OSS calendar servers/clients that don't suck?
Just missed a meeting today because I accepted an event on Thunderbird this morning, that should have synced to Nextcloud, and then to my phone running a calendar app from 'simplemobiletools'. Never made it. After I missed the meeting I didn't see the event on nextcloud, then went to look at the event on thunderbird, and now lo and behold its on nextcloud, two hours after it was over. Cool. Still not on the phone.
Anyone have a solid calendar stack they like? I'd like to reliably get from emailed invite to alert on my phone.
26 replies
Heads up about SimpleMobileTools - the project sold out and some of those apps are no longer being updated, I'd suggest migrating your data over to the forked apps now maintained by the Fossify organization
https://www.androidauthority.com/simple-mobile-tools-acquisition-3391041/
https://github.com/FossifyOrg
Radicale + Thunderbird + Davx5/tasks.org/acalendar+
Unfortunately Davx5 is broken if you use a firewall to block google calling home to the mothership
Davx5 from Fdroid has no dependency on Google
You're right. It has a bug.
I use Rethink to block 90% of my traffic, including all system processes on my LineageOS. DAVxโต works like a charm for me.
Obviously you're not blocking google.
I went trough 5 days of Rethink logs to confirm. Not a single call to a Google domain was allowed. DAVx5 works great.
Another user posted that Davx5 from Fdroid has no dependency on Google. Maybe you're using the Playstore version? I don't even have GApps to install the playstore.
the logs are coming from your OS, not the app
Update: For your info, this known bug's discussion is here:
If you're using the latest version of Davxx5 and your syncing is not broken, then you are not blocking your system from constantly pinging Google.
I'm sorry you're experiencing this bug. I'm not however. I even checked my pi-hole: the only access to connectivitycheck.gstatic.com comes from my wife's phone, which isn't hardened.
I vaguely remember doing some fiddling to the captive portal setting years ago. I probably found a way to disable the check altogether.
Its a bug. Its not closed source dependency. It requires your device to make a call to a Google domain.
If your phone doesn't call home to that domain, DAVx5 refuses to connect to the internet. Its a known bug.
I went trough 5 days of Rethink logs to confirm. Not a single call to a Google domain was allowed. DAVx5 works great.
Another user posted that Davx5 from Fdroid has no dependency on Google. Maybe you're using the Playstore version? I don't even have GApps to install the playstore.
I'm using the one on F-Droid. I do not have gapps on my devices.
What they say "no dependency on Google" they mean no proprietary blobs. That's true. The calls home to Google to check for internet activity are made by open-source software baked-into AOSP.
If you use a firewall to block these calls, then the OS says that you don't have internet connection and Davxx5 is dumb enough to take that as fact and refuses to sync. This is a known bug.
On custom roms like grapheneos you can change the domain it connects to. Om grapheneos it defaults to servers hosted by grapheneos.
That probably explains it. So your firewall isn't setup to block your phone from phoning home to the Graphene mothership then..
I'm sorry you're experiencing this bug. I'm not however. I even checked my pi-hole: the only access to connectivitycheck.gstatic.com comes from my wife's phone, which isn't hardened.
I vaguely remember doing some fiddling to the captive portal setting years ago. I probably found a way to disable the check altogether.
Thank you for pointing out Davx blindly follows NET_CAPABILITY... which calls home. I avoid data mining apps but don't have a firewall to protect from these cases, may I ask what you recommend?
I use AFWall. I dont trust the VPN firewall solutions because that would easily lead to accidental leaks.
That's what I've been using for a few years now, with SimpleCalendar (soon Fossify) on my phone. Didn't have any problems yet.
The problem isn't with Nextcloud (I had the same issue happen with me). The problem is with the default sync settings on Thunderbird and DAVx5 (at least for me). Thunderbird defaulted to a longer than I wanted synch schedule, so I dropped it down to syncing every 15 minutes. DAVx5 was set to 240 minutes unless the event was created on my phone. Once I updated both schedules to every 15 minutes, I haven't noticed an issue.
Chiming in for Radicale. Been running it for a couple of years now along with Fantastical (Iโm on iOS/macOS), and itโs been great.
The problem is not that the clients suck, the problem is that you're using Nextcloud. Switch to something like Radicale or Baikal and it will all work fine.
Radicale, CalDAV-Sync, Calengoo.
Calengoo can also connect directly to Radicale.
DAVx5 works fine too for the most part but it crashed once and doesn't seem to like calendars with lots of events.
CalDAV-Sync is old but super solid. It can't do contacts but there's a counterpart app called "CardDAV-Sync Free" for that.
Also can't do calendars that are marked "journal only" so if you need that you gotta use DAVx5.
CalDav
I use kcaldav and davx5
DecSync?