Why TimeTree events don't show up in Google Calendar
You wrote a family event in TimeTree, opened your own Google Calendar, and it is not there. That is how it works. TimeTree's help centre says so:
> Events cannot be reflected from TimeTree calendar to the default calendar. You need to copy them one by one.
(I want to display another calendar)
So nothing leaves TimeTree on its own. If your work week lives in Outlook and the family's plans live in TimeTree, neither side can see the other, and the times you are actually free are split across two places.
The two ways to use an outside calendar, and what each gives up
TimeTree offers two, and each drops what the other keeps.
Display it (help)
- "It will update automatically" — change the original and TimeTree follows
- But "it will not be displayed to people you are sharing your calendar with" — the family cannot see it
- Events from it cannot have members assigned, or comments, or photos
Import it into the shared calendar (help)
- The family can see it
- But "since it does not update automatically, you need to import every time you update the external calendar"
- And re-importing an event whose details changed adds a second copy rather than replacing the first
Visible to the family, or up to date. Not both.
Why it is built that way
TimeTree's shared calendar is a place a group writes into together, with a chat, notes and photos hanging off each event. That is a different object from a calendar entry in Google or Outlook, which has no such thing, so there is no obvious way to carry one back. Displaying an outside calendar inside TimeTree is a convenience for the person looking at it, not a merge.
That distinction is the reason the limitation exists, and the reason it will not be fixed by an update: an app built around its own shared calendar has to treat everything else as a read-only overlay.
What you can do about it
Copy events by hand. What the help page suggests. Workable for a handful, and repeated every time something moves.
Keep the two apart on purpose. Family plans in TimeTree, your own in Google, and never move anything between them. The cost is that answering "when am I free on Thursday" means opening both.
Use something that syncs both ways. Calendar sync tools — OneCal, CalendarBridge, SyncGene — do keep two calendars in step in both directions. What they do not do is draw one week with the whole household on it, filtered by what each person chose to share.
How Alfie handles it
Alfie is our product, and it is built for exactly this.
There is nothing to move into. Each person connects the account they already use — Google Calendar, Microsoft 365 and Outlook.com, iCloud through an app-specific password, or any CalDAV server — and the household week is drawn from those calendars.
It syncs both ways. An event created or edited in Alfie on a connected calendar is written to that calendar, and a change made in Google or iCloud comes back. Nothing is copied by hand, and if you stop using Alfie the events stay where they have always been. Google reviewed and approved Alfie's access to Google Calendar in September 2026.
How much of each calendar the household sees is set once, per calendar: Full details, Busy only, or Hidden. A work calendar starts at busy only, so meetings show as untitled blocks — the family knows you are unavailable from 2 to 4 without seeing whose review it is.
Children are profiles a parent manages, with no login of their own.
Try Alfie. It is free, and web-only for now.