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Remote / Local calendars in .ics format

Add any calendar in .ics format to Obsidian — whether it is a local .ics file stored in your vault (e.g. Calendars/my-schedule.ics) or a remote URL.

This includes public calendars like this one of US holidays, but also includes private Google Calendars and public Apple Calendars. The walkthrough below shows where to find a Google Calendar's private .ics link, and how to add it to Obsidian, but any URL or local path will work just as well.

Local .ics Files

To use a local file, simply enter its relative path from the vault root (for example: Calendars/export.ics). The plugin reads it directly from your vault without needing external network access.

Refreshed

Calendars are re-fetched automatically from their source at most every five minutes.

Command Pallette

Use Full Calendar: Revalidate remote calendars to manually revalidate remote calendars directly.

Google Calendar private ICS setup walkthrough in plugin settings

Note: webcal:// links are automatically converted to https:// when added.

Read-only and timezone behavior

  • ICS calendars are read-only inside Obsidian.
  • Video Conferencing & Links: Extracts meeting URLs from RFC 7986 CONFERENCE attributes or Microsoft Teams specific fields, merging them directly into the parsed location or description. Injected URLs and description links are fully clickable inside the Event Details modal. For details, see Video Conference & Linkification Support.
  • Events with explicit timezones (including TZID parameters or UTC Z indicators) are parsed in their source timezone and converted to your Display Timezone for viewing.
  • Floating Event Time Preservation: Events without a TZID parameter and without a UTC indicator (Z) are treated as floating event times. Their exact nominal hour is preserved without shifting relative to system or display timezone conversions.
  • Display Mode Property (X-OFC-DISPLAY): Honors the X-OFC-DISPLAY property on VEVENT components, allowing external calendar feeds to define custom FullCalendar display styles (background, inverse-background, list-item, block).
  • Multi-Date Cancellations (EXDATE): Recurring events and tasks parse and respect all comma-separated dates across multiple EXDATE properties, ensuring multi-date cancellations from Outlook, WebCal, and external feeds are cleanly excluded.

Troubleshooting

See: Troubleshooting: Remote calendars not updating