One of the few remaining ubiquitous open formats of the web. Unfortunately Apple still refuses to recognise *.ics files unless they're included as a Mail attachment.
One of the few remaining ubiquitous open formats of the web. Unfortunately Apple still refuses to recognise *.ics files unless they're included as a Mail attachment.
What do you mean? You can open them in Finder or iOS Files app and a calendar import UI will be shown.
Opening an .ics file on iOS from the Files app will show the events, but will not allow you to import/add them to your calendar.
Apple's built-in Calendar program on macOS will import VEVENT entries just fine; most programs handle VEVENTs in an .ics file well.
VTODO, on the other hand, is broken in many applications, and I've only gotten VTODO to work on Mac once in my life—and I don't remember how. Outlook flat-out ignores VTODO.
If every calendar app supported VEVENT and VTODO well, my life would be much, much simpler. I'm required to use some cloud software that tracks events and tasks, and I'd love to sync it to my phone and have those events and tasks show up as events and tasks. But, because very few calendars import VEVENT correctly (or at all), my cloud software exports both events and tasks as VEVENTs—events for the correct duration, and tasks as a five-minute event on the due date. This is a stupid kludge to get around the usual bad support of VEVENT, and it's one of the things that raises my blood pressure the most.
We made the deliberate choice on MacOS to remove VTODO from iCal when it split out to the Reminders App and started to go beyond the open protocol.
Opening an .ics file on iOS from the Files app will show the events, but will not allow you to import/add them to your calendar.
Not true. I just tried it on an iPhone 14 with iOS 18.4, and it works fine.
You tap on the ics icon, and it opens up the details. Tap "Done" and the event lands in the calendar you specified.
What can I say, other than we have very different experiences. Opening an .ics file from the Files app indeed shows its details, but selecting "Done" does nothing but dismiss its contents and adds nothing to the calendar.
Contrast this with opening the same .ics file from an email attachment or viewing it online, which presents an "Add All" button.
The irony being that iCalendar would be exactly what it'd be called if Apple had invented it.
Apple Intelligence now scans the entire email and sends me its best guess of the event date, time and location, which causes me to second-guess it and contact the organizer again anyway.
Ubiquitous and, unfortunately, almost always implemented with some bugs.