Title, date and time, time zone, location, guests, reminders, and repeats — then download the .ics file or open it straight in your calendar.
What is inside one
Open an .ics file in a text editor and it reads as a short list of properties. The event itself sits between BEGIN:VEVENT and END:VEVENT: SUMMARY is the title, DTSTART and DTEND are the times, LOCATION and DESCRIPTION are what you would expect, and UID is the identifier a calendar uses to tell an update from a new event. The format is RFC 5545, published in 2009 and unchanged since — which is why a file written today opens in software written a decade ago.
The preview beside the form is the real file, updating as you type. Nothing is hidden from you and nothing is added: what you read there is byte for byte what downloads.
How to open one
- macOS and iOS
- Double-click or tap the file; Calendar offers to add the event.
- Google Calendar
- Settings → Import & export → Import, then pick the file and the calendar it should land in.
- Outlook
- File → Open & Export → Import/Export → Import an iCalendar (.ics) file, or just double-click it in Windows.
- Android
- Most Android calendars import through Google Calendar on the web rather than from the phone — mail yourself the file and open it on a desktop.
Questions
- What does ICS stand for?
- It is simply the file extension for iCalendar data — short for "iCalendar Stream". The format itself is defined by RFC 5545, and the same content is sometimes served with the media type text/calendar.
- Is .ics the same as iCal?
- Nearly. iCal was Apple’s calendar app, now just called Calendar, and people borrowed the name for the format it read. The format’s real name is iCalendar and its files end in .ics.
- Can one .ics file hold several events?
- Yes — a calendar file can contain any number of VEVENT blocks, which is how a subscription feed for a whole season of fixtures works. This builder makes one event at a time; for many at once, export CSV and use your calendar’s bulk importer.
- Can I edit an .ics file by hand?
- You can, and it is a reasonable way to fix a typo — it is plain text with one property per line. Keep the line endings as CRLF and keep long lines folded, or strict parsers will complain.