Downloaded .ics files won't open in Calendar on iOS (broke again)

bzgnyc

I believe this is the same issue as reported here but it appears the fix no longer works:
https://orionfeedback.org/d/10340-downloaded-ics-files-wont-open-in-calendar-on-ios

Often after I sign up for an event, the website offers to add an entry for it to my calendar via .ics file (effectively -- often they give a different description). These are easy to add from my desktop but annoying these days to add from my phone when I use Orion.

Opening the same link in Safari works fine and offers to add to my calendar. It also used to work from DuckDuckGo though it seems to have broken for them in recent versions of iOS, too. I didn't try Orion on my previous phone that ran an older iOS so can't say whether Orion ever worked.

I do not have an entry in my Orion's App Opener (Settings->General-App Opener) for Apple/Calendar and don't see any other place where I could enable this if it is optional.

My current workaround is to Save to Downloads and then go to Files then do some sort of open/hold/paste into Calendar (probably the worst UI/UX I could imagine for letting a user open a file in the app they want but that's an Apple issue).

Ideal behavior would be that when I click on a link to an .ics file, it offer to forward direct to Calendar which would then give me the final option to 'Add to calendar'.

It seems it is possible for non-Apple apps to request Calendar to open an .ics file -- see ICSKit app.
However, doesn't seem that it should be necessary -- nor desirable -- to have to use a 3rd-party app to get an ICS file from Orion to Calendar.

Is there a fix for Orion on the horizon that would let it request Calendar to offer to add a calendar entry from an .ics file/link?

Orion 1.4.7 on iOS 18.7.3

jeanetienne

Hi bzgnyc thank you for taking the time to report this bug!

I am currently working on an issue related to ICS download. It is not as easy as I initally thought, and there are actually a few different (but related) issues around ICS download.
Would you be able to provide a link to the page where you attempt to download an ICS, so I can check if it's the same or a slightly different issue?

Thank you for your help in making Orion a better browser!

bzgnyc

jeanetienne Of course happy to identify specific examples. I didn't realize the issue was specific to the site or even the ICS file. I experienced the same behavior in Orion from all that I've come across and just assumed this was iOS/etc adding protections to make sure users' calendars didn't get hijacked.

The most common place I run into this is with events from Eventbrite. You would need to create an account (free) and register for an event to get it to offer an ICS file to add to your calendar. There are free events that you could register for that should then give you the offer to add to your calendar. If Orion is the default browser (which it is me now) then the links open in Orion but from there the only offer is to forward/share (to all sorts of places except Calendar...).

I don't know if there are trustworthy websites offering to add events to calendars via ICS without going through a login/registration/etc.

bzgnyc

bzgnyc Hi I am curious if you have all the examples you need? I did recently find one public example. Also Zoom events that have confirmation/reminder e-mails appear to be another good example.

Otherwise, do you know if this will make Orion for iOS 1.50 (or whichever version the next release for iOS will get)? I assume this is not in Orion 1.49 for iOS.

bzgnyc

Hi, any ETA on this? I saw an update to Orion for iOS pushed out earlier today but it doesn't appear to have addressed this issue.

I probably signup for events that offer an ICS at least weekly and reminded of this every time I try to add a confirmation ICS to my calendar. On the Mac, double-clicking on a downloaded ICS file in the Downloads folder to get it loaded into my calendar is basically the same as any other process. However, iOS's manual process to add an ICS file to one's calendar if the app/browser doesn't do it is annoying bordering on obnoxious. Orion/Kagi can't fix Apple on this but would be great if we could avoid the need for the manual workaround.