Moving from TimeTree to Equal House, step by step

Moving a family from one organiser to another takes an evening. Keep TimeTree running while you do it, and for a week or two afterwards, so nobody misses anything while the rest of the family catches up.

Families moving from another family app can have a month of Equal House Pro on us with code SWITCH, which unlocks the calendar link in step 2. It is 31 days of Pro for the whole household, with no card and nothing to cancel, and it never turns into a subscription. It works once per household, once per person and once per email address, is limited to the first 10,000 households, and closes at 23:59 UK time on 31 March 2027. Every condition is on the switch page.

First, the catch: TimeTree has no export

TimeTree’s own help says you can bring events into TimeTree from Google, Apple or Outlook, but you cannot export TimeTree’s events to another calendar, and it has no shareable calendar link. So no app, Equal House included, can pull a TimeTree calendar across automatically. The steps below get the events across in an evening anyway, by starting with whatever is already somewhere else.

1. Set up your household

Install the Equal House app, sign in and give your household a name. Bric can ask a few quick questions and set it up with you, or you can do it yourself: see set up your household.

If you are claiming the free month, leave your email on the claim page first and sign in to the app with the same address. The month starts when you sign in.

2. Link the calendars TimeTree was showing you

Many TimeTree families also keep a Google, Outlook or Apple calendar, and let TimeTree display it. Those events never belonged to TimeTree: they are still in that calendar, and Equal House can show them too.

In Equal House:

1. Find that calendar’s secret iCal link. Our guide Link your Google, Outlook or Apple calendar shows where each provider keeps it.
2. More → Calendar Sync, paste the link, give it a name, and choose whose events these are.

What to expect:

• It is read-only and one-way. You change those events in Google, Outlook or Apple, and nothing Equal House does is written back.
• It refreshes through the day, not instantly, so a change can take a few hours to appear.

Calendar Sync is part of Pro, which the free month unlocks. See bring in a calendar you already keep.

3. Bring the TimeTree-only events across with Magic Add

For events that only ever lived in TimeTree, you don’t have to type them in one by one:

1. In TimeTree, open the month view, or the list of what’s coming up, and take a screenshot. One screenshot per month or two is plenty.
2. In Equal House, open Bric → Bric can read… → A screenshot and pick it.
3. Magic Add suggests the events it finds. Check the dates and times, change anything it misread, then confirm.

Nothing reaches your calendar until you have seen it and said yes. Magic Add has a monthly allowance for the household, small on Free and bigger with Pro; see Magic Add.

The repeating ones are quicker by hand. The weekly swimming lesson, bin day or a birthday needs adding once as a repeating event, and it carries on by itself; birthdays and anniversaries repeat every year without being asked. See add an event.

4. Memos and to-dos

Copy TimeTree’s memos and to-dos across by hand, into the place in Equal House that fits each one:

• shopping goes on the shared shopping list, sorted into UK supermarket aisle order;
• jobs become tasks, and the ones that come round again become repeating tasks. Ready-made tasks cover most household chores in a couple of taps;
• the things one person knows (the wifi password, the boiler, which bin goes out this week) go in House Notes.

Equal House has one shared shopping list and one shared task list rather than several named lists.

5. Invite the family

• Grown-ups get an invite: More → Your Account → Add a family member, then share the invite however you usually talk to them. See invite another adult.
• Children need no email address or password. Add them as children, and they sign in with the family’s six-picture code and an optional PIN, on a device a grown-up has approved. See add a child and how children sign in.

If your TimeTree calendar is shared with people outside the house, such as grandparents or the other half of a co-parenting arrangement, Equal House can link two households rather than putting everyone in one. See link another household.

6. Give it a week

Tick things off as you do them for a week, then open the Fairness Score on the Tasks tab. It shows how the grown-ups are sharing the household work, by effort rather than by count, and Auto-Balance can move jobs to whoever has room. That is the part TimeTree never tried to do: see what the Fairness Score means.

What doesn’t come across

• TimeTree’s events can’t be exported, so they come across as screenshots read by Magic Add, or by hand.
• Comments, reactions and the event chat stay in TimeTree; Equal House has no family chat.
• Equal House’s free plan plans three days ahead on a rolling basis. Like TimeTree, it also works in a web browser: Equal House on your computer, at app.equal.house.

If you paid for TimeTree Premium, cancel it where you bought it once you have finished moving.

Still deciding? Our TimeTree and Equal House comparison sets out where each is ahead.