I am on a mission to De-google my tech ecosystem and if luck permits, persuade others to do so as well; it turns out that Google does some pretty bad stuff. And also to protect my data because they have enough of that already.
Anyhow, my college will soon start and I wanted a digital calendar in my life once again. Having one of them is important from a productivity/time management point-of-view, and I couldn’t use Google Calendar anymore.
My first stop was using a public NextCloud instance (courtesy of tilde.green) and use the calendar feature. But it soon turned out to be an unreliable option for me because of some authentication issues I was facing (just power-user stuff).
So then, the only rational option was to host my own “calendar” service, and so I did.
How does it work?
How these digital calendars operate is called “CalDAV”, a Internet standard for all things calendar. It’s a protocol (like HTTP) but for calendars, events, and all such things. If you can hack up a CalDAV server, then you’re good to go! Just bind your CalDAV client to the server and kaboom!
In my case, I am using Radicale as my CalDAV server and a combination of apps as clients (to access the calendars).
A note on CalDAV and its cousin CardDAV is given below.
Why self-host it?
- It’s fun to do this kinda stuff.
- You learn a bunch of things: networking, sys-admin skills, debugging, and so on.
- You become less dependent on “someone else’s computer” i.e the CLOUD.
But in particular to my project:
- Radicale uses VERY little resources.
- It’s very easy to setup.
- It’s a Pascal’s Wager.
But what do I need to host it?
You can do it in your laptop now, it’s just a PyPi package, which is basically free!
But you can also use a dedicated SBC, a VM or a VPS to do it, if you’re interested in getting into homelabbing.
I think I’ll write a tutorial to host a Radicale server + other goodies on a RaspberryPi Zero 2 W. Stay Tuned!
What does it look like in the end?
Like fresh air after a thunderstorm. Like FREEDOMMMMM!!!
It feels liberating to host any service on your own, because you now have control of your own stuff, which is hard to do in 2026.
Anyhow, I can access the server and my calendar from my Android phone and tablet and can use it as well!
Phew. One step closer.