Share Google Calendar availability while keeping event titles private

Give colleagues access to your busy hours

For events marked Busy that follow your calendar’s default visibility, free/busy sharing lets a colleague see occupied time without reading the event title. Choose that access level when arranging meetings is the whole request. If details still appear, examine the calendar’s other sharing routes and the individual event’s visibility.

Consider a hypothetical Tuesday with a client call at 2 p.m. and a personal appointment at 4 p.m. A teammate needs to avoid those hours. Giving them the client name, location, and appointment description adds information they did not need to propose a time. Read-only access can still disclose those details.

On a computer, find the calendar under My calendars, open its three-dot menu, and choose Settings and sharing. In Shared with, add the recipient’s email address, select free/busy access, and send the invitation. For an existing recipient, change the permission beside their name. They use the emailed link to add the calendar. Google’s sharing instructions also explain the ownership or sharing-management permission required.

Before changing anything, match the calendar name to the events you want to share. A screen showing several overlaid calendars can conceal a simple mistake: you edited the project calendar while your appointments live on your primary calendar. Ask the recipient which calendar they added, especially if several have similar names.

A separate sharing route can still reveal titles

A restrictive entry beside one email address does not cancel broader access. Google’s permission guide gives the example of a calendar publicly shared with details: a person separately assigned free/busy can still read those public details.

That explains a frustrating troubleshooting loop. You lower the colleague’s permission, ask them to refresh, and see no improvement. Repeating that same edit leaves the public route intact. Open Access permissions for events and inspect the audience there before changing the individual entry again.

For work accounts, inspect organization-wide sharing as well. The Workspace sharing guide describes giving the organization either availability or event details. If coworkers should only see occupied time, align that setting with the intended result. An unavailable control may require help from the organization’s administrator.

A public calendar has a wider audience than a short list of coworkers. It can appear on a website and be discovered through search when that site is searchable. The public-calendar documentation explains both public availability-only and detail-sharing options. Sending a calendar to three named colleagues does not require publishing it for everyone.

The opposite symptom also causes confusion. In a user discussion, a person could see details from a secondary work calendar but only Busy entries from the primary one. That report illustrates why calendars must be checked individually. It does not establish that every missing title has the same cause, or that making a calendar public is the appropriate fix.

Handle visible titles and delegate meeting changes

You might want colleagues to know where a team lunch is taking place while sharing only your availability for other appointments. Saving the lunch as Public lets people who already have access to your calendar read its title and location, even with free/busy permission. It does not put an otherwise unshared calendar on the internet.

The same setting can explain why a client meeting still shows its title. Open that meeting’s editor and check its visibility. If it was inadvertently saved as Public, choose Default visibility and save to have it follow the calendar’s sharing settings. A Busy event then appears without its title to a free/busy viewer who has no broader access. If a colleague normally needs to read your work appointments but should not read a particular personal one, save that personal appointment as Private.

Delegating meeting changes takes another decision. Suppose an assistant needs to reschedule client calls on a calendar that also contains personal appointments. Mark the personal appointments Private, then give the assistant “Make changes (see private events as free/busy)” access. They can move the non-private client calls without reading or editing the private appointments. Giving them “Make changes and see event details” instead would let them read the private entries too, as would “Make changes and manage sharing.” Google’s visibility comparison for primary calendars distinguishes these roles.

Keep a private appointment marked Busy if you cannot take meetings during that time. An assistant with the restricted editing permission will see an occupied block and can schedule around it. Mark that appointment Free and it disappears from their calendar grid; they no longer see that you have an appointment then. You do not need to mark an event Free to hide its title. The permission guide describes both how these private entries appear and which events this assistant can edit.

Before relying on the handoff, ask the assistant to move a sample client meeting and check that a separate private test appointment cannot be read or edited. The steps below let you check both parts of the arrangement without using the contents of a real personal appointment.

Find out which calendar displayed the meeting

Someone who knows a meeting title may have received an invitation rather than read it through calendar sharing. Default-visibility events can also expose details through an invitee’s shared calendar or a booked room’s calendar. Even Private events may leave some information visible through guests or resources, such as timing or the creator.

Ask where the person saw the entry: your calendar, their invitation, or the room schedule. Those answers lead to different settings. A screenshot of an entire working week may reveal much more than necessary; the calendar name and the display of a harmless test entry can be enough to identify the route.

Administrative access also differs from ordinary coworker access. The Workspace guide identifies special access for super administrators and administrators with the Google Meet hardware privilege. Do not use such an administrator as the sole test of what a typical colleague can see.

Put shared team events on their own calendar

A separate team calendar can reduce the number of individual exceptions you manage. Suppose several coworkers need to update client visits and team events. Those entries can live together, while your own calendar retains the sharing level needed for scheduling around you. This is an organizational choice, not a requirement to create another calendar for every appointment.

You can create a calendar in a browser using the add control beside Other calendars. Give it a name and description, create it, then configure its sharing. A name such as “Client visits — team schedule” tells contributors more than “Work 2.” The description can identify who maintains it and which events belong there.

When adding an event, select its destination calendar before saving. Google’s event-creation instructions show that selection in the event form. A personal appointment accidentally saved to the team calendar will not be protected by changes made only to your personal calendar’s sharing settings.

If a colleague uses Outlook or Apple Calendar, resist copying whichever URL looks convenient. The secret iCal address is intended for viewing your calendar in your own applications. Google’s synchronization guidance says not to give it to other people. Resetting it invalidates the previous address if it was accidentally shared.

For example, if that secret URL went into a team chat as “my calendar subscription,” changing the message’s wording would not replace the address. Reset it and update your own connections that used the old link. Agree on the recipient’s account, application, and intended access before choosing how to share the calendar.

Check from the recipient’s account

You still see your own event titles when a colleague has only free/busy access to your calendar. To find out what that colleague can see, ask them to check a harmless test appointment from their account. If you have delegated editing, also ask the delegate to check whether they can read or edit a private test appointment on your calendar.

1. Create a harmless Busy event called “Sharing check” on the target calendar. Leave it at default visibility and do not invite the test recipient to the event.
2. Have the recipient open that calendar using the email account you shared with. Check whether the occupied hour appears without the title.
3. If details remain, compare the event’s visibility, public or organization-wide access, group sharing, and that recipient’s individual permission.
4. For a delegate, add a separate private test appointment and verify what they can read and edit against the task you assigned.
5. Delete the test entries afterward. Keep a short note of the calendar and recipient account used so a later handoff can repeat the same check.

When collaboration ends, remove the relevant person or group from sharing. Turn off public or organization-wide access separately if it is no longer wanted. Hiding a calendar from your own list does not remove someone else’s access.

For turning off public sharing specifically, Google says the change usually takes minutes but can take up to four hours.