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  • How Do I “Unshare” a Shared iCal Calendar on my Mac?

How Do I “Unshare” a Shared iCal Calendar on my Mac?

May 9, 2022 / Dave Taylor / Mac & MacOS Help / No Comments

I’ve had a shared calendar with my brother for years since we both use Mac systems. Any family events go on that and we both see them. Handy. But he doesn’t want to know about family events anymore. How can I “unshare” this from my Apple Calendar (iCal) program?

One of the great unsung features of Apple Calendar (formerly known as iCal) is that you can set up both shared calendars with others and public calendars that then get a URL allowing anyone to subscribe to the calendar. It’s an easy way to be the official schedule keeper for a club, sports team, or even a special holiday calendar. I have a number of shared calendars and for people who are in the Apple ecosystem, those events then show up on their phones, Mac systems, even on the daily summary on their Apple Watch!

But, as you say, what happens when you want to stop sharing? What do you do to sever that tie, either turning a public calendar private again or simply removing someone from a private, shared iCal calendar? Not to worry, it’s pretty straightforward and I even have a shared calendar of my own that’s long since needed to be unshared, so it gives me the excuse for a demo too…

HOW TO IDENTIFY IF AN APPLE CALENDAR IS SHARED

Let’s start by seeing how you can identify which of your calendars are shared with others, which might be subscriptions to online calendars someone else maintains, and which are just your private calendars. The first thing to know is that on the event info itself, there’s no indication. For example, this event is shared but you can’t tell from what’s shown:

apple mac ical calendar - event: is it shared?

If I look at the corresponding calendar on the list of calendars on the left side of the Apple Calendar window, however, there is an iconographic clue:

apple mac ical calendar - calendars, some shared, some subscribed

The calendars with a tiny person icon are shared, the ones with the tiny wi-fi-esque waves icon are subscriptions, and the others are my personal calendars. In other words, sports! and School are shared, Spurs and Facebook Events are my subscriptions to public or external calendars, and Films!, Personal, and College Sched are my own private calendars.

Tip: I find that having a number of different calendars, each assigned a different color, is a great way to help organize my schedule. It’s easily done and as long as you remember to assign events to the correct calendar, can be quite beneficial for keeping everything, well, on schedule.

If I click on the tiny icon, a little window pops up. On a subscription calendar, it’ll show the URL:

apple mac ical calendar - subscribed event url

Much more interestingly, on a shared calendar that same click-on-icon will reveal who else sees this calendar:

apple mac ical calendar - shared calendar pop-up

You can see I’m sharing this particular calendar with Linda.

HOW TO STOP SHARING AN ICAL APPLE CALENDAR

Want to add someone else to the share list? You can do that with a click on the green checkmark. A new space opens below it:

apple mac ical calendar - share with someone else

Click on their name and you can verify their share email and even change whether they can add to the calendar or not:

apple mac ical calendar - share permissions email

All interesting, but how do you UNshare the calendar? That’s done with a Control-Click on the calendar name on the list. It pulls up a different menu of options:

apple mac ical calendar - sharing settings get info stop sharing menu

Simply choose “Stop Sharing…” and you’ll stop sharing that calendar with everyone. At least, once you confirm:

apple mac ical calendar - sure you want to stop sharing?

A click on “Stop Sharing” and you’re done. Mission accomplished. The calendar even loses its little icon:

apple mac ical calendar - no icon

Changed your mind and want to make it a shared calendar again?  You can choose “Sharing Settings…” from the menu revealed when you Control-Click on the calendar name, or you can use a sneaky shortcut: Click on the spot where the share icon would be if you were sharing and this appears:

apple mac ical calendar - add to shared calendar

At this point, you can make it a public calendar (which will then reveal its URL for others to use) or add one or more people to your newly re-shared calendar. Done.

Pro Tip: I have a ton of Mac tutorials and help pages on the site as I’ve been running MacOS since the early days of the operating system. Please take the time to check ’em out!

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Starbucks coffee cup I do have a lot to say, and questions of my own for that matter, but first I'd like to say thank you, Dave, for all your helpful information by buying you a cup of coffee!
apple calendar sharing, calendar sharing, ical sharing, shared calendar

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