Synchronizing iCloud Calendar

#The Problem

A lot of my workflow is terminal-based. My email client, text editor, music player, calendar and IRC client are all terminal applications. My family has a shared calendar wherein all the events that concern members of the family are stored. However, I’ll frequently waste time doing something like this.

#Open up my email

I’ll open up mutt to see if there have been any new events that are created. New events are forwarded to my inbox.

#Download and import a .ics file

A convenient .ics file is always attached to any automatic event emails. I’ll manually save and import these into Khal.

All this is very tedious. I needed to find some way to be able to automate this process. That’s when I found out about vdirsyncer - a program that automatically syncs your iCloud calendar events.

#Configuring Vsyncdir

I’d simply add a configuration file, telling Vsyncdir a few important details.

1. Where to fetch the events from.
2. The calendar ID (since you can have multiple iCloud calendars).
3. iCloud authentication details - as the calendar is private.
4. Where to store the events

All in all, it looks like this. Sensitive information has been redacted for security purposes.

[general]
status_path = "~/.local/share/vdirsyncer/status/"

[pair family]
a = "family_local"
b = "family_remote"
collections = ["4138f409266b0ef84e8ccc6a2153c5ae9c12e5a345e61cad05db17cc05430a3a"]

[storage family_local]
type = "filesystem"
path = "~/.calendars/icloud/"
fileext = ".ics"

[storage family_remote]
type = "caldav"
url = "https://caldav.icloud.com/<USER_ID>/calendars/<CALENDAR_ID>/"
username = "<ICLOUD EMAIL>"
password = "<ICLOUD PASSWORD>"

#Syncing remote data

After a configuration file has been defined, we can actually start the synchronization process. It’s a matter of just discovering the remote calendar identifier(s) and then following up by syncing the remote calendar data using Vdirsyncer.

Discover and synchronize as follows.

vdirsyncer discover && vdirsyncer sync

It may also be handy to have this linked up to a Systemd process. For example, on my server, I have the following setup.

I have a timer that is linked to the synchronization of common tasks such as reloading emails and calendar events:

[Unit] 
Description=Periodically synchronize remote data 
Requires=mbsync.service 
Requires=icloud.service 
Wants=network-online.target 
After=network-online.target 

[Timer] 
OnStartupSec=1m 
OnUnitActiveSec=3m 
Unit=mbsync.service 

[Install] 
WantedBy=timers.target 

This is then “linked” to the following service files.

#Get recent iCloud photos

[Unit]
Description=Periodically synchronize icloud data
AssertPathExists=/run/media/ssd/icloud/
AssertPathExists=%h/.calendars/icloud
Wants=photos.timer

[Service]
type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/icloudpd --directory /run/media/ssd/icloud --username <email> --password <password> --library "PrimarySync" --recent 10 --notification-email joshuarose@gmx.com

TimeoutSec=300

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

#Get new calendar events

[Unit]
Description=Periodically synchronize icloud calendar data
AssertPathExists=%h/.local/share/vdirsyncer/status
AssertPathExists=%h/.calendars/icloud
Wants=sync.timer

[Service]
type=oneshot
ExecStart=/usr/bin/vdirsyncer sync

TimeoutSec=500

[Install]
WantedBy=default.target

#Displaying .ics data with Khal

Khal does know how to display .ics files, but it takes a bit of hand-holding. Here’s what my Khal configuration looks like:

[calendars]
[[icloud]]
path = ~/.calendars/icloud/<CALENDAR_ID>

Then once you open Khal you should be seeing the same events that are in your iCloud calendar. Here’s what it looks like for me: