How do you add a link that will add an event to your iPhone calendar from safari?

Question

This seems like it should be simple but after a couple hours of googling I have not figured it out. I know I can add iCal links using ICS files, but this does not work on the iPhone.

BTW, when I say iPhone I would like it to work on the touch also. Anyone have any luck with this?

Solution 1

You can get iPhone to download the .ics file (using Safari on a mobile web page) by using the webcal protocol:

webcal://website.mobi/mymeeting.ics

Solution 2

As of iOS 5, if you create a simple http link to an .ics file, Mobile Safari will offer to open it up in Calendar.

Solution 3

According to the iPhone documentation there is no URL scheme for the Calendar application. (There are URL schemes for Mail, Phone, Map, YouTube and iTunes.)

Of course there could be something undocumented, but I'm not sure that using it would be a good idea even if you can find it.

Solution 4

Of course it is possible but only if your JavaScript application is installed on the device. Look at http://tetontech.wordpress.com to see how to make calls from JavaScript to Objective-C. You can then use this and the Calendar Store Programming Guide from the documentation in Xcode to do what you want.

Solution 5

It is not possible. Apple does not want you to do this.

Now, what you could do is bookmark a javascript bookmarklet that checks the user-agent of the browser invoking it, and if the user is on Safari on their laptop or desktop Mac, then invoke the iCal using standard method (ICS file).

The user on iPhone could bookmark your page into a home screen bookmark with a useful (and perhaps custom) icon that said "Event" and title of "Meet Mary at 8:15". They could then, when they have synced their bookmarks, be reminded of the event and invoke it on their desktop browser.

Significant barriers here to educating users how to use this system, but it would work if you could convince people to do it, I think.

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Comments

[Vadim]

iPhone SDK documentation is not the same as for Mac OS X. And there is no available APIs at the moment.

[Scott Means]

While this technically works, it prompts the user to subscribe to a new calendar, which will get tedious if you have to create a complete calendar feed for each event. I'm still looking for a workaround to just import a single event.

[goddogsrunning]

You are correct. I'm looking for the same thing as you - if you happen to find the answer, please post it here. I'll do the same! Cheers!

[bafromca]

do you guys know if there has been any update on this since 2011? @ScottMeans

[lunateck]

Thanks for this, I was looking for create subscription calendars actually. However, this doesn't work for Android as they don't support webcal format. For single event, you just change the webcal into http, i.e. "http ://website.mobi/mymeeting.ics" as answered by @jeffehobbs