How to share your availability without giving access to your calendar

Colleagues, clients, and collaborators constantly need to know when you're free. But handing over your actual calendar is too much — and at a lot of workplaces, IT won't let third-party scheduling tools log into your account anyway. Here's how to share just your availability, cleanly, on Apple devices.

Why the usual options fall short

Sharing your full Outlook/Exchange calendar exposes every meeting title, attendee, and note — far more than "am I free Tuesday?" — and many work accounts don't even allow it.

Scheduling tools (Calendly, Reclaim, and the like) have to connect to your calendar account — an "OAuth login," where you grant an outside app permission to read your work calendar. The catch: many corporate Exchange / Microsoft 365 accounts have IT block exactly that. No third-party app is allowed to connect, so these tools simply don't work with your work calendar — and it's usually not a setting you can change yourself.

So people fall back to doing it by hand — copying each event's time into an email, or retyping their week into a separate calendar, again and again. Today it's often the only thing that works, and it's miserable.

The approach: a busy-only shared calendar

Here's the difference: Calends never connects to your work account at all. There's no OAuth login and no permission for IT to block — because Calends doesn't reach out to Exchange. It simply reads the calendar your Mac or iPhone shows in Apple Calendar — Apple's built-in Calendar app — and builds from there. (Don't live in Apple Calendar today? Adding your work or Google account to it is a quick, free step, and it stays in Outlook or Google too — see the FAQ below.) Calends does it like this:

• It reads the work calendars you already see in Apple Calendar (Outlook/Exchange, Google, iCloud) — no login, nothing for IT to approve.
• It merges them into one calendar inside your Apple Calendar and lets you switch on busy-only mode.
• You share that calendar like any other. People subscribe to it — no app, no account — and see when you're committed, never what or who.

It's entirely on your device and private iCloud: no servers, no tracking.

Common questions

Will people see what I'm actually doing?

No. In busy-only mode every event simply reads "Busy" — times only, with no titles, locations, or attendees.

Does my IT department need to approve anything?

No. Calends never logs into your work account or asks for any access. It only reads the calendar your Mac or iPhone already syncs, and writes an ordinary iCloud calendar.

My company blocks third-party apps from my Outlook / Exchange calendar — will this still work?

Yes. That block is on apps connecting to your work account — the OAuth permission Calendly-style tools need. Calends never connects, so there's nothing to block. As long as your work calendar already appears in Apple Calendar on your device, Calends can read it and build your shareable busy-only calendar from it.

I use Outlook or Google Calendar, not Apple Calendar — can I still use this?

Yes — and you don't have to give up the apps you like. Your work or Google account can live in Apple's built-in Calendar app and in Outlook/Google at the same time. Adding it to Apple Calendar is a quick, free step (iPhone/iPad: Settings → Calendar → Accounts; Mac: System Settings → Internet Accounts), it removes nothing from Outlook or Google, and once the account shows up there, Calends can read it. Plenty of people add Apple Calendar just for this.

Do the people I share with need the app?

No. They subscribe to a normal calendar in whatever app they use. Calends is only needed on your side.

Can I include my Outlook / Exchange work calendar?

Yes — as long as it appears in Apple Calendar on your device, it can feed the shared availability calendar.

Related: How to combine multiple calendars into one →