You set up a beautiful project tracker in Notion. Deadlines, milestones, launch dates, all neatly organized in a database with a calendar view. Then you hear about Notion Calendar and think: finally, all of this will show up in Google Calendar.
Except it doesn't. Not the way you expected.
This is one of the most common points of confusion for Notion users, and it's completely understandable. The name "Notion Calendar" strongly implies that your Notion data flows into your calendar. The reality is more nuanced than that.
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What Notion Calendar actually is
Notion Calendar started life as Cron, a standalone calendar app that Notion acquired in 2022. It connects to Google Calendar and iCloud, giving you a clean interface to manage your events. It's a genuinely good calendar app with smart scheduling features and a polished design.
Where Notion comes in is that Notion Calendar can display items from your Notion databases alongside your regular calendar events. You open Notion Calendar, and you see your Google Calendar events next to your Notion project deadlines. All in one view.
The key phrase there is "you open Notion Calendar." Everything happens inside that one app.
What Notion Calendar doesn't do
Notion Calendar doesn't push your Notion database entries into Google Calendar. It doesn't generate a subscription link that other calendar apps can read. If you close Notion Calendar and open Apple Calendar or Outlook, your Notion data isn't there.
This means your coworker who uses Outlook can't see the project timeline you built in Notion. Your partner who checks the family Google Calendar won't see the deadlines you're tracking. The Notion data lives in Notion Calendar, and nowhere else.
Notion Calendar also doesn't currently support Outlook as a connected calendar provider, which rules it out entirely for a lot of teams and workplaces that run on Microsoft's ecosystem.
None of this makes Notion Calendar a bad product. It's a very good calendar app that happens to have a Notion integration. But it solves a specific problem: giving you, personally, a unified view inside one app.
The problem that remains
Most people don't want to switch calendar apps. They already have one that works. What they want is for the data in their Notion databases to show up where they already look at their schedule.
A content calendar with publish dates. A CRM with follow-up deadlines. A project board with sprint milestones. This data has dates, and dates belong on a calendar. The question is how to get it there without copying things manually or replacing your entire calendar setup.
What an iCal feed does
An iCal feed is a standard web link, a URL, that any calendar application can subscribe to. Google Calendar, Apple Calendar, Outlook, Fantastical, Thunderbird. If it's a calendar app, it almost certainly supports iCal subscriptions. The format has been around since the early 2000s and it's the universal language of calendar data.
When you subscribe to an iCal feed, your calendar app periodically checks that URL for updates. New events appear automatically. Changed events update automatically. You don't install anything, you don't switch apps, you don't ask your team to sign up for a new service.
The events show up as native entries in your calendar. They trigger notifications. They appear in your widgets. They show up when your calendar is shared with other people. For all practical purposes, they're regular calendar events.
When to use which
If you want a new calendar app that shows Notion data in its own interface, Notion Calendar is a solid choice. It's well designed, it's free, and the Notion integration is seamless within the app itself.
If you want your Notion database entries to appear in whatever calendar you already use, you need an iCal feed. This is also the right choice when you need to share a schedule with people who don't use Notion. A client, a freelancer, a family member. You send them the subscribe link and they see the events. No Notion account required.
For teams that use Outlook, iCal feeds are currently the only option since Notion Calendar doesn't connect to Microsoft's calendar system.
How to get an iCal feed from a Notion database
Notion doesn't generate iCal feeds on its own. You need a third-party tool to bridge the gap. That's exactly what Notion to Calendar does.
The setup takes about two minutes. You connect your Notion account, pick the database you want to turn into a calendar feed, and choose which date property to use for the events. The tool generates a subscribe URL that you paste into your calendar app of choice.
Once subscribed, your calendar checks for updates automatically. When you add a new item to your Notion database or change a date, the update flows through to your calendar within minutes. You can customize what appears in the event title and description, set up filters to include only certain items, and generate separate feeds for different databases or views.
The feed works with any calendar app that supports iCal subscriptions, which is essentially all of them. One Notion database can feed into Google Calendar for you, Outlook for your colleague, and Apple Calendar for your manager. Same data, different apps, no friction.
They're not competitors
Here's the thing that gets lost in the confusion: Notion Calendar and iCal feeds solve different problems, and you can use both at the same time.
Use Notion Calendar as your personal daily planner where you see everything in one place. Use iCal feeds to push specific Notion databases into shared calendars, team calendars, or the calendar apps of people who will never sign up for Notion.
Your content team's editorial calendar can live in Notion, appear in your Notion Calendar app for your own planning, and simultaneously feed into a shared Google Calendar that the whole marketing department subscribes to. These approaches complement each other.
The confusion only exists because the naming suggests Notion Calendar does everything calendar-related with Notion. It doesn't, and that's fine. Now you know which tool does what, and you can pick the right one for what you actually need.