Hi everybody !
While I really like the simple and sleek google calendar web GUI and functionalities, I’m more and more concerned about my data and privacy. Even if I have nothing to hide, I don’t agree anymore to sell freely and consciously my data to any GAFAM.
Has anyone any alternative to google calendar?
- Free and if possible, open source? It can have some discret sponsors/ads. As long as it isn’t to intrusive.
- Todoist integration
- Sync between devices
- GUI doesn’t have to be PERFECT, but a bare minimum for my candy eyes !
- Can be API, Web… doesn’t matter as long as it syncs between devices (android, mac, windows, linux)
I already searched through the web, but couldn’t find any conclusive alternative, maybe someone knows some hidden gem :)
Thank you !
EDIT: The solution and compromise: nextcloud. It took me some times (2days) to set it up correctly and make it work as intended.
- Android calendar sync with DAVx5
- Calendar notification on android’s native calendar app
- 2way sync between Android calendar and nextcloud calendar
- push notification on nextcloud webrowser
A few things too keep in mind:
1 — if you build your nextcloud instance with docker-compose:
- cron jobs don’t work out of the box and documentation is not straightforward
2 — Android permissions to sync with your calendar
- DAVx5 mentions how to allow syncing seemingly
- It’s different for every android phone
- Battery power mode
- Work in the background
- …
3 — It won’t work with todoist
- Because of the propieteray instance, it won’t work with DAVx5 and next cloud
- alternative: jtx board! (build by the same devs as DAVx5 seems to work similarly)
Conclusion: Nextcloud isn’t as good as the cloud sync provided by google/todoist and every other GAFAM cloud instance. It has his quirks and need some attention to make it work as intended. It take some times, reading and tinkering but those are compromises I’m willing to take :)
I found nextcloud easier to set up than many other services, plus it comes with cloud file storage and other goodies as a bonus.
It is even easy on such obscure platforms as NetBSD in an nvmm-backed qemu virtual machine runnning on a NetBSD host.
(EDIT: well, it wasn’t really trivial, the database (PostgreSQL in my case) setup and connection is not necessarily obvious to someone who hasn’t done it before, but the fact that it works without real complications on very diverse platforms is a testament to its clean code.)
If you’re not confident in database management, there is always the Snap version. I know Snap gets a lot of hate, and you do lose some ability to tinker with Nextcloud configuration, but its been pretty solid for me.
Hey :) Wasn’t that easy even with docker compose or specially with docker? IDK. But the cronjobs took me some time to figured it out… And the documentation wasn’t that obvious with docker… Thankfully, I wasn’t alone xD Docker issue github