A calendar next to your notes, with a meeting note for every event

Most people keep meetings in one app and notes in another, then retype the title, the time and the names before every call. Barside puts a calendar next to your notes instead. Paste your Google Calendar or Outlook calendar's private iCal address once, and Barside shows today and the next 7 days beside your library. One click on any event makes a meeting note that is already filled in, and a quiet notification tells you when the meeting is about to start.

This guide shows how to connect a calendar, how meeting notes and the heads-up work, and where your calendar data lives.

Why keep your calendar next to your notes

A calendar tells you when a meeting is. Your notes hold the rest: the agenda, the decisions, and who does what next. When the two live apart, the note for Tuesday's call ends up in a random file, and a month later nobody can find what was decided.

Barside joins them without moving your calendar. Events stay in Google Calendar or Outlook, where you already manage them. Barside reads them, shows them in a Calendar view, and gives each event one meeting note in the workspace you choose. The calendar keeps the times; Barside keeps what happens in the meeting.

How the calendar works in Barside

Barside connects to a calendar through its private iCal (ICS) address, a link Google Calendar and Outlook offer so other apps can read a calendar. Barside never signs in to your Google or Microsoft account, and it only reads: it cannot add, move or delete events.

Open Calendar in the sidebar, or type cal in the search bar, to see your agenda:

• Today and Tomorrow, then the six days after, each with its date and how many events it has.
• A Now line that shows where you are in the day, and a Now tag on the meeting in progress.
• For each event: its time (or All day), the calendar it comes from in that calendar's color, the place (Online when the place is a web link) and how many people are invited. Tentative and declined events are marked.
• Click an event's title for its details: date and time, place, the first 12 attendees and how many more, the organizer and the description.
• Join appears when the event has a Teams, Zoom, Google Meet or Webex link, or another web address as its place or link, and opens it in your default browser.
• Meeting note makes the event's note. Once the note exists, the button reads Open note.

Refresh at the top loads every calendar again, the gear opens Calendar settings, and the top of the view says when your calendars were last updated. Connect a work and a personal calendar, and both appear in one agenda, each in its own color.

How to connect Google Calendar or Outlook

You need the calendar's secret address once. Barside's form shows the same steps, with buttons that open the right settings page in your browser.

1. In Barside, open Settings & backups and scroll to Calendars. Choose Add calendar. From an empty Calendar view, Open Settings takes you there.
2. Under Where do I find it?, choose Google Calendar, Outlook or Other.
3. Copy your calendar's address, as described below, and paste it into Secret iCal address.
4. Choose Check address. Barside downloads the calendar once and tells you how many events it found in the next 30 days.
5. Check the Calendar name, which Barside fills in with the calendar's own name, pick a color, then choose Add calendar.

Repeat for each calendar you want to see, up to 10. Barside saves a calendar only after its address has loaded, so a mistyped link never leaves a broken calendar behind.

Google Calendar

Use a computer: the Google Calendar phone app does not show this address.

1. Open Google Calendar's settings. The Open Google Calendar settings button in Barside does it for you.
2. On the left, under "Settings for my calendars", click your calendar.
3. Click "Integrate calendar".
4. Copy the address under "Secret address in iCal format".

If that section is missing, a Google Workspace admin has turned it off. If you are the admin, for example because your email uses your own domain, open the Google Admin console and go to Apps → Google Workspace → Calendar → Sharing settings. Set "External sharing options for primary calendars" to "Share all information, but outsiders cannot change calendars". The change can take up to 24 hours.

Outlook

This works for Outlook.com and for work or school accounts in Outlook on the web. Barside has a button for each.

1. Open your Outlook calendar on the web.
2. Select Settings (the gear icon), then Calendar → Shared calendars.
3. Under "Publish a calendar", choose your calendar and "Can view all details", then select "Publish".
4. Copy the ICS link, not the HTML link. The HTML link is a web page for people to look at.

If "Publish a calendar" is missing, your organization has turned it off. Ask your IT admin whether it can be turned on.

Other calendars

Any calendar that offers a subscription link in iCal format works. In your calendar app, look for "Subscribe", "iCal", "ICS" or "Share link". Barside accepts addresses that start with https://, webcal:// or webcals://.

Meeting notes in one click

Choose Meeting note on any event: in the Calendar view, in the daily briefing, or by clicking the heads-up before the meeting. Barside makes a note from the built-in Meeting notes template and opens it:

• The title is the event's name and date, such as Weekly sync · Sep 24.
• When:, Who: and Where: are filled in with the date and start time, the people invited, and the place, or the meeting link when there is no place.
• Headings for Agenda, Notes, Decisions and Action items, with a checklist under Action items, are ready for you to type.

