Course calendar not updating? Why it lags, and the fix

If your course calendar is not updating in Google Calendar or Apple Calendar, the most likely reason is timing, not a broken link. Your calendar app rereads your course calendar link on its own schedule, and for Google that’s commonly several hours apart, sometimes up to about a day. Your course site already has the change; your calendar hasn’t fetched it yet. Work through the checks below in order: the first two find most problems, and the rest explain the ones that look like lag but aren’t.

First: is it lag, or is something broken?

Open your course site and find the item that looks wrong. Compare it with your calendar.

• The course site has the new date, your calendar has the old one. That’s lag. Your calendar will catch up on its own. If it’s still wrong after a full day, go to the fixes below.
• The course site doesn’t have it either. Nothing is broken. The professor hasn’t posted or changed it on the course site yet. Skip to “What the calendar link never shows”.
• Your calendar shows nothing new from any class for days. Something is broken. Start with fix 1.

Fix 1: Make sure you subscribed, not imported

This is the most common real problem. There are two ways to get a calendar file into a calendar app, and only one of them updates.

• Subscribing (Google: Other calendars, +, From URL; Apple: Add Subscription Calendar) saves the link. The app keeps rereading it.
• Importing a downloaded .ics file copies the events once. They never change again, no matter what your professor does.

If you ever downloaded a file and used Import, delete those events (or the calendar you imported them into) and subscribe with the link instead. Our guide to adding your course calendar to Google Calendar has the exact steps.

Fix 2: Check that the calendar is on, and syncing

A calendar can be subscribed and still hidden.

1. Google Calendar on a computer: make sure the box next to the calendar under Other calendars is checked.
2. Google Calendar on iPhone: tap the menu at the top left and check the box next to the calendar.
3. Google Calendar on Android: tap the menu, then Settings, then the calendar (tap Show more if needed), and turn on Sync.
4. Apple Calendar on iPhone: tap Calendars and make sure the class calendar has a checkmark.
5. Apple Calendar on a Mac: check the box next to the calendar in the sidebar. You can also choose View, Refresh Calendars to make it check now, and set how often it checks: Control-click the calendar, choose Get Info, and pick an option from Auto-refresh.

Fix 3: Re-add the link

If a whole class is missing, or nothing has changed in days:

1. Copy a fresh calendar feed link from your course site. Open Calendar; the link is usually at the bottom of the right-hand column, called Calendar Feed.
2. Remove the old calendar from your app. In Google Calendar on a computer: Settings, pick the calendar on the left, Remove calendar, Unsubscribe.
3. Add the link again as a new subscription.

This also helps after you add or drop a class partway through the term. Removing and re-adding the calendar sometimes makes Google fetch it sooner, too, but don’t count on that as a refresh button: it doesn’t always work.

Fix 4: Check the time, not just the date

If an assignment looks like it’s on the wrong day, look at how it’s stored. In the feeds we’ve examined, an assignment due at 11:59 PM comes through as an all-day item on its due date, not as an 11:59 PM event. That’s correct, but it reads differently. An all-day Tuesday item means “due by the end of Tuesday”.

Items with a real time, like a quiz that closes at 2:00 PM, come through with that time. Your calendar shows them in your phone’s time zone. If you’re traveling, or your phone’s time zone is set by hand, a timed item can look an hour or more off.

Why your calendar app lags

Calendar apps don’t get told when something changes. They have to go back and reread your link, and each app decides how often.

Google Calendar doesn’t publish how often it rereads a calendar added by link. In practice it’s commonly several hours, sometimes up to about a day. There’s no button to make it check now. Reloading the page or pulling to refresh in the app redraws your calendar, but it doesn’t make Google fetch your link again.

Apple Calendar on a Mac lets you choose how often it checks a subscribed calendar, and has a Refresh Calendars command. On an iPhone, Apple doesn’t document a refresh command for subscribed calendars; they update in the background when your phone checks.

So a professor can move a deadline at noon, and you might not see it in Google Calendar until the next morning. For anything due soon, the course site is the only place that’s always current.

What the calendar link never shows

Some things look like a calendar that isn’t updating, but they were never in the link in the first place. The calendar feed from your course site carries assignments and calendar events that have a date, with the date for your section. It doesn’t carry:

• Whether you turned something in. Finished work stays on your calendar.
• Announcements. “Exam 2 moved to Thursday” in an announcement won’t change your calendar until the professor also edits the exam.
• Assignments with no due date, and to-do items.
• Your grades.

The bigger gap is exams that aren’t posted yet. When we compared five real courses’ syllabi with their course calendars in week 6 of a term, about half the term’s exams weren’t on the course calendar yet. They were only in the syllabus. And two of the five courses we checked had a syllabus that disagreed with the course site on a date. When the two disagree, ask your professor which one is right; don’t guess.

To get those syllabus dates onto your calendar now, paste each syllabus into our free syllabus to calendar tool. It lists every exam and deadline it finds, with the line it came from, and gives you a calendar file to import. It runs in your browser. Imported dates don’t update, so keep the link subscription too: one shows what’s posted, the other shows what’s planned.

A routine that doesn’t depend on the lag

• Use your calendar app for the shape of the week.
• Each evening, open the course site and check anything due in the next two days.
• Read new announcements, especially ones that mention a date.
• Set your own reminders for exams, since the feed doesn’t come with any. Our notifications checklist covers why reminders go quiet.

Where Coursebird fits

Coursebird reads the same calendar link, but it doesn’t wait on Google’s schedule. It checks your classes itself every 30 minutes while it’s open, and right away when you press Sync. When something changes, What’s New shows the old date and the new one side by side, and a date written in an announcement is listed at the top for you to add. Everything lands in one list, and the phone app reminds you 24 hours and 2 hours before each deadline, and three times for every exam. Coursebird also reads your syllabus for exams that aren’t posted yet, and shows you the line each date came from.

It’s read-only, and your data stays on your device. Coursebird is in beta and the phone app isn’t out yet. If that sounds useful, join the list.