Hi John,
Could you ask the developers what their thoughts are on my comment above this please…
We currently have no UI to display the “default” value and thus we can’t use it. This may change in some future version. There’s no way in the API to figure out what the default value is for a particular calendar.
From a layman’s view point would it not work by simply using ‘default’ in the variable?
This problem was reported six years ago. Do we have any plan or method to fix it? Thanks.
Hello. Just found out that eMClient has been exposing all my private events created through the Desktp app as public because of this bug.
This was reported 7 years ago. How come there’s no fix? There’s a major privacy problem here!!
According to Google support page, Google shared calendar events “are private by default” even if it’s shared unless you change it to public.
(Quote from Google page).
Events from Gmail
Only you can see the events that are automatically added to your calendar from Gmail, even if you’ve shared your calendar with someone.
If you want others to see an event, follow the instructions to change the privacy settings for the event.
If you use Calendar through a work or school account, your administrator can see events from Gmail
@Erwan, can you check your Google Calendar sharing setting?
You have two options:
Afterall, it is Google that is sharing the calendar, not eM Client.
Hello. My Google Calendar is shared as “see only busy/free”.
when you create a new event you have the opportunity to set its privacy as Private, Public, or Default. In my case Default would be “see only busy/free” which is what I’d expect.
However, any event created from eMclient sets the privacy setting to Public, therefore overriding the status defined in Google Calendar (would have been private if the event was created within Google Calendar as reported by @cyberzork above) . This is why I’m saying eMclient has been consistently exposing all these events, and not Google Calendar itself.
The correct behavior would be to keep the Default behavior, or a minima to set Private for obvious privacy reasons. This is what was suggested in these 2013 and 2014 posts.
Yes i too have found that even though a Google “Shared Calendar” setting (Online) is set to “See only busy/free” as @Erwan advised above, when you add the Calendar Event in eM Client to your Google Calendar and look at the event in Google Online, the Event is shown as “Public” and not just for the peeps who you shared the Calendar too ?. See screenshots below.
I see however that if you create the event in your Google Calendar (Online) you can specify “Public or Private” in the Create Event Options. So i think the problem is that (eM Client) doesn’t have the option when creating the Google Calendar Event to make an event Private or Public.
Maybe the Google Calendar API doesn’t allow for third party clients to enable “Private or Public” when creating an event like in Google Calendar online ? Or it just hasn’t been enabled yet in eM Client ?.
…
Google Calendar Create Event Online (Has option to create private or public)
I have since found the (Private event) checkbox at the bottom left in eM Client new calendar event, that then “does update the event in Google online” to (Also Private) if you check that box and works fine.
It was so small down the bottom left i didn’t notice it 
Yes agree would be good to have Private and Public event options (for the default) in “eM Client Calendar Settings” so you don’t have to manually tick or untick at the bottom.
Ps In my case i would always want events to be Private even for Shared calendar events.
This option you set in Google is for events you create using their web interface. It is not for events created using other applications.
It may not be possible to set the “default” option with eMclient, however it is already possible to choose Public or Private for individual events from within eMclient by ticking the checkbox mentionned by @cyberzork
What you want to implement :
- short term : have a global parameter to set Public or Private by default for events created within eMclient
- short term (even urgent, privacy problem!) : set the default to Private, because with public you’re exposing people’s events without them knowing
- short term : mention that Public/Private will override Google Calendar default behavior (that’s not obvious, and not all users will be doing the insightful research we’re doing now! )
- long term : (if possible) find a way to use Google API to create an event without overriding Google’s calendar default behavior.
I think the first items can be implemented easily and will make eMclient much better regarding clients privacy!
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Yes, if the event you created in the Google Calendar is public, that means Google will share it with everyone who you have shared the calendar with. That is what public means. If you don’t want Google to share the details, make the event private.
No, it doesn’t override anything. This setting you have on your Google Calendar for events to be private by default, that is for events you create using the Google web interface, not when using another application to create them. If you set an event to private in eM Client, it will be private in Google. If you set an event to public in eM Client, it will be public in Google.
What you want is to have a setting in eM Client to create events as private by default, so I have changed this thread to a Feature Request.
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Thank you, this would be a great solution.
There’s no way in the API to figure out what the default value is for a particular calendar.
Wondering would this still be the case ? or would the API have possibly now been updated to allow default value.
I’m a new user to the software. Immediately encountered this issue and found it very disturbing. Can we at least enable default value for the “private” checkbox in the account settings or something similar?
Thanks!
Hello,
I am a developer by profession and have researched that this issue can be solved rather easily, without the need to set Private events by default. I consider this rather important as it is a deal-breaker for me in continued usage of eM Client.
Google Calendar currently officially supports three visibility options: Default, Public, Private. The Default visibility option is neither Public nor Private. It is a separate third option, and I strongly suggest that this should be the default option in eM Client from now on as well. This is the default behavior for iOS Calendar and the official Google Calendar web interface, both of which I also use.
Please see official Google Calendar API Documentation, where “visibility” is a string that can take “default”, “public” and “private” options (at the bottom of the Request body section):
How does Default differ from Public and Private?
Any events with Default visibility in shared calendars flagged using the “See only free/busy (hide details)” will be seen as Private by outsiders. If the “See all event details” option is chosen instead by the calendar owner, then such events will be seen as Public by outsiders. Relevant screenshots can be seen in previous posts in this thread multiple times.
Thank you and I hope to see an update soon as it’s been 7 years since this thread has started.
I just discovered that for the last two years at my new company, which uses Google for the organization’s email and calendar, while I have been happily using emClient as my local client, my entire Calendar details have been visible to all employees DESPITE the fact that my Google calendar sharing level is set to “Free/Busy only” status!
This shocked me, and it is simply unacceptable to have the default setting for calendar events made in emClient be “PUBLIC”, which overrides the default Google calendar sharing setting. This thread offers many suggestions for a quick repair. I’m super disappointed there has been no progress from emClient on this. Let me strongly advocate to the dev team to do something to address this! Meanwhile I am rapidly evaluating other client packages.
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