Each event gets one note, and each meeting in a repeating series gets its own. Choose Open note later, from the calendar or the briefing, and you land in the same note, not a copy. Pick where these notes go in Settings, under Meeting notes go to. When a note belongs to a client or project, the workspace selector above the note moves it in one step (see workspaces for projects).

A meeting note is an ordinary Barside note. Every item under Action items shows up on the task board built from your checklists, where you can give it a due date. To keep a record of the conversation, transcribe the call on your computer into the same note. After the call, meeting follow-through turns the transcript into a summary, quoted decisions and proposed tasks, with the AI you connect. Notes from events always start from the built-in Meeting notes template; for other notes you write again and again, see note templates and repeating notes.

A quiet heads-up before each meeting

With a calendar connected, Remind me before meetings is on. It shows a silent notification 2 minutes before each timed event, such as Weekly sync starts in 2 minutes, with the time and place. Choose 1, 2, 5 or 10 minutes, or turn it off, in Settings under Calendars. Clicking the notification opens the meeting note, or makes it if it does not exist yet.

The heads-up is built to stay quiet:

• It comes once per meeting, and each meeting in a repeating series counts on its own.
• All-day events, canceled events and events you declined are skipped. Barside can tell which events you declined in Google calendars. Outlook leaves declined meetings out of a published calendar by itself.
• Nothing appears while your screen is locked.
• If you open Barside after a meeting started more than a minute ago, it does not tell you late.

It is a nudge for meetings. Reminders on notes are different: you set them yourself with the bell on any note, at any time, and they stay until you finish or snooze them.

Your calendar across Barside

• Daily briefing. The Daily briefing tab in Library & briefing lists what is left of today's calendar, with a Meeting note button on each event, next to overdue reminders and unchecked tasks. It works without AI or a network. See the daily briefing from your notes.
• Search bar. Press Alt+Shift+Space in any app and type part of an event's title or place. Events from the next 7 days show up, and choosing one opens the Calendar view. See the search bar and hotkeys.
• Agents. Start a scheduled agent from the Morning briefing preset (weekdays at 8:30), and the AI you connect writes a note that begins with what is due today, then today's calendar. See AI agents that ask before they act.
• Modes. Writer Mode and Team Mode both keep the calendar in the sidebar. See app modes.
• Barside meetings. Video meetings you schedule in the Meetings tab can be added to Google Calendar, Outlook or Apple Calendar, so they sit in the same calendar as the rest of your day. See free video meetings for small groups.

Who it helps

• Consultants and freelancers who work across Google and Outlook: one agenda for both, and each meeting note moved into the client's workspace.
• Team leads with back-to-back one-on-ones: the agenda for every call is one click away, and action items land on the task board without copying.
• Anyone who dislikes blank pages before a call. The note already knows who is coming, when and where.

Limits worth knowing

• Calendar feeds are read-only, and Google or Microsoft update them on their own schedule. Google can take hours to publish a change.
• Barside refreshes each calendar when it starts, every 15 minutes, after your computer wakes or unlocks, and when you choose Refresh. If an update fails, you see Could not update with the reason, the last events stay on screen, and Barside tries again after 1, 2 and 4 minutes, then at longer gaps of up to 2 hours.
• An Outlook calendar published with "Can view titles and locations", or with busy times only, has no attendees or descriptions. Publish with "Can view all details" to get them.
• You can connect up to 10 calendars. Plain http:// addresses and addresses on private or local networks are refused.
• The calendar works the same on Windows 10 and 11, on Linux and in Barside for Mac. On Linux, the secret address is encrypted through your desktop's keyring (GNOME Keyring, KWallet or KeePassXC), so a keyring must be open to add a calendar. On a Mac, the macOS Keychain protects it.

Privacy: where your calendar data lives

Barside downloads your calendar straight from Google or Microsoft to your computer, every 15 minutes. You need no Barside account for it.

• The secret address is stored encrypted on your computer and never included in backups. Other parts of Barside only see a shortened form, like calendar.google.com/….
• The last copy of each calendar is kept, also encrypted, so your agenda shows before the next update arrives.
• Anyone who has a secret address can read that calendar, so treat it like a password. If you shared it by mistake, Google Calendar's Reset button makes a new address and turns the old one off. Then add the new address in Barside.
• Removing a calendar in Barside stops the updates and deletes its saved copy. The meeting notes you made stay in your library.
• On a new computer, add your calendars again. The encrypted file only opens on the computer that made it.

The privacy guide has the full details.

How it compares

Many meeting apps record and summarize calls in the cloud. Barside takes a local path: your calendar gives the meeting note its details, the call can be transcribed on your own computer, and follow-up uses the AI you choose, when you choose. If you are comparing tools, read the Granola alternative guide and the list of the best AI meeting assistants. For notes apps in general, see the best note-taking apps.

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