How can a Web App add a Calendar Event to an Android Phone?

Question

On iOS, you simply link to an .ics file and the Safari browser shows an "intent" to add it to your calendar.

How can you do something at least somewhat similar on Android, maybe achieve the same result in a different way? It has to be entirely web based and not rely on functionality that only native apps can access.

Is there anything planned for upcoming Android or Chrome for any platform to do this?

Android supports web notifications, so I guess you can have your own "web" based calendar but I'd rather have the user place it on their native calendars.

If there is no way to do this that you know of, maybe there is a way to an event to a gmail calendar, specifying arbitrary information, because usually all android phones are linked to some gmail address and thus the calendars would be synced, right?

Answer 1

If all you want is to prompt a user to add a single event to a google calendar there is a link template one can use. This tool will generate a link for you. I couldn't easily find a google help post that describes the template. https://decomaan.github.io/google-calendar-link-generator/

If you looking for a more universal cross browser / device solution then note: how an application responds an ics link is up to user and the app, and depends how the user comes to the ics link.

1. If it's attached to an email, the default behaviour one would expect would be to suggest import into calendar chosen by user. Calendars will not 'sync' it is a one off import.
2. If it's a link (ics url) then default behaviour one might expect would be to 'subscribe' to the calendar. BUT users can override that EG on my PC i have mine setup to open .ics files in notepad. Subscribed calendars will update at intervals determined by the receiving app and is one-directional - ie not strictly a 'sync' - just an update (like an rss feed)