Fill in your times from your calendar
29 October 2026
Instead of marking every slot by hand, give the event page a picture or a file of your calendar. It blocks off your busy times and marks the rest of what the calendar showed as free. A screenshot is the quickest. A PDF or an .ics file works too, and an .ics file is the most exact.
Whatever you use is read in your browser and never uploaded. Only the free times you end up with are saved, like any other answer.
Take a screenshot that reads well
- Open your calendar in a view that shows hours: week, a few days, or a single day. A month view or a list of events won’t work.
- Go to the days of the event. For a days-of-the-week event, use this week or next week.
- Scroll so the hours of the event are on screen.
- Take the screenshot with the hour labels on the left and the dates along the top in it. Those are what the reader uses to work out when each block is.
On Windows, Win Shift S lets you drag a box around the calendar and copies it. On a Mac, Ctrl Shift ⌘ 4 does the same. On a phone, take an ordinary screenshot.
Screenshots of Google Calendar and Outlook are what it’s tested with, from phones and computers, in light and dark mode. Your calendar can be in another language; about 30 are understood. The all-day row, the line marking the current time, floating buttons, and grey or free events are ignored.
If the hours you need don’t fit on one screen, take two screenshots of the same days, one scrolled further down, and add both. They’re combined.
Add it to the event
- Open the event and stay on the Your times tab.
- On a computer, press Ctrl V (⌘ V on a Mac). You can also drag the image onto the page, or click the dashed box that says Screenshot of your calendar to pick a file.
- On a phone, tap Add a screenshot of your calendar and choose the screenshot.
The first screenshot takes a few seconds longer: the text reader (about 3 MB) downloads once and stays cached. A message then says how many slots were blocked, for example “Blocked 6 busy slots”, with Undo next to it.
Busy slots are hatched. The hatching stays on your device and nobody else sees it. Free time is marked only for the hours your calendar showed, and only if you hadn’t marked anything yet. If you had, your marks stay and the busy slots are cleared from them. If your screenshot stopped at 17:00 and the event runs to 20:00, the evening stays empty for you to fill in.
Check the result before you leave. A calendar knows about meetings, not about the gym or the commute.
Use a PDF instead
Calendar apps can print a week, and printing to PDF gives the event page something to read.
- In Outlook, print the calendar with the Detailed agenda style, or save the week view as a PDF.
- In Google Calendar on a computer, open the week, press Ctrl P (⌘ P on a Mac) and save it as a PDF.
Add the PDF the same way as a screenshot: drag it in, or click the dashed box and pick it. A scanned or image-only PDF works too; its first page is read like a screenshot.
Use an .ics file instead
An .ics file has every event with its exact times, repeats and time zone, so nothing needs reading off a picture. Events marked as free, cancelled events and all-day events are skipped.
- In Google Calendar on a computer, open Settings, then Import & export, and choose Export. You get a .zip file; open it and use the .ics file of your calendar.
- In Apple Calendar on a Mac, select the calendar in the sidebar, then choose File, Export, Export…
- In classic Outlook for Windows, open the calendar and choose File, then Save Calendar, and pick the date range.
If your Outlook has no Save Calendar option, as in Outlook on the web, use a screenshot or a PDF.
If the import misses something
“That calendar doesn’t show any of this event’s days”
The screenshot shows a different week. Go to the event’s dates in your calendar and take it again. For a days-of-the-week event, use this week or the next.
Everything is shifted by an hour or more
Your calendar is showing a different time zone from your device. Without a zone label in the picture, the reader assumes your device’s zone. Switch the calendar to the zone you’re in, or use an .ics file, which carries its own time zone.
“Couldn’t read that file”
The picture may be too small or blurry, or cropped so the hours or dates are cut off. Take a larger screenshot with both in it, or try the .ics file.
A meeting was missed
Grey blocks are treated like events marked as free, so a meeting your calendar shows in grey isn’t blocked. Tap that time on the grid to clear it.
If the whole result is off, Undo in the message puts the grid back as it was, and Clear empties it.