Your Family Calendar, Everywhere: Shared Events, Private Notes, and Photos

This post comes from the official AiDive blog, the creators of Davie. We share our personal experiences using Davie with our own families, highlighting what works well and areas for future improvement.

In our last post, we shared our experience using the family calendar for a month. Since then, the most frequent question we've received isn't about a specific feature, but rather: "Does it work on computers too?"

We faced the same challenge. Our schedules live on our phones, but our work happens on PCs. If we needed to check "What’s happening this Saturday?" at the office, we’d have to pull out our phones. When booking a doctor’s appointment, we’d find ourselves toggling between a browser and our phones. If a family calendar is only accessible on a phone, it feels like we’re navigating half our day without it.

So, this post is about having the same calendar, accessible everywhere. We’ll break down how our family uses Davie across our iPhones, Macs, Windows PCs, and web browsers, and how we differentiate between shared and private events.

We opened the same September calendar on our Mac app and browser. You can select which spaces to view from the list on the left.

The Same Calendar, No Matter Where You Open It

Davie is currently available on five platforms:

• iPhone · Android Apps (App Store, Google Play)
• Mac App (Mac App Store)
• Windows App (Microsoft Store)
• Web Browser — A web app requiring only a login (davie.im/app)

There’s no need to manually turn on sync or connect accounts. Simply log in with the same email, and your calendar appears. An event added on your phone is instantly visible on your Mac, and an event scheduled on your work PC browser is ready on your phone by the time you commute home.

My typical day breaks down like this:

• Phone: Used for jotting down events on the go, uploading photos, and receiving notifications.
• Mac / Windows: Used at my desk to get a broad monthly overview and organize schedules. Clicking on a day opens the entry field directly, and clicking elsewhere saves it.
• Browser: Used on work computers where installation isn't possible, or on my parents' computers. It’s always the latest version, so no need to worry about updates.

One heads-up: the desktop and browser versions don’t include every single feature found in the apps. Creating new spaces, using home screen widgets, or the Discovery feature for events like festivals and school dates are mobile-only. We designed the desktop experience as a place to "view and organize events, photos, and notes on a larger screen." We’ll touch on this again at the end of the post.

Shared Events, Organized by Space

In Davie, events belong to a Space. I have separate spaces for our family, the kids, and our pets. Doctor’s appointments and kindergarten schedules go into the kids’ space, while pet food orders and vaccination reminders go into the pet space.

Each space has a color, making it easy to distinguish events even when viewed together on one calendar. On desktop and web browsers, you can select which spaces to view using checkboxes in the left-hand list. The screen above shows only the kids’, dogs’, and cats’ spaces enabled. If work events were mixed in, it would get complicated. These selections are remembered per device, so you can keep only the work space active on your work PC and the family space at home.

Events within the same space are visible to all members with the same content. However, notification timings can be set individually. For example, my wife might receive a kindergarten notification the evening before, while I receive it mid-afternoon on the same day. Completion checks are also shared. You can mark an event as complete directly from the desktop by clicking the checkbox next to the event on the calendar. Only that specific day’s event is marked, so there’s no risk of accidentally altering recurring weekly tasks.

Private Events, Your Choice of View

An often-overlooked aspect of shared calendars is how to keep things private. I use three methods:

First, Personal Spaces. When you create an account, a private space for yourself is automatically generated. Since no one else can access it, I use it for personal appointments, private plans, and tasks that only I need to manage. While these events appear alongside family events on the main calendar, they are essentially non-existent to other family members. When creating an event, the screen where you select which space to add it to clearly marks this personal space as "Not visible to others."

When creating an event, you select a space. Events in your personal space are only visible to you.

Second, Space-Level Permissions. Within space settings, you can define permissions for events, photos, and notes as Disabled / View Only / Collaborate for each. For spaces shared with my parents, we collaborate on events but only allow viewing photos. For the kids' spaces, we collaborate on everything, including photos. The space creator sets these permissions, and they apply consistently across the app, desktop, and browser.

You can set separate permissions for events, photos, and notes within each space.

Third, Device-Specific Views. As mentioned earlier, the space selections are saved per device, not per account. On your work PC browser, you might only enable the work space, while on your home Mac, you might only enable the family space. This allows you to have a different calendar view tailored to your location, even with the same account. On your phone, you can also customize which spaces’ new posts and photos appear in the feed, a setting that applies only to you. This means after work hours, you can exclude work-related content and see only family updates.

Photos on Your Calendar, Accessible on Any Device

What truly sets Davie apart from typical shared calendars is the ability to attach photos and notes from the day alongside your events. Switching to photo mode transforms your calendar, displaying photos for each date.

The photo mode looks the same on the Mac app and browser. You can upload photos directly from here using the button in the top right.

Initially, this view was only available on phones, but now it opens identically on Mac, Windows apps, and web browsers. The experience of browsing through a month’s worth of photos on a large screen is quite different from a phone. It answers the question, "What did we do this month?" with a single calendar view.

Uploading photos from your PC is now possible. You can do it directly from the browser web app, and starting with version 1.0.2 of the Mac and Windows apps. If you’ve transferred photos from your camera to your PC, you can upload them directly without needing to send them to your phone first. Similar to the mobile app, you can include multiple photos in a single post, and upload videos up to 3 minutes long. Family members can react to uploaded photos with likes and comments, and use emojis for events – all accessible from any device.

Currently, the ability to download photos is limited to mobile devices. For PCs, consider it a viewing and uploading feature.

Areas for Improvement, Based on Our Experience

As the creators, we also want to acknowledge the areas where Davie can be improved.

• Creating new spaces is only possible on mobile. Desktop and browser versions are intended for managing existing spaces. However, joining via an invite link is possible from any device.
• Discovery (for festivals, school events) and widgets are mobile-only. On desktop, these added events only appear as background layers.
• There’s no feature yet to mark a single event as private. Currently, the method is to place private events in your personal space.
• Downloading photos is currently mobile-only.

We will share progress on these fronts through future updates and our official blog.

What Changes When Your Calendar Leaves Your Phone

It’s not a dramatic transformation. However, I find myself reaching for my phone less often at work, and when planning weekends, we now spread the month out on the Mac and review it together as a family. The need to transfer files to my phone just to upload photos has also disappeared.

For a family calendar to remain useful, it must be accessible when and where you need it. Whether that place is your phone, your desk Mac, your work Windows PC, or your parents’ browser, having the same calendar open is the biggest change we've implemented.

If you’re juggling your schedule across phones and PCs, try Davie for free. You can download the apps from our download page or open the web app directly at davie.im/app. If you encounter any issues or have suggestions, please use the 'Send Feedback' option in the app or desktop versions – our development team reads every submission.

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This post was written by the AiDive team for the official Davie blog, sharing our product usage experiences.