this post was submitted on 09 Mar 2026
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17
What is Radicale and how do I use it? (thelemmy.club)
submitted 4 hours ago by philanthropicoctopus@thelemmy.club to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
13 comments fedilink hide all child comments
 

Hi everyone

I'm trying to degoogle as much as possible. I've heard about this thing called calDAV and cardDAV but I have no idea how to use it.

With radicale, do I need to install some other somewhere in order to use it?

I'm just looking for basic useage for myself only at this stage. I'd like to be able to self host my own calendar and contacts. Is radicale appropriate for this?

Is it safe to self host a calendar?

Can a self hosted calendar still send and receive invites to other calendars?

Any help greatly appreciated, thank you

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[–] Ooops@feddit.org 2 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 1 hour ago)

With radicale, do I need to install some other somewhere in order to use it?

No, you just need to install Radicale. That's it. calDAV and cardDAV are widely used formats available as an option with basically any calendar.

Can a self hosted calendar still send and receive invites to other calendars?

Oh, I see your problem. You don't host your calendar. You host a service that is used to synchronise all the regular calendars you already use over different devices.

Or are you at the moment using Google's calendar in browser only?

[–] trewq@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

Baikal was easy to migrate. All i needed to do was to copy the single db file.

[–] Shimitar@downonthestreet.eu 6 points 3 hours ago (2 children)

My experience with radicale

https://wiki.gardiol.org/doku.php?id=services%3Aradicale

I currently use it, from android with dav5x (F-droid)

[–] irmadlad@lemmy.world 1 points 1 hour ago

https://wiki.gardiol.org/doku.php?id=services%3Aradicale

This is your wiki? I've been there before. Turned up in a search.

[–] philanthropicoctopus@thelemmy.club 3 points 3 hours ago

Thanks for the link

I see it doesn't have a dashboard, would I be better off with something like Baikal?

I'm quite basic and only really selfhost cause I don't like big tech, not cause I'm a linux wizz

[–] xtools@programming.dev 1 points 2 hours ago

I've recently set up Baikal on a cheap shared host. It doesn't even need a dedicated database, it just creates a file-based sqlite db. i've just copied some files to a php webhost and followed the quickstart guide for setup, i'm pretty happy with the result

[–] yaroto98@lemmy.world 4 points 3 hours ago* (last edited 3 hours ago) (1 children)

It's how you can copy/backup/sync calendar and contacts.

on my phone I installed davx5 which does the copying over to my radicale instance on my server. Then my server backs up my calendar and contacts.

When I get a new phone I can sync all of it over easily. Bonus points, google doesn't have that data.

[–] philanthropicoctopus@thelemmy.club 1 points 3 hours ago

Is it hard to set up? Sound perfect for what I want, just also seems complicated for my skills haha

[–] philanthropicoctopus@thelemmy.club 2 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Follow up questions:

I seed to have created multiple users, how can I manage users?

Does Radicale have a dashboard?

[–] eskuero@lemmy.fromshado.ws 1 points 1 hour ago

Doesnt have a dashboard per-se for centralized administration. It has a web ui to manually create create/upload collections. I personally use it a very simplistic way and just reupload an updated .vcf file with all my contacts from time to time.

About user management, I dont know how you installed radicale but they have this docs https://radicale.org/v3.html#authentication

[–] fozid@feddit.uk 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Exactly for what you want it for. I've been using it about 3 months. Contacts and calender. It's a real pain to set up. Not straight forward. I didn't a lot of time with ai as could not get my head round the guide.

[–] philanthropicoctopus@thelemmy.club 1 points 3 hours ago (1 children)

Yeah I hear you. I've installed it but I have no idea what to do from here. Cant access any kind of dash. I've just learnt it doesn't have a native dash but you need a third party app for that?

[–] Ooops@feddit.org 1 points 1 hour ago* (last edited 52 minutes ago)

Take a look at the config file (/etc/radicale/config). It's extensively commented. Although you barely need to change any defaults for regular use.

Just create an htpasswd file (with htpsswd, apache-tools or just any of the one million available online generators) and edit two lines under [auth] to read type = htpasswd and htpasswd_filename = <the location and file you created>.

And you can start (and enable) Radicale via the systemd service usually included in the installed package. (Or for early testing just start the server manually... radicale starts it with the defaults from the config file. You can also configure everything with parameters but that's an insanely long list (radicale --help if you are interested in seeing them)...)

The webinterface to login will be available (by default settings) under http://localhost:5232/.

All you have to do then is change the config so Radicale listens on the server's IP instead so it's available in in your network. (Plus the usual stuff of making it available from the outside if you need that like for any other sevice)

And any calendar/contact software will bring a wizard that guides you through the process of sync'ing, usually just asking for an address to reach your server, as well as user and password.

EDIT: I looked up the defaults and you can skip all the autehntification stuff in the beginning. By default just anyone can access the webpage at port 5232. So you can just test it and only bother with authentication later (definitely when you plan to make it available from the outside, for example to sync phones).