It is so frustrating to care about privacy and wanting good alternative services.
I want to organize all my life on my calendar.
Do you know any good alternative to Google calendar that doesn’t have only half of its features? Because I didn’t find any.
When I started to educate myself on privacy, I switched from Google contacts, calendar and Gmail to tutanota because it encrypts a lot of things (compared to proton. Like proton doesn’t encrypt your contacts’ names with zero knowledge encryption) and it had a more generous offer (like unlimited calendars compared to the 25 of proton).
I didn’t know what I was getting myself into.
Here’s the thing, tutanota has a very good encryption at the cost of half the features you were used to.
Tutanota is good if all your network uses it. Which is unrealistic.
For my calendar here’s some non negotiable features:
Tasks in Calendar (tutanota and proton don’t support it. A least on Android)
I want to be able to schedule a meeting with someone.
I want to be able to subscribe to external calendar using an URL
I want to be able to change the color of my events, tasks and calendar.
End-to-end encryption for content and for metadatas like calendar names, event names and task names
Affordable (ideally a one time payment if it’s only a calendar app. Or less then $ 3 per month if it includes mail (with the support of custom domains), contact and calendar)
Since you are already using the stock apps on your phone and they have the features that you need have you considerd EteSync?
EteSync integrates seamlessly with your existing apps. All you need to do is sign up (or run your own instance), install the app, and enter your password. After that, you will be able to save your contacts, calendar events and tasks to EteSync using your existing apps, and EteSync will transparently encrypt your data and update the change journal in the background. More security, same work-flow.
I think that this would be the closest option that would fit your needs, let me know what you think
As far as I am aware Skiff does offer the meeting scheduling with Jitsi and Proton supports adding an external URL but I don’t know of a service which has both and all the other features that you need. You may be able to request it as a feature though.
It seems to me that the best online calendar option is Skiff calendar which does have video conference scheduling plus it also automatically adds invitations to your calendar if you accept them. However it doesn’t support adding an external URL, you may be able to get in touch with them and they might add it. I don’t think a service that has all the features you need exists yet unfortunately so you might have to make a compromise here either way.
I’m using Proton calendar, but I think you are going to have the same issues with any E2EE calendar, you can only import the calendar in other calendars, you can’t create or edit events.
I can understand wanting to get away from Google Calendar.
We have discussed having a public identity, a business facing identity where you use services which we all are trying to avoid.
My employer uses Microsoft office which I am thankful I do not have to use the calendar. My professional work life is compartmentalized from my home private life, as well as I feel is necessary to be at peace. If I had to interact with the calendar, having an open source “front end” would be an option I would look for.
I mentioned I have a friend who is a nurse and the ability for others to see her calendar to know if she is available to work or not would be a financial benefit, not counting the time she would spend jumping in several popular calendar apps to manage work schedules.
My work calendar (Microsoft calendar)is not used. I think people who use calendars more often use more than one.
You got me thinking on how I use calendars, what’s my work flow like.
At my job we use a weekly schedule, printed… At my last job I used googles reoccurring events to create 4 events, these events were a shift that rotated every 16 days if I recall. 4 days, 4 off, 4 nights, 4 off. Something like that. I used google calendar and created a work account just for work. Compartmentalize work from everything else this we 14 years ago. This job had a schedule as well for variances.
I use a pocket journal with a bullet journal technique to manage task with dates. This is the beginning and the end of my work flow. I use AmpleNote Calendar to work on projects and my task which take more time to manage go in Amplenote.
With my work I use Notion. I have large data sets with database which utilize the last edited date as a calendar. This is a massive amount of data as every entry is an event.
I also us an app called Days to Go which is an event count down I just find useful and I no other app or system covers this feature.
Is my system chaotic? Well the analog aspect of bullet journalling task has been great for me, away from the computers in my life.
There is nothing that handle what I have built in Notion and the isolation of all that data is critical, got to get away from it for clarity.
AmpleNote is my general note taking app where I kinda live. The calendar view is a drag and drop approach to juggling events.
All the management of these events go into my journal.
It is a lot to handle. The Notion events are more for reference. What did I work on (modify the entry in a database) on a particular day or when was the last time I worked on an entry. Each entry in the database is a web page, every entry is a combination of a form, and blog. The event date is mostly historical.
The printed work schedule is more of time blocking. Yes I manage a small amount of flexibility on the daily aspect but the schedule is time blocking as an input. My events are not planned during that time. Small task that can be completed during any free time of course is taken advantage of.
These inputs of events are mentioned just as a context to calendars variety. To integrate all event or task inputs into one calendar would be nice. I can not get my employer to enter the work schedule into the Microsoft Calendar. I assume as of now they are using Microsoft Excel to print this form.
When my family was using all android devices I linked all the google calendars but they honestly just used the calendars to see if I was at work. They were not an input that was integrated by the choice they did not use the calendars.
Using just one calendar for everything may work for you. For me the input of all events is +50% of the work.
Talking to my friend who has two jobs at this time, one full time and one part time. Could benefit from collaborating on the same calendar with her part time job. I asked how do they communicate confirmed work events. They use SMS, yes just texting confirmations. They would need to team up and get on the same calendar. Agree to collaborate and then a privacy friendly app or event sharing setting could tie the chosen calendar platform to a privacy friendly calendar.
