How to Use the Same Calendar Across All Your Apple Devices

c/o Dafne Chalet/FLICKR

Have you ever saved an event into the Calendar on your Mac and then failed to find it when you need it on your iPhone?

The chances are that you have your default calendar set to different ones on each device – it’s possible one or more of your devices is using a calendar that doesn’t even sync via iCloud.

The Calendar app on your Apple devices always has a default calendar to which events are automatically added (unless you override this).

The challenge is that depending on what you have been doing with your machine, or when and where you added any new calendar items (Birthdays, Things to Do, etc.) then the app may be set to default to a different set on each device.

What can be done?

This is ever so easy to fix, though you must address this on every Mac, iPad, iPhone or iPod touch you use.

On iOS:

• Open Settings>Calendar and look for the Default Calendar item. Tap this to make sure it is the correct one, and make sure it is also an iCloud calendar. Tick it and all your calendar entries made on that device will default to that list, and be propagated across your devices.

On Mac:

• Now you must do the same on your Mac. Open the Calendar application  Preferences and look for the Default Calendar item. Then ensure it is the same collection as you use on all your other devices.

In future, any appointment or event you enter using a calendar in the Calendar app on any of your Apple devices will sync to the same one on all your other devices.

I hope this helps – many thanks to MacNZ for this useful tip.

PS: I like this tip because — to my shame — when I ran it on some of my Macs and iOS devices I was mortified to find I was using different calendars held in different places/services with the same name, which says  everything I need to know about why I kept missing appointments… So do check.

PPS: You may find this isn’t your problem — that all your calendars are set correctly. if that’s you, then do take a look a this Calendar synch tip published by Macworld today.