Why a meeting is blocking your time
Every meeting tells you why it's holding the slot, and what you can do about it.
A declined invite, a maybe, a meeting your calendar already calls free and one you freed by hand all looked identical. So "why is there work on top of this?" and "can I do anything about it?" both went unanswered. It's also how you find out you can free time up at all.
How to use it
Open any meeting. It says one of:
- Blocked, because your calendar says busy. Free it up if you can work through it.
- Your calendar already has this as free, so work can go here.
- You freed this up, so work can go here. Your calendar still has it as busy.
- You marked this busy, though your calendar has it as free.
- You declined, so work can go here.
- A maybe, so the time stays blocked until you know.
Then use Can you work during this?, or right-click the meeting (long-press on the phone) to flip it in one go.
The honest version
Picking whatever your calendar already says drops your override rather than freezing it, so a meeting that later gets cancelled or moved stops blocking your time on its own. That's why there's no separate "reset" button. And since we never write to your calendar, this works on invites you don't even own.
Read-only, always
YWGSD reads your calendar. It never writes to it.
That's a trust decision, not a gap. Nothing here can create, move or delete a real event, so connecting your calendar can't embarrass you in front of anyone who shares it. Your scheduled work lives in YWGSD and is drawn alongside your real events.
How to use it
Calendars shows a Read-only badge against each connected account.
Mark any event free
That standing meeting you don't need to attend? Tell YWGSD, not the organiser.
The override lives here, not on the invite, so it works on meetings you don't own and can't edit. Your real calendar is untouched, nobody else sees it, and it survives every resync.
How to use it
Click the event on the calendar → Can you work during this? → choose blocked or free. Reset to the calendar's setting hands it back to the provider's answer. Calendars → Upcoming events lists everything you've overridden.
Read the meeting's notes without leaving
The dial-in, the agenda, the "bring the printouts" — right there on the event.
Knowing a meeting is called "Client call" doesn't tell you the code to join it. Everything the organiser wrote is on the event in YWGSD, so planning your day doesn't mean bouncing back to a calendar app to find the useful half.
How to use it
Click the event on the calendar, or tap it on the phone. The notes sit under the date, above Can you work during this? — on the phone they're under Description. Long ones scroll.
The honest version
It's read-only and plain text, like everything we take from a calendar: formatting, images and links come through as words, and anything past 2,000 characters is cut with a "…". Events with no notes just don't show the section. Outlook gives us its own preview of the body rather than the whole thing, so a very long Outlook invite arrives shorter than it looks in Outlook.
Google, Outlook and iCloud
Add each calendar you actually use, one at a time.
Most people's week is split across two or three calendars — a work one, a personal one, a shared family one. All of them are busy time, so all of them have to be in here, or YWGSD books work over half your life.
How to use it
Calendars → Add Google Calendar, Add Outlook or Add iCloud (they read Add another … once one is linked). Google and Outlook open a consent screen and come straight back. On the iPhone that screen opens in a browser sheet, and you only sign in to Google or Microsoft there — never to YWGSD; the app is already you. iCloud takes a minute longer — see below. Each connection gets its own row with its own sync state, and disconnects on its own.
The honest version
Nothing here has ever run against a live API — you'll be the first for all three, and if one fails the page names the cause rather than shrugging. Add as many accounts per provider as you like; they're all one pool of busy time, which is the point.
iCloud takes an app password
Apple has no "sign in and approve", so you make a password just for us.
Every other provider hands out a revocable, read-only grant. Apple publishes neither OAuth nor a calendar API, so the only way into an iCloud calendar is CalDAV with an app-specific password. Without it, anyone who lives in Apple's calendar can't be scheduled around at all.
How to use it
Calendars → Add iCloud, then follow the four steps on screen: open appleid.apple.com, Sign-In and Security → App-Specific Passwords → +, name it YWGSD, and paste what Apple shows you along with your Apple ID email. We check it with Apple before storing anything, so a typo comes back straight away.
The honest version
An app password isn't limited to calendars — Apple offers no narrower scope — so it's broader than what we need. We only ever read, it's encrypted before it's stored with a key the database has never seen, and you switch it off by deleting that password at appleid.apple.com rather than anywhere in here. Repeating events are expanded by Apple's server; if that ever comes back unexpanded, the Calendars screen tells you some occurrences may be missing instead of quietly planning over them.
The same calendar on two accounts
You and someone else can both connect the same shared calendar.
How to use it
Nothing special — connect it on each account the normal way.
The honest version
You'll both plan around those meetings, but neither of you sees the other's scheduled work, because we never write our blocks back to the calendar. So two people can both fill the same free Thursday afternoon. That's fine for your own work and personal accounts; it isn't team planning, and we won't pretend it is.
When a connection breaks
We tell you, rather than quietly booking work over everything.
How to use it
Calendars shows Reconnect needed or Last sync failed against the account, and you reconnect from the same screen. For iCloud that means pasting a fresh app password — usually because the old one was deleted at appleid.apple.com.