Syncing between primary and shared calendars on the same account will create what seems to be duplicate events.
For example
The Personal calendar was shared to the Primary calendar, and shows up in Google Calendar's web interface.
If a sync established between the Personal calendar and the Primary calendar, you would see this:
On the right: You're seeing the original event—the source event that Reclaim synced to the target calendar.
On the left: You also see the synced copy of the source event—the copy of the event that Reclaim created on the target calendar.
This ends up looking like a duplicate event, but they're two separate events.
The original event, on the right, is the one that is not visible to others (besides you) and the synced copy, on the right, is one that gets created in order to provide visibility and availability to others without sacrificing your privacy.
Avoid cluttering your calendar
The simplest thing to do is to hide the source calendar from view by unchecking the colored box next to the calendar name.
But now I can't see the details!
By hiding the source, you may have hidden the details you care about, such as which personal commitment you have coming up.
We recommend installing Reclaim's Google Workspace Add-on. It brings much of the Reclaim capabilities right to your fingertips while in Google Calendar. It's useful for showing the title of the source event with a link to open up the event from the source calendar.
This is what it looks like when you click on a source event:
And this is what it looks like when you click on a target event:
Other options:
Sacrifice a bit of privacy and sync all details to the target calendar, giving you the context.
Toggle the source calendar on and off when you need to see the details or make changes to the source event.
Continue seeing duplicate events.
Beware: syncing with full details, even when marked private, can still result in workplace administrators and superusers being able to see them. So if you choose this approach, be mindful if the event "Job Interview" lands on your personal calendar, it could be seen by IT or the company leadership on your work calendar!
Other solutions
We are working with the creators of popular calendar apps to make it possible to not only have privacy-centric universal availability (courtesy of Reclaim Calendar Sync), but also not have to see any clutter or experience awkward workflows.
Today, the following apps support Reclaim Calendar Sync events:
Fantastical, a paid app available on macOS, iOS, and iPadOS.
Vimcal, a paid web-based calendar available on all platforms.
Both of these apps have a feature that will blend related events together to appear as one. For example, this is what the previous example looks like in Fantastical and Vimcal, respectively:
In addition, Reclaim's own UI uses a similar technique and presents opaque sync events back to you (and only you) with the original source details.
Which event do I make changes to?
You should always make changes to original source events, not the synced copies. Reclaim automatically manages the synced copy and keeps it up-to-date with any changes, so no need to adjust it.
You can think of the original event as the source of truth, and the synced copy as a reflection of the original event that's used to protect your availability from others.
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