How do I add my course calendar to Google Calendar?

To get your course calendar into Google Calendar, copy the calendar feed link from your school’s course site, then open Google Calendar on a computer and go to Other calendars, +, From URL, and paste it. Your assignments, quizzes and exams show up as their own calendar in a few minutes, and on your phone after that. The catch: Google rechecks that link on its own schedule, so when a professor moves a due date, your Google Calendar can stay wrong for hours, sometimes most of a day. Below are the steps, the settings people miss, and what to do about the lag.

Step 1: Copy your calendar feed link

Your school’s course site gives every student a private link to their own calendar. It’s meant for exactly this: apps like Google Calendar.

1. Sign in to your course site in a web browser on a computer.
2. Open Calendar from the main menu (usually on the left).
3. Look for a link called Calendar Feed. On most course sites it sits at the bottom of the right-hand column, under the list of your classes.
4. Click it and copy the whole address. It’s long and ends in .ics.

Treat this link like a password. There’s no login on it: anyone who has it can see your calendar. Don’t post it in a group chat or a shared doc.

Step 2: Add it to Google Calendar (on a computer)

Google only lets you subscribe to a calendar by link from a web browser. The Google Calendar app on Android and iPhone doesn’t have this option, which is the first thing that trips people up.

1. Go to calendar.google.com on a computer and sign in.
2. On the left, next to Other calendars, click + (Add other calendars).
3. Choose From URL.
4. Paste your calendar feed link.
5. Click Add calendar.

The new calendar appears on the left under Other calendars. Google’s own steps are in its help article, Add a calendar by URL.

Give it a clear name while you’re there. Hover over the calendar, click the three dots, then Settings, and rename it to something like “Classes”. Pick a color that stands out from your personal events.

Step 3: Make it show up on your phone

A calendar you add on the web should appear in the Google Calendar app on its own. If it doesn’t:

• iPhone: open the Google Calendar app, tap the menu at the top left, and make sure the box next to the calendar’s name is checked.
• Android: open the Google Calendar app, tap the menu, then Settings, then tap the calendar (tap Show more if you don’t see it). Make sure Sync is on. Google notes it can take a little while for events to appear after you turn it on.

Step 4: Check what the dates look like

Open an assignment you know is due at 11:59 PM. In the feeds we’ve examined, an assignment due at 11:59 PM doesn’t arrive as an 11:59 PM event. It arrives as an all-day item on its due date. So “all day Tuesday” on your calendar usually means “due by the end of Tuesday”, not “due Tuesday morning”. Items due at a specific time, like a quiz that closes at 2:00 PM, keep their time.

That matters for reminders. All-day items and timed items get different notification settings in most calendar apps, so a reminder you set for “30 minutes before” won’t fire for an all-day item.

Step 5: Set up reminders, or decide where they’ll come from

Google Calendar can remind you about events, but a calendar you subscribe to by link is read-only. You can’t edit its events, and the feed doesn’t bring reminders with it. Open the calendar’s Settings on a computer and look for Event notifications and All-day event notifications. If your version shows them for this calendar, set a default there, for example a notification the day before for all-day items. If it doesn’t, the feed’s events won’t alert you at all, and you’ll want reminders from somewhere else.

Either way, a reminder is only as good as the date it’s based on, which brings us to the lag.

Why Google Calendar lags behind your course site

You haven’t done anything wrong when Google shows an old due date. Here’s what’s going on.

Google checks the link on its own schedule. Google doesn’t publish how often it rereads a calendar added by link. In practice it’s commonly several hours and can be up to about a day. There’s no “refresh now” button for these calendars: reloading the page or tapping refresh in the app only redraws what Google already has.

The feed only carries what’s been posted. If your professor hasn’t put the exam on the course site yet, no calendar app can show it. 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. Two of the five courses we checked had a syllabus that disagreed with the course site on a date.

Some things are never in the feed. The calendar link carries assignments and events with a date, adjusted to your section. It doesn’t carry your grades, whether you’ve turned something in, announcements, or assignments with no due date. An exam that’s only mentioned in an announcement won’t be on your calendar.

Importing is not subscribing. If you downloaded an .ics file and used Google’s Import option instead of From URL, you got a one-time copy. It will never update. Delete those imported events and add the link with From URL instead.

What to do about the lag

• For anything due in the next two days, check the course site itself. Google Calendar is fine for the shape of your week. For “is this still due tonight?”, go to the source.
• Read announcements. Date changes often get announced before, or instead of, being changed on the calendar.
• Put your syllabus dates in too. Paste each syllabus into our free syllabus to calendar tool. It finds the exam dates and deadlines, shows you the line each one came from, and gives you a calendar file you can import. It runs in your browser, and those dates won’t update on their own, so treat them as a heads-up for exams that aren’t posted yet.
• If a whole class is missing, for example one you added after you subscribed, remove the calendar in Google and add the link again. On a computer, open Settings, choose the calendar on the left, then Remove calendar and Unsubscribe.

If your calendar has stopped changing altogether, our guide to a course calendar that isn’t updating walks through each cause. And if what you really want is a heads-up before each deadline, see why assignment notifications don’t come.

Where Coursebird fits

We built Coursebird because of the gaps above. It reads the same calendar feed link, so there’s nothing for your school to set up. But it checks the link itself instead of waiting on Google: every 30 minutes while it’s open, and right away when you press Sync. It puts every class in one list, this week first, and the phone app reminds you 24 hours and 2 hours before each deadline and three times for every exam. When a date moves, it shows you the old date and the new one side by side.

With the Coursebird Sync browser extension, Coursebird also reads your course pages, so what you’ve turned in gets checked off. It only reads: it never submits or changes anything, and your data stays on your device. Coursebird is in beta, and the phone app isn’t in the App Store yet. If you’d like to try it, join the list.