at the start or up to 2 hours before.

Busy blocks are one-way. Editing a copy in the family calendar doesn't change your meeting, and the next sync puts the copy back. When a meeting moves or is cancelled at work, its block follows. If one meeting in a recurring series changes, only that block changes.

Syncom syncs when your work calendar changes, when your Mac wakes and when your VPN connects, so the family calendar stays current while your Mac is on. Busy blocks share only times, which suits most work calendars, but company policies vary, so check yours.