The webcal URL is incorrectly passed to the Calendar Name field in Google Calendar

This is about the new Calendar subscription URLs for external calendar apps functionality.

I notice that when I add a URL to my Google Calendar, the URL is posted to both the URL field (appropriately) and the Name field (inappropriately). This includes the user_api_key, which probably isn’t ideal (deliberately truncated in this image):

It isn’t too much trouble to rename the linked Calendar for a savvy user (who has many of them?), but it would make much more sense to pass through the site name instead. And my less savvy users wouldn’t freak out!

And how can we do that?

Well, for example, when I add a Google calendar from here to mine, it passes through the name just fine:

But I’ve got no idea how to do that programatically of course!

John Mulaney: That's The Million Dollar Question

Ok, with a bit of Gemini’s help I think I have an answer. There is a field that can be added to the .ics file that the webcal link points to which will (hopefully) achieve it.

Gemini’s take on it:

To add a name to a Google Calendar subscription link, you cannot use a direct URL parameter like &name= . Instead, Google automatically pulls the name from the source file or requires the user to rename it manually after subscribing.

If you are the developer or creator of the .ics file being linked, you can set the name that appears when someone subscribes by including the X-WR-CALNAME property in the file header:

BEGIN:VCALENDAR
VERSION:2.0
X-WR-CALNAME:Your Custom Calendar Name
...
END:VCALENDAR
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