Sync a Google Workspace calendar with iCloud
Your work calendar lives in Google Workspace. Your phone, your Mac and your Watch show Apple Calendar. CalCollapse copies one into the other — hourly, one way, read-only — into an iCloud calendar you already have.
Why a work calendar is hard to see on an iPhone
Google Workspace is somebody else’s domain — usually your employer’s — and the usual ways of getting one of its calendars onto Apple hardware each give something up:
- Adding the Google account to iOS.The work calendar arrives, but it arrives as its own account rather than as part of iCloud. It is not in an iCloud calendar, so it is not something you can share from iCloud, and it has to be added again on every device.
- Subscribing to the calendar’s secret iCal address.Many Workspace domains disable external sharing outright, and where it is allowed, Apple refreshes a subscribed calendar on its own schedule — often well behind the meeting that just moved. A subscription is also all or nothing: no filtering, and no choosing where it lands.
- Living with two calendar apps.Which works until you accept something personal during a work meeting, or the other way round.
CalCollapse takes the other approach: it reads the Workspace calendar and writes the events into an iCloud calendar you already own. From then on, Apple Calendar is showing your own iCloud data — on every device signed in to that Apple Account, with no per-device setup and nothing to configure on the Watch.
How it works
Sign in with Apple
This only identifies you. It grants no calendar access of any kind — that comes later, and separately.
Connect iCloud with an app-specific password
Generated at account.apple.com and revocable there at any time, without telling us. Apple offers no calendar-only credential to third parties, so this is the narrowest grant available.
Connect the Workspace account
Through Google’s own consent screen. The single permission asked for is reading your calendars; there is no box on that screen that would let us write to Google.
Pair a Workspace calendar with an iCloud one
Choose which calendar to read and which of your existing iCloud calendars its events should land in. The first sync runs immediately, and then hourly.
What Workspace users ask first
It cannot touch your work calendar
The only Google scope requested is calendar.readonly. Nothing in Workspace can be created, changed or deleted by this app, which is usually the whole of what an IT administrator wants to know.
Nobody gets emailed
Copied events carry no scheduling properties, so iCloud cannot read one as an invitation and mail the people on it. Attendees are preserved as text in the description. Your responses in Google Calendar are never altered.
Shared and team calendars work too
Anything on the connected account’s calendar list can be paired — a team calendar, a room, a colleague’s shared calendar — not only your own.
Work and personal, side by side
Connect as many Google accounts as you like, Workspace and personal, and send each of their calendars wherever it belongs. Each is a separate authorisation you can withdraw without touching the others.
If your domain restricts third-party apps. Workspace administrators can control which apps reach Workspace data. On a domain configured that way, Google’s consent screen will refuse until an administrator allows the app — a decision that is theirs, not ours. On a domain that does not restrict it, no administrator is involved.
Google also shows an “unverified app” interstitial for apps requesting calendar access until it has verified them, and ours is not verified yet.
What it costs
One Google account and one calendar syncing into iCloud is free, which is enough if all you want is your work calendar on your phone. Connecting more accounts, or collapsing several calendars at once, needs the unlimited plan. Billing is handled by Stripe; card details never reach this app.
Questions
Does this work with a Google Workspace account, or only a personal Gmail one?
Both, and you can connect several of each to the same CalCollapse account. A Workspace calendar is authorised the same way a personal one is, through Google's own consent screen, and the access granted is the same read-only access.
Do I need my IT administrator's permission?
Sometimes. Google Workspace administrators can restrict which third-party apps reach Workspace data, and on a domain configured that way the consent screen will refuse until an administrator allows the app. If your domain does not restrict third-party access, no administrator is involved at all. Nothing about your Workspace configuration has to change either way.
Can it change anything on my work calendar?
No. The only Google permission requested is read access to Calendar, so there is no capability to create, edit or delete anything in Workspace even in principle. Events flow one way, from Google into iCloud.
Will my colleagues be emailed anything?
No. Synced events carry no scheduling properties at all, so iCloud cannot mistake a copy of a work meeting for an invitation and email the people on it. The attendee list is preserved as text in the event's description instead. Your responses in Google Calendar are never changed, because nothing is ever written back.
Which iCloud calendar do the events land in?
One you already have — you pick it when you pair the calendars. CalCollapse never creates, renames or deletes an iCloud calendar, and it only ever touches the events it wrote itself, so anything you added by hand to that same calendar is invisible to it.
Can I sync a shared team calendar rather than my own?
Yes. Any calendar on the connected account's list can be paired, which includes team calendars, resource calendars and calendars colleagues have shared with you, not just your primary one.
How current does the iCloud copy stay?
It syncs once an hour, and you can trigger a run yourself at any time from the dashboard. Every run is logged with what it moved, so a sync that fails is visible rather than silent.
Can I leave out meetings I have declined?
Yes. Excluding declined events is a checkbox on each calendar pair, alongside whether the calendar's label should prefix every event title.
How do I revoke access when I leave the company?
Remove CalCollapse from your Google account permissions, or disconnect the account in CalCollapse, which deletes the stored authorisation and stops the sync. Your iCloud access is a separate credential you revoke separately, at appleid.apple.com.
The setup walkthrough shows every screen of this, in real screenshots, before you hand over anything. What we store and for how long is in the privacy policy.