what actually happens
Several schools, one calendar. Three things, once. A closure arrives by email, because the phone calendar refreshes on its own schedule and can take hours to notice.
one successful import free · no card · nothing to install
- mon 15No schoolteachers' day · both schools
- tue 16school as usual
- wed 17Early dismissal 1:15ada · lincoln es
- thu 18Soccer practice 5:30sam · midtown ms
- fri 19No schoolconferences · both schools
fictional walkthrough · about one minute
From a school document to your calendar
This illustrated example shows the steps and an error correction. It uses fictional schools and dates, and does not run extraction.
1. The input
fictional school-calendar PDF excerpt
Maple School · October 2026
12 October — school closed
16 October — early dismissal at 1 pm
Conferences: Friday 23 October. An older footer says 22 October.
Choose the school, academic year and document. A PDF or photo can be up to 4 MB.
2. Review the uncertain date
The two clear dates can publish automatically. The conflicting conference date waits for approval and stays out of the subscription.
Check the document and the school announcement: the correct date is 23 October.
3. The final events
- 12 October · Maple School · School closed
- 16 October, 1 pm · Maple School · Early dismissal
- 26 October · Cedar School · School closed
A second school uses the same household feed. Each title identifies its school or child alias, even when the calendar app uses one colour.
4. Subscribe once
After signing up and importing your own calendar, open your feeds settings and copy the private subscription link. Add it by URL in Apple, Google or Outlook using the instructions below.
Keep that link private. This demo contains no live subscription. Calendar apps refresh on their own schedule; consult official school announcements for urgent closures.
- 1
upload
The district calendar you already have: the PDF that came home in a backpack, or the one attached to the newsletter. We read the dates out of it — closures, half-days, early dismissals, the in-service day nobody remembers — and publish confident dates automatically. Uncertain dates wait for your approval and stay out of your subscribed calendar until approved. Review the results and correct any wrong or missing dates. Later imports and monitored changes follow the same confidence and review rules. One file, and the only part of this nobody can do for you.
- 2
subscribe
You get one link. It goes into the calendar app already on your phone, once, and every school in the house arrives on it — with a child alias or school name in each title, so you can tell whose date it is. Colours depend on your calendar app and may be the same for every event. This is the step people expect to be hard, so here it is per app:
- apple
- On iOS 26+: Calendar → Calendars → Add Calendar → Add Subscription Calendar. Paste the link, tap Find, choose iCloud under Account, then Done. On iOS 18 or earlier, tap Subscribe instead of Find, then Add. Choosing iCloud makes it available on devices signed in to the same Apple Account.
- calendar.google.com → Other calendars → From URL, and paste the link. Google refreshes subscribed calendars on its own schedule, often not the same day. A same-morning closure arrives by email, not by waiting on this refresh.
- outlook
- outlook.com/calendar → Add calendar → Subscribe from web, and paste the link.
- 3
keep dates updated
With Fridge Household ($29 per household per year), connect the school's calendar URL and turn on monitoring. Calendar sources are normally checked weekly; news pages daily. For same-morning closures, add an alerts source: it is checked every 30 minutes from 5–8 am on school days in the school's timezone, and every six hours otherwise, with a check at the next school-morning window. Failed sources retry with increasing delays. Your school settings show checks and errors. Detection, review and email delivery can be delayed: always confirm closures with the school's official announcements. Your subscribed calendar picks the change up when the phone app next refreshes, which can be hours later. Your first successful file import is free; an uploaded file is a snapshot of the dates it contains.
- 4
share the school
One household can publish a school's community page: the school-wide days off and events, at an address anyone can open. Another family at the same school subscribes in one click and gets the same Sunday digest. The page carries dates, never documents, and nothing about any child; every change to it is reviewed by one of the people who keep it before it shows.
The subscription link works like a house key — anyone holding it can see your family’s dates, so it stays hidden until you ask for it, and you can swap it for a new one whenever you want. What we keep, and why.