Beside for macOS is focused on meeting intelligence and team collaboration. It’s different from the mobile app, which is designed for phone calls, messaging, and AI Receptionist features.
Before connecting your calendar, you’ll need to set up your desktop account. The steps vary depending on whether you’re already using Beside on mobile or starting fresh on macOS.
👉 New to Beside for macOS? Start here to learn how to set up your account and understand what Beside Desktop is.
Once your account is set up, connecting your calendar and granting the right permissions unlocks the full Beside desktop experience: smart pre-meeting prep, AI-powered summaries, and timely reminders.
This ensures Beside can automatically detect upcoming meetings, surface helpful context, and generate notes afterward.
🔗 Connect your calendar
You can connect your calendar directly from the desktop app:
Open Beside on your Mac
Go to Preferences → Calendar
Click Manage Calendars
Choose your provider (currently Google Calendar only, Outlook coming soon)
Sign in and grant permissions when prompted
Once connected, Beside will automatically start detecting upcoming meetings. ✅
🔐 Required permissions
When connecting your calendar, Beside will request access to:
Read calendar events: to detect upcoming meetings
View event details: to extract meeting links and participant information
📆 Managing multiple calendars
If you use more than one calendar (work + personal):
Go to Preferences → Calendar.
Click Select Calendars.
Check which calendars Beside should monitor.
Click Apply.
💡 Tip: You can connect multiple calendars but choose only specific ones for meeting detection.
🔄 Disconnect or reconnect calendars
To disconnect your calendar:
Go to Preferences → Calendar
Click Disconnect Calendar and confirm
To reconnect or change permissions:
Follow the steps above again and choose your desired settings
⚠️ Note: Disconnecting will stop meeting detection and remove calendar access. Your past meeting notes and transcripts will remain saved.
💡 What Beside Desktop does (and doesn’t) do with your calendar
✅ Detects meetings with video links (Zoom, Meet, etc.) ✅ Sends notifications before meetings start ✅ Reads meeting titles and participants to prepare summaries ✅ Adds post-meeting summaries to your calendar (if enabled) | ❌ Does not share your calendar with anyone ❌ Does not modify existing events without permission ❌ Does not access personal calendar data unrelated to meetings |