I really would like to switch from Google to Nextcloud completely, step by step.
After succesfully migrating filesharing and contact-management for a while, I am now also moving the calendar. Nextcloud should be my “single source of truth” from now on.
What I already did:
Migrated all my historical and current calendar-data to my Nextcloud-instance. It’s there, and it’s working fine. I can edit existing and new appointments via Web-GUI of Nextcloud. → good!
I setup DAVx5 for synchronization of calender data in the calendar-database of my Android phone. There, I can now access the calendar-data in the stock android app of Android. This is synced back and forth to my Nextcloud instance. → good!
I also have another sync running on my work-laptop, where I have to use Outlook. Here I use https://caldavsynchronizer.org/ succesfully. I have to support this legacy technology for now, and it’s working fine.
What is still missing (please help):
My private communication is happening via my gmail-account, and I’m not planning to change that anytime soon (my email is used everywhere, and I’m happy with the service). But as calendar invitations are received via email most of the time, there has to be a way to handle invitations coming via email.
When I receive an invitation via gmail on the phone, I’d like to create an appointment in my Nextcloud calendar (which is available on my phone and synced via DAVx5). Still, gmail always creates an appointment in the “google-native” calendar, which is no what I want.
There is no option to define in which calendar a new appointment should be created. I think this was available in past times, but not today. Or am I missing something? I use Android 15 with latest patches.
I would prefer the stock Android calendar app, but if nothing works, I would be willing to move to a different calendar app. I just tried “OneCalendar”, but this does not improve the situation. Appointments are still created in the Google-native calendar.
I searched in the “default app”-settings, but it is not possible to set a “default calendar app”. So the 3rd party calendar app doesn’t solve my problem.
The same requirement I have for my Android-phone I basically have for my PC. When I am doing gmail in the browser (my preferred way of doing email), I’d like to receive/send invitations from/to my Nextcloud calendar instance.
Any advice very much appreciated! I’m sure there are solutions for this, right? My research didn’t yield results so far. How do you do it?
Not sure how you’re going to accomplish this without ditching gmail as your email provider.
I use Fossify Calendar on my Android; it’s connected to my Proton email account and I get calendar invites that way. I also have my private NC tied into it via Davx5. So I see both calendar’s events on a single Andtoid calendar.
OK. Perhaps I’m even willing to go down that route. Will be a lot of work but I’m willing to do it to make myself free from Google.
But let me ask for clarification: Is gmail really a showstopper to successfully integrate my Nextcloud calendar into my workflow? In my understanding, the email-provider should be transparent and not significant for that question. Isn’t it the apps that decide how invitations are handled? So if gmail is not configurable in the desired way, couldn’t I switch to a different app which handles invitations correctly? What do you use as the app for your Proton Mail account? Is there a specific Proton app which behaves the way you want? Is the workflow for you working on both PC and mobile?
You could try using thunderbird mobile as your email app for gmail emails https://www.thunderbird.net/en-US/mobile/. I haven’t tried this usecase myself, but I would be surprised if it could not accomplish what you want.
So for me, changing email wasn’t that bad. I’d already moved accounts, etc. over to Proton. As far as personal emails, my suggestion would be this: if you change to another email provider, use the same name so your contacts only have to change the suffix of the email address. I.e:
Much easier for your contacts to make that small change (they just had to simply change ‘g’ to ‘proton’.
Incoming invitations to me from people I work with come in via my proton account. Those get saved to my proton calendar. Personal calendar items that I create myself, and want to keep private, I create on my Nextcloud calendar. On my laptops, I have the personal calendar in my NC calendar (obviously) and also have a link from my proton calendar so those items also show up in the NC calendar.
Similarly on Android, where the Fossify Calendar shows both (it can also have a device-only calendar if you want some items to only appear on the phone.
Thanks for describing your workflow. In understand, but I also see that you don’t really have/solve the usecase of putting invitations via email directly (with low effort) into your Nextcloud calendar. I would say that Proton is your main-calendar, no?
That’s correct. There’s basically a single group of people I communicate with via proton email, and all calendar invites come from individuals in that group. Those invites get automatically added to my proton calendar (still viewable - read only - in my NC calendar).
Every appointment I create for myself lives only in my NC calendar.
BTW I take weekly exports of my NC calendar and stash them separately just as a backup. I recently had a router go down and was without my NC until I got a spare router online. Worst case I would have imported that backup into proton as a temporary measure.
In my understanding, the email-provider should be transparent and not significant for that question.
Gmal as email-provider yes.
Isn’t it the apps that decide how invitations are handled? So if gmail is not configurable in the desired way, couldn’t I switch to a different app which handles invitations correctly?
Yes. I assume the Gmail app just does not ask you where the calendar is created and just uses the google calendar default.
What happens when you try to open the attachment (it should contain an copy of the invitation)?
Hello @kesselb, that was a great question - because if open the attachment and THEN actually open it with the stock android calendar app, THEN I get to choose to which calendar specifically I want to add the appointment. I can then choose the Nextcloud calendar, which is then synced to my Nextcloud instance with DAVx5.
Awesome, that’s good enough for me. Thanks for the helpful question.
Now I just have to find a solution how to handle the invites when I use “full” webmail on the workstation. I will search the available extensions for the browser, perhaps there is some way to “link” the ics-files in the emails to the Nextcloud calendar in the browser as well.
Just to add to the possibilities my reaction. It is the email app on you phone that handles the email with the invitation. I use FairEmail which handles a lot of different account types including GMail. In an email with an invitation it has the buttons to Accept or Decline an invitation and it then offers you to choose from the calendars available on your phone.
For the web- solution:
Give nextcloud mail on your instance a try:
and there your G-mail account as an imap account.
Google apps like the mail-client on your android and the “web-apps” will never let you
go.
My Usecase is since 10 Yearss:
All PIM on my nextcloud instance
On Android Thunderbird ( prim. K9 ) stock Calender / stock Contacts via dav5x
On my workstations Thunderbird ( also with may g-mil account )
As Web interface the nextcloud web interface.
Never had hassle with that combination.
