Show Your Work Calendar as Busy Time on Your Family Calendar

"Are you free for dinner at 7?" is a hard question to answer when your family can't see your work calendar at all, and an uncomfortable one to answer honestly when they can see too much of it. The fix isn't sharing your whole work calendar - it's showing your household exactly one thing: whether you're busy.

The problem with the obvious options

Sharing your work calendar directly hands your family (or worse, anyone with the link) every meeting title, every client name, every note - far more than "am I free" requires, and something most workplaces would rather you didn't do anyway.
Telling people verbally works until the week gets busy, and it puts the burden on you to remember and repeat it.
Not sharing anything means the family calendar has a blind spot exactly where your availability matters most.

What you actually want: busy time, not details

A one-way, free/busy-only sync solves this cleanly. Your work calendar's events still show up on the family calendar, as plain "(busy)" blocks with the time and duration, but nothing else - no title, no notes, no attendees, no location.

Set it up

Click Add calendar and choose your work provider - Google, Microsoft, or Apple iCloud - and connect it. Your work calendar appears under My account.
Click Add calendar again and add the family calendar's provider, if it isn't already connected.
Click Add connection, set your work calendar as the source and the family calendar as the target.
Set sync direction to One-way (work events flow onto the family calendar, family events don't flow back), and choose Free/busy only.
Let the first sync run. Existing work events appear as busy blocks; new ones keep flowing automatically.

How fast does it update

Google and Microsoft push a change notification the moment a work event moves, so a new meeting typically shows as busy on the family calendar within about a minute. If your work calendar is on Apple iCloud, Apple gives third-party apps no such notification, so Calendar Family checks it every 15 minutes instead - still fast enough for household planning.

It's free, and it stays that way

This is free/busy-only, one-way sync, which the free tier covers in full - no trial, no separate charge for adding a family calendar alongside your work one.

The result

Your family gets an honest, up-to-date picture of when you're free, and your work calendar's actual content, meeting names and all, never leaves your work account.

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Frequently asked questions

Will this share my meeting titles or who I'm meeting with?

No, not unless you choose to. Set the connection to Free/busy only and Calendar Family writes a plain block titled "(busy)" onto the family calendar, with no title, notes, location, or attendees - your household sees you're occupied, not what for.

Can I do this without giving my family access to my whole work calendar?

Yes. You sync one specific work calendar into one specific family calendar; nobody gets a login to your work account, and nothing outside that one calendar is touched.

Does it need to be two-way?

No, one-way is usually right here: work events flow into the family calendar as busy blocks, but family events don't get pushed back into your work calendar. You can switch to two-way later if that changes.

Is this free?

Yes. Free/busy sync between a work calendar and a shared family calendar is covered by the free tier, on Google, Microsoft/Outlook, or Apple iCloud.