External Calendar Integration

Mosaic can share your school’s calendar with any calendar app that supports URL subscriptions — including Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, and Outlook. Once subscribed, your school’s events appear alongside your personal events in whichever calendar you use day to day.

Updates are not instant

Once you subscribe, your calendar app checks for updates roughly once a day on its own schedule. This is a limit of how URL-subscribed calendars work across every calendar service — it’s not something Mosaic controls. A new event you just added in Mosaic may take up to 24 hours to appear in Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook. If you need real-time updates, use the Mosaic app directly.

Before You Start: Choose a Language

If your school runs in more than one language, Mosaic offers a separate subscription for each language. Pick the language you want your events to appear in on the dropdown menu — this choice is permanent for each subscription, because the calendar app keeps polling the same URL forever. If you change your mind later, you can always unsubscribe and resubscribe in the other language.

To open the menu, click the ⋮ dropdown next to New event at the top of the calendar page. You’ll see entries like:

• Add to Apple Calendar (English)
• Add to Apple Calendar (Español)
• Copy calendar URL (English)
• Copy calendar URL (Español)

Only the languages your school has configured will appear. If your school is single-language, you’ll see one option per action.

Apple Calendar (Mac, iPhone, iPad)

This is the fastest path if you use Apple Calendar — it’s a single click on an Apple device.

1. Open the Mosaic calendar on your Mac, iPhone, or iPad.
2. Click the ⋮ dropdown next to New event.
3. Click Add to Apple Calendar in your preferred language.
4. Your device’s Calendar app will open and ask “Do you want to subscribe to this calendar?” Click Subscribe.
5. You can customize the calendar name, color, and refresh frequency in the dialog that appears. Defaults are fine.

The school’s events will appear as a separate calendar in your Calendar app. You can toggle it on and off alongside your other calendars.

Best on Apple devices

The Add to Apple Calendar button relies on the webcal:// protocol. Your Mac, iPhone, or iPad recognizes it and hands off to the Calendar app automatically. On Windows or Android, clicking this button may open your browser’s default calendar handler — usually Google Calendar — or show an error. If you’re not on an Apple device, use Copy calendar URL instead.

Google Calendar

Google Calendar doesn’t have a one-click subscribe button for external calendars — you have to paste the URL into Google Calendar’s “Add by URL” flow manually. It’s still just a few steps.

1. On the Mosaic calendar page, click the ⋮ dropdown next to New event.
2. Click Copy calendar URL in your preferred language. A confirmation toast tells you the URL has been copied to your clipboard.
3. Open Google Calendar in a new browser tab.
4. In the left sidebar, find Other calendars and click the + next to it.
5. Choose From URL.
6. Paste the URL you copied from Mosaic into the URL of calendar field.
7. Click Add calendar.

Your school’s calendar will appear under Other calendars in the left sidebar. You can rename it, change its color, or hide and show it like any other Google Calendar.

Outlook.com (Web)

1. On the Mosaic calendar page, click the ⋮ dropdown and then Copy calendar URL in your preferred language.
2. Open Outlook.com Calendar in a new browser tab.
3. In the left sidebar, click Add calendar.
4. Choose Subscribe from web.
5. Paste the URL and give it a name, color, and a folder.
6. Click Import.

Outlook (Desktop App)

1. On the Mosaic calendar page, click the ⋮ dropdown and then Copy calendar URL in your preferred language.
2. In Outlook, switch to the Calendar view.
3. On the ribbon, click Add Calendar → From Internet.
4. Paste the URL and click OK.
5. Confirm when Outlook asks whether to add and subscribe.

Other Calendar Apps

Any calendar app that supports iCalendar URL subscriptions (sometimes called “ICS feed,” “webcal,” or “internet calendar”) will work with Mosaic. Use Copy calendar URL from the Mosaic dropdown and paste the URL wherever your app asks for a calendar URL. The feed is standard iCalendar 2.0 in UTF-8 encoding.

What’s in the Feed

The calendar feed includes:

• Events marked public on your school’s calendars. Events that are hidden from public view are not included.
• Events from the past year and all future events, with a maximum of 1000 events. For very large schools, the most recent and upcoming events are prioritized.
• Event title, description, location, start time, and end time for each entry.
• Times are in UTC, and your calendar app converts them to your local time zone automatically.

The feed does not include:

• Events marked as private or drafts
• Attendance, lunch orders, grades, or any other non-calendar data
• Parent-specific or student-specific events (the feed is the same for everyone who subscribes)

Unsubscribing

You can stop syncing at any time — the process is identical to how you’d unsubscribe from any other URL-based calendar.

Google Calendar: In the left sidebar, hover over the Mosaic calendar under Other calendars, click the ⋮ that appears next to the name, and choose Unsubscribe.

Apple Calendar (Mac): In the sidebar, right-click the Mosaic calendar and choose Delete. On iPhone/iPad, go to Settings → Calendar → Accounts → Subscribed Calendars, tap the Mosaic calendar, then Delete Account.

Outlook.com: Right-click the Mosaic calendar in the sidebar and choose Remove.

Outlook (Desktop): Right-click the Mosaic calendar in the calendar list and choose Delete Calendar.

Unsubscribing is a one-way action in your calendar app — Mosaic doesn’t track who has subscribed, so nothing happens on the Mosaic side.

FAQ

Why don't new events show up in my calendar right away?

Calendar apps that subscribe to URL-based calendars check for updates on their own schedule — typically once every 12 to 24 hours. This is how every calendar service handles external subscriptions; it is not a Mosaic limitation. If you need to see a new Mosaic event immediately, open the Mosaic calendar directly.

A few calendar apps let you manually refresh a subscribed calendar:

• Apple Calendar (Mac): Right-click the calendar in the sidebar and choose Refresh.
• Google Calendar: There is no manual refresh button. Google controls its own polling cadence.
• Outlook (Desktop): Right-click the calendar and choose Send / Receive.

Is the calendar URL private?

The URL doesn’t contain any personal information or login credentials, but anyone you share the URL with can subscribe to it. Since the feed only contains events that your school has already marked as public, this is normally fine — it’s no different from sharing a link to the public calendar on your school’s website. That said, don’t paste the URL in a public place if you wouldn’t also post the underlying events there.

Mosaic does not have access to anything in your personal Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, or Outlook account. The subscription is one-way: Mosaic publishes school events, and your calendar app reads them on its own.

Will my personal events appear in Mosaic?

No. The subscription is one-way — your calendar app reads events from Mosaic, but nothing from your personal calendar is ever shared with Mosaic.

I subscribed in English but want Spanish (or vice versa). How do I switch?

Each language has its own subscription URL, so the simplest way to switch is:

1. Unsubscribe from the existing Mosaic calendar in your calendar app (see Unsubscribing above).
2. Go back to the Mosaic calendar page and click Copy calendar URL (or Add to Apple Calendar) in the language you want.
3. Subscribe again using the new URL.

Why does the Add to Apple Calendar button open Google Calendar in my Chrome browser?

Chrome sometimes registers itself as the default handler for the webcal:// protocol that the Apple Calendar button uses. When Chrome intercepts that link, it routes you to Google Calendar’s subscription page instead of an Apple Calendar app. If you’re not on an Apple device, use Copy calendar URL instead — it gives you a plain URL you can paste into any calendar app, including Google Calendar.

What should I do if I encounter issues with calendar syncing?

First, check that enough time has passed — remember that most calendar apps only refresh every 12-24 hours. Then try unsubscribing and resubscribing. If the problem persists, email our team at support@mosaicsms.com with a description of your calendar app, your operating system, and what you’re seeing.