Blog/Privacy
Availability without exposing event titles
A design essay about free/busy privacy, alongside the calendar roles and public sharing that mmddyy actually supports today.
·Updated ·mmddyy
Teams sometimes need to know whether someone can meet without knowing the details of a personal appointment. Free/busy sharing is a useful design idea for that problem.
mmddyy v1 does not offer free/busy-only sharing. A viewer can read event details on a shared calendar. The distinction matters before inviting colleagues to a calendar that contains personal information.
Share the work, not your whole life
A practical approach in the current app is to create a dedicated team calendar. Add the plans the team should see, and keep sensitive personal events on a separate, unshared personal calendar.
Sharing one personal calendar in mmddyy does not expose your other personal calendars. Joining a team calendar does not automatically reveal every calendar in that workspace. Team workspace owners can manage all calendars in their workspace.
Current roles
| Role | Access on that calendar |
|---|---|
| Viewer | Read events and their details |
| Editor | Read, create, edit, and delete events |
| Owner | Manage events, settings, members, and invite links |
Public profiles are a separate choice. If an owner publishes selected calendars at /@handle, visitors can read ongoing and upcoming titles and times without sign-in. Notes, locations, email addresses, and memberships are not included in that public output. Public titles can still reveal personal information, so choose calendars carefully.
Access removal has boundaries
Invite links expire after seven days and can be revoked. Revoking a link prevents new acceptance, but does not remove people who already joined. Removing a member does not revoke links they still hold, so revoke those links too if they must not rejoin.
Making a profile private stops future access through public endpoints. Neither unpublishing nor removing a member can retract screenshots or other copies already obtained.
The design question ahead
A future scheduler could use availability without requiring broad access to event details. This essay explores that goal; it is not a description of an implemented privacy mode or a promised release.
Use the sharing guide, security page, and privacy policy for the controls that exist today.