How Busy blocks work across Google calendars

If you use separate Google calendars for work and personal plans, each calendar can make you look available while another already has a commitment. Banana adds a Busy block to your other enabled calendars for that time. The block reserves the hours without copying the original event’s title or details.

Why separate calendars can lead to double bookings

Imagine a dentist appointment on your personal calendar from 2 to 3 PM. Someone looking only at your work calendar may still see that hour as open. Keeping both calendars in your own view helps you notice the conflict, but it does not reserve the time for someone who can see only one calendar.

A Busy block makes that commitment visible as occupied time on the other calendar. Your personal appointment stays on its original calendar.

What information does a Busy block contain?

A Banana Busy block reserves a time range and is named Busy. It does not copy the source event’s title, description, guests, or meeting link into that block. When Banana includes travel time for the event, that travel time can reserve time too.

For the dentist example, a colleague with access only to your work calendar sees Busy during the reserved period. They do not get the dentist appointment’s details through that block.

A Busy block does not change access to your original event. Someone who can also see the personal calendar may still see the appointment there, according to that calendar’s Google sharing permissions. An event you directly invite them to can also reveal details independently of calendar sharing.

How is this different from showing multiple calendars together?

A combined calendar view brings several calendars onto your own screen. A Busy block also reserves time on another calendar, so people and scheduling tools using that calendar can see the conflict.

In Banana, your Google events appear alongside reminders, routines, weather, and travel context. The calendar remains in Google Calendar: creating or changing a Google event in Banana writes the change back to Google.

Which calendars take part?

Banana works with Google Calendar and supports connecting multiple Google accounts. Calendars that exist only in iCloud or Outlook are not shown through this connection.

Cross-calendar Busy blocks are enabled when you connect and can be turned off in Settings. Calendars owned by someone else only receive blocks if you enable that behavior and have the required access. Use Settings to review which accounts and calendars are connected before relying on availability across them.

Calendar visibility and calendar notifications are separate controls. Hiding a calendar from your own view and muting its alerts solve different problems; neither grants or removes someone else’s Google sharing access.

What should I check before sharing a calendar?

1. Decide whether the other person needs event details or only your availability.
2. Review the sharing permission on each calendar in Google Calendar. A person can have different access on different calendars.
3. Check whether they are also an invited guest on an individual event.
4. Look at the calendar from their account. What you see as the owner is not proof of what they can see.

If a shared view shows both an original event and an extra Busy block, it may be a display or merging issue to investigate. Matching time ranges alone do not prove that two entries represent the same event, and an extra block is not evidence that someone has permission to see more details. When reporting it, tell us which calendars are shared and whether the viewer can see event details or only availability. Please avoid sending private event details that are not needed to reproduce the issue.

Try it with your own day

Banana is currently available through the public TestFlight beta for iPhone, iPad, Apple silicon Mac, and Apple Watch. Calendar features require a Google account.

Read how Banana handles your information, find connection and account help, or see the calendar overview.