Connect Apple and Google calendars

Kept can show two kinds of calendar: the ones on your device through Apple Calendar, and Google calendars connected to your account. Apple Calendar comes first wherever Kept offers both, because it needs no account and works as soon as you allow it. Google Calendar is optional. They behave differently, and it is worth knowing how.

Apple Calendar

1. On iPhone, tap your avatar, then Settings → Connections → Calendars, or tap Calendars at the top of the Calendar screen. On Mac, open Settings → Integrations. On iPhone, Show, New events, and Merge duplicate meetings lead the sheet; Apple Calendar is the first connected-account section beneath them. On Mac, Apple Calendar is the first section.
2. On iPhone, tap Connect Apple Calendar; iOS asks for full calendar access with Kept's explanation of why. The Calendar screen's connect card offers the same button first. On Mac, click Connect Apple Calendar, read the short primer, and choose Continue.
3. Once access is allowed, the section reads Connected, and Show Apple Calendar turns the calendars on this device on or off in Kept.
4. If you declined once, iOS will not ask again, so the iPhone section offers Open iPhone Settings, where you allow full access to Calendars; the Mac offers Open System Settings.

Apple events stay on the device that reads them and are never copied into your Kept account. They still inform Today's free windows and travel with a question you ask the assistant about that stretch of time. The choice to show them belongs to your Kept account on that device.

Google Calendar

Google Calendar is optional. Its section sits below Apple Calendar and offers a quieter Connect Google Calendar button.

1. In the same Calendars screen on iPhone, or on the Calendar screen's connect card, tap Connect Google Calendar.
2. Google opens its own consent screen. Choose the account and allow calendar access. Backing out is silent and changes nothing.
3. Back in Kept, tap a calendar's name to show or hide it, and choose which one new events go to.

Kept syncs Google events into your account, keeps them current, and sends supported changes back: edits, moves, replies, and new events. Connect another Google account on iPhone adds a second one; hiding a calendar only removes its events from view, and nothing is deleted. A Top 3 priority can be placed on that Google calendar from Today. See A priority on your calendar.

Calendar refreshes have a fixed time budget. If Google does not answer before it expires, Kept stops that provider request, keeps the previous event data and sync position, and safely tries again through the same incremental-sync path. A partial refresh is reported as partial instead of as zero changes.

On a new connection, Google's consent screen names Kept, from Thesis Labs, as the app asking for access, and asks for three permissions: to view and edit events on your calendars, to see the list of calendars you subscribe to, and to see availability on calendars you have access to. Kept does not ask to see and download every calendar you can access. A Google account you connected earlier keeps syncing as it is, with the permission it already gave and nothing to reconnect.

If Google asks Kept to sign in again, the Calendars screen shows Needs reconnecting beside that account, and a quiet banner in the app offers Review. Reconnect and your calendars and events stay where they were.

New events, merge, and layers

On iPhone, the Calendars sheet leads with the settings people change most, in this order:

1. Show chooses the layers the calendar draws: Events, Habits, Tasks, Workouts, Daily notes.
2. New events is where an event you capture goes when nothing says otherwise: Automatic, or one of your writable Google calendars. Capture also offers a Calendar row on each event so you can choose per event.
3. Merge duplicate meetings, on by default on iPhone, shows one row when the same meeting sits on more than one calendar, keeping the richest copy. The Mac merges the same way without a switch. Two meetings on the same calendar, or two that end at different times, always stay two rows, even when they start together in the same video room, so a double booking stays in view for you to move. When one Google meeting sits on two of your Google calendars, or reaches you through two connected Google accounts, Kept syncs it once, from a calendar you show, and keeps it current from there.

Your connected accounts follow, then How calendar sync works, a disclosure that keeps the data-path facts below available without putting them under the everyday switches. It ends with how Google events travel: they sync to your Kept account, and when you ask Kept something, event titles in the window you ask about go with your question. On iPhone, that sentence is where it lives now that Google has verified Kept.

Colors

Tap a calendar's swatch to recolor it: Lavender, Sage, Grape, Flamingo, Banana, Tangerine, Peacock, Graphite, Blueberry, Basil, Tomato, or a custom color. The color follows you to every device you are signed in on and never changes the color in Google or for anyone else.

Disconnect

Turn off Apple Calendar with its switch, or revoke access in the system's Privacy settings. Apple events were never copied to your Kept account, so there is nothing of them to delete.

Disconnect a Google account from the Calendars screen. There is no confirmation and no undo. Kept asks Google to revoke its access, then deletes three things from your Kept account: the Google events it synced from that account, that account's list of calendars (with your colors and show or hide choices), and the stored connection to it. Nothing in Google Calendar itself changes.

Disconnect still deletes all three when Google says Kept's access is already gone, for example because you removed Kept in your Google Account's third-party access settings first, or when Kept holds no stored sign-in for that account.

If Google cannot be reached, answers with an error, or asks Kept to wait, nothing is deleted yet and the account stays in the list. When Google only asked Kept to wait, tapping Disconnect again later finishes the job. If the account is still listed after that, report it from the app.

How far Kept looks

Kept keeps about two months back and thirteen months ahead on screen and loads more as you scroll. Google itself is synced from three months back to a year ahead, and Apple events load from three months back to a year ahead. When a Google account needs to be reconnected, a banner with Review appears above whatever you are doing. On a narrow screen the notice wraps and Review stays a whole word. Each account's calendars can be shown or hidden together with Show all and Hide all.

Next: Calendar on Mac.