Sync ParentSquare with iCloud
School days live in ParentSquare. Your phone, your Mac and your Watch show Apple Calendar. CalCollapse copies one into the other — every 15 minutes, one way — into an iCloud calendar you already have.
Why a school calendar never quite arrives on an iPhone
ParentSquare is where the early release, the field trip and the snow day are posted. Apple Calendar is what you actually look at on the way out the door. Subscribing to the feed inside Apple Calendar is the usual advice, and it costs you the calendar you already use:
- Each class and school feed becomes its own calendar.Two kids at two schools, plus a PTA calendar, is a stack of subscribed calendars. None of them is the family calendar you already share from iCloud, and none of them is what the Watch shows unless you remember to enable it.
- Apple refreshes subscriptions slowly.A day that was cancelled this morning can still look like a school day at 3pm. There is no “check now” on an iPhone subscription.
- The feed is easy to miss in the app.ParentSquare’s Calendar view is for reading. The subscribe or export URL — the thing a calendar app can actually follow — is a separate control, labelled differently by different schools.
CalCollapse reads that same feed 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 to get the URL, and where it goes
Copy the feed from ParentSquare
Open Calendar in ParentSquare and look for Subscribe, Export, Add to Calendar, or an iCal / webcal link. Copy the URL, not a downloaded file. If the school and a classroom each offer a feed, copy both.
Sign in with Apple and connect iCloud
Sign-in only identifies you. iCloud is a separate app-specific password from account.apple.com. Google is not required.
Paste the URL and pick a calendar you already have
Several school and classroom feeds can share the same iCloud calendar. Each keeps its own label. The first sync runs immediately, and every 15 minutes after that.
It cannot touch ParentSquare
The feed is read-only. Nothing in ParentSquare can be created, changed or deleted by this app. Calendar changes stay in ParentSquare, and the next sync picks them up.
School days next to the rest of the week
The usual setup is the school feed landing in the same iCloud calendar as work, family and sports — not a subscribed calendar that only exists in the Calendar app’s sidebar.
What it will not do. Events flow one way, ParentSquare into iCloud. Editing a synced event in Apple Calendar will be overwritten on the next run. CalCollapse is not affiliated with ParentSquare or PowerSchool.
What it costs
One calendar syncing into iCloud is free, which is enough for a single school feed. Collapsing several classroom and school calendars at once needs the unlimited plan. Billing is handled by Stripe; card details never reach this app.
Questions
Does this copy a ParentSquare calendar into Apple Calendar?
Yes, when your school or classroom publishes a calendar subscription URL (webcal or iCal). CalCollapse reads that feed and writes the events into an iCloud calendar you already have, so Apple Calendar — and the Watch, and anything else reading EventKit — sees school days as your own iCloud data.
Where do I find the ParentSquare calendar URL?
In ParentSquare, open Calendar and look for Subscribe, Export, Add to Calendar, or an iCal / webcal link. Schools present this in slightly different places; the thing you want is the URL, not a downloaded .ics file. If a classroom and the school each have a feed, copy both.
Why not just subscribe in Apple Calendar?
You can. Each feed then becomes its own subscribed calendar, Apple refreshes it on its own schedule, and none of them is the family calendar you already share. Early-release days and soccer practice then live in different lists. CalCollapse writes every feed you paste into one existing iCloud calendar.
Can the school calendar and a classroom calendar share one iCloud calendar?
Yes. Paste each URL and point them at the same destination. Each keeps its own label so a district holiday and a class field trip are still distinguishable once they sit in one place.
Do I need to connect Google?
No. After iCloud, paste the ParentSquare URL. Google is a separate source if you also have work or personal calendars to collapse; it is not required here.
Will this change anything in ParentSquare?
No. Events flow one way, from the feed into iCloud. Editing a synced event in Apple Calendar does not push back; it is overwritten on the next run. Changes to the school calendar have to be made in ParentSquare.
How current does the iCloud copy stay?
Changes reach iCloud every 15 minutes. You can also trigger a run yourself from the dashboard. A snow day posted in the morning should not still be missing from the phone at pickup.
What does it cost?
One calendar syncing into iCloud is free — one school feed is enough to use the free plan. Collapsing several classroom and school feeds at once needs the unlimited plan. Billing is handled by Stripe; card details never reach this app.
Any webcal works this way, not only ParentSquare — how webcal sync works, and the same job for TeamSnap. Google calendars copy into iCloud too. The setup walkthrough shows every screen before you hand over anything, and what we store and for how long is in the privacy policy.