Combine Your Kids' Sports & School Calendars Into One

With two kids on different teams, plus the school calendar, plus the odd recital, our fridge calendar stopped keeping up. Every app wanted us to live inside it. I built iCal Merge so I could pull all of those schedules into one link and share it with the whole family — and so it would keep itself up to date when a game got rescheduled.

The Saturday double-booking problem

Sports apps like TeamSnap and SportsEngine each publish their own calendar. The school district has its own. Grandparents and carpool parents can't see any of them. The result is a separate app (and login) per source — and a missed game eventually.

Step 1: Get each calendar's feed link

Most apps expose a "subscribe" or "iCal/ICS" URL. In TeamSnap or SportsEngine, look for Subscribe to calendar and copy the link. Your school's calendar usually has a "subscribe" or ICS link too. If you're new to these links, the iCal feed explainer covers where to find them.

Step 2: Add them as sources

Create a calendar in iCal Merge and paste each link in as a source. Add one for each team, one for school, and anything else — there's no fixed list of supported apps; if it has an ICS link, it works.

Step 3: Share one link with everyone

iCal Merge gives you a single feed that contains every event. Share that one link with your partner, the grandparents, and the babysitter. They subscribe once and new games show up automatically — no app to install, nothing for them to manage.

How this compares to family calendar apps

Apps like Cozi or BlendedCal work well if your sources are on their supported list. iCal Merge takes a simpler, more flexible approach: any calendar with an ICS link can be a source, the output is a standard subscribe-able feed that works in Google, Apple, and Outlook, and it's free.

A quick tip

Some calendars give you a link that starts with webcal://. Paste it in as-is — iCal Merge handles webcal:// links automatically, so you don't need to change it to https:// first.