ToDowl can show events that live somewhere else, next to your own projects and lists. My calendars is what ToDowl itself creates; Connected calendars is everything that comes from outside: public holidays, an iCal URL, and now birthdays. A connected calendar is read-only by design: its events show up on your grid, they never turn into tasks, and ToDowl never writes anything back to the source.
Three sources work today: public holidays, iCal URLs, and birthdays.
Add a connected calendar
Open the calendar, find the Connected calendars group in the sidebar, and use Add calendar. The dialog lists every source with a short explanation of what it does, and marks each one Read-only.
Public holidays
Pick Holidays and choose a country. ToDowl pulls that country’s public holiday list and draws each date as an all-day item.
This is the right choice if you just want national days off to show up while you are planning a week, and you do not want to hand over access to a personal calendar account.
An iCal URL
Pick URL and paste the address of an .ics feed. Give it a name so you can recognise it in the sidebar, then select Connect.
Most calendar services can produce a public or secret .ics link for a calendar: look for wording like “secret address in iCal format,” “public URL,” or “subscribe link” in the source calendar’s own sharing settings. The address has to start with http:// or https://.
What ToDowl reads from the feed:
- the event summary, used as the title
- the start date, whether it is a date or a date and time
- a stable identifier, so re-reading the feed does not duplicate anything
What it does not read: repeat rules and timezone conversion. A recurring event in the source feed shows up on the dates the feed spells out, not expanded from a rule. For a holiday list or a sports fixture list, which is what these feeds usually are, that is enough.
Birthdays
ToDowl can bring birthdays in from two places.
Google Contacts
Use Connect Google Contacts in the same dialog. It is a separate button from Google Calendar on purpose: connecting your calendar does not hand over your address book, and connecting your contacts does not hand over your calendar. Each one asks for exactly the access it needs.
ToDowl has not gone through Google’s app verification yet, so the consent screen warns that the app is unverified. That is expected, not a sign that something is broken. To get through it:
- On the warning screen, click Advanced.
- Click Go to ToDowl. Google shows this caution for any app it has not verified; it does not mean the connection itself is unsafe.
- Click Allow on the screen that follows.
Once connected, ToDowl reads birthdays from your Google contacts and keeps them in sync.
A .vcf contacts file
If your contacts live in Apple Contacts, iCloud, or anywhere else without a direct connection, export them as a .vcf file and upload it instead. ToDowl reads birthdays from the file, including ones saved without a year, which is how many address books store them.
There is no way to connect to Apple Contacts directly from a browser: Apple does not publish an interface for it. A .vcf export is the only route in from an Apple address book. That is a limitation of what Apple allows, not a gap we have left unfinished.
What birthdays do today
Connecting a source adds the people to your list, and you manage the connection like any other connected calendar: recolour it, switch it off, or disconnect it. Birthdays do not appear on the calendar grid yet; that display is still being built. The connection and the sync work today, the on-grid view comes later.
Managing a connected calendar
Each connected calendar is a row in the calendar sidebar with:
- a colour, which you can change so the layer stands apart from your projects
- an on and off switch, which hides the layer without disconnecting it
- a disconnect action
Connected calendars belong to your account, so they follow you to any device you sign in on.
What is not connected yet
The dialog also lists Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, Exchange and CalDAV. Those routes are built into the interface but the server side is not live yet, so choosing one will not connect anything today. If you need events from one of those accounts right now, look for its iCal export link and add it as a URL connection instead.