Holidays Showing Twice on iPhone Calendar

You open Calendar to see what's coming up before the holidays, and October 31 says Halloween twice. Thanksgiving is doubled too. So is your sister's birthday. You didn't add any of them, and when you try to delete one, there's no Delete button.

The short answer: the iPhone isn't making copies. Two different calendars are each showing the same thing. Most often that's Apple's holiday calendar plus a second holiday calendar that came with a Gmail, Outlook or work account. For birthdays, it's usually two contact cards for the same person. Tap a copy to see which calendar it comes from, then hide one calendar or merge the duplicate contact. Don't start deleting events until you know which case you're in.

Step 1: Find out where each copy comes from

Tap one of the doubled events, go back, and tap the other. The event details show which calendar each one belongs to. You'll usually see one of these pairs:

• Two holiday calendars: Apple's own (US Holidays, or the one for your country or region) and one under your Gmail, Outlook or Exchange account. Google's is usually named something like Holidays in United States.
• Two birthday entries: both from Apple's Birthdays calendar (that means two contact cards), or one from Apple's Birthdays and one from a birthdays calendar in your Google account.
• The same calendar twice: the school or team calendar, or your work calendar, showing under two different accounts.
• The same calendar, both copies: a real duplicate. The event exists twice in one calendar.

Step 2: Holidays twice? Hide one holiday calendar

This is the most common case, and it takes ten seconds. From Apple's support article on duplicate events:

1. In the Calendar app, tap Calendars at the bottom of the screen.
2. Deselect the checkbox for one of the two holiday calendars.
3. Tap Done.

Which one should you keep? Keep the holiday calendar in the account you use on all your devices. If your Mac and iPad use iCloud, keep Apple's. If you live in Google Calendar on a laptop, keep Google's and hide Apple's on the phone.

You can't fix this by deleting the holidays themselves. Apple's iPhone User Guide says the Holidays calendar is a subscription calendar, and "you can't add or delete holidays, because subscription calendars can be modified only by the calendar provider." That's why there's no Delete button. The calendar can only be shown or hidden as a whole.

If the holidays are for the wrong country, that comes from your region setting, not a duplicate. Change it in Settings > General > Language & Region > Region, then deselect the Holidays calendar under Calendars and select it again.

Step 3: Birthdays twice? Check Contacts first

Apple's Birthdays calendar isn't a list you edit. It's built from the birthdays saved on contact cards. If you have two cards for your sister, both with her birthday, you get two entries on that day. Apple's fix is to search Contacts for the person and merge or delete the extra card.

One doubled birthday usually means many duplicate contacts. That happens a lot after a new phone or after adding a Gmail account, because every account brings its own copy of the address book. Since iOS 16, Contacts can find exact duplicates on its own: below My Card, tap View Duplicates. Here's the full walkthrough for duplicate contacts, including the near-duplicates Apple's tool misses.

If one copy comes from Apple's Birthdays and the other from a birthdays calendar in your Google account, it's the same fix as the holidays: deselect one of them under Calendars.

Phone Diet has a Contact Cleaner that merges duplicate contacts in one tap (back up the address book first), and a Calendar Cleaner that finds duplicate, cancelled and old events. You can scan without paying. Merging and deleting are part of Premium.

Step 4: The same calendar showing twice? Remove the extra source

Sometimes a whole calendar appears twice: the school calendar you subscribed to on the iPhone and again in iCloud on your Mac, or a Google account that was added twice. Every event in it is doubled.

Here, don't delete events. The two copies are one event shown twice. Deleting either one deletes it from that calendar for real, and the other copy vanishes on the next sync. Instead:

• Hide one copy right away under Calendars in the Calendar app.
• Then remove the extra source. Accounts live in Settings > Apps > Calendar > Calendar Accounts on recent iOS versions (on older ones, Settings > Calendar > Accounts). You can turn off just Calendars for an account and leave its mail alone. A subscription you no longer want can be unsubscribed from the same Calendars list. Tap the info button next to it.

Removing a calendar from the iPhone only removes it from the phone. The calendar stays in the online account.

Step 5: Real duplicates? These you can delete

If both copies are in the same calendar, the event really does exist twice. Common causes: you accepted an invite and also typed it in yourself, you imported the same .ics file twice, or an app added the same appointment twice. Delete the extra copy like any other event.

One warning: if you organized a meeting and invited other people, deleting it can send each of them a cancellation. Check the invitees before you delete.

Where Phone Diet's Calendar Cleaner helps, and where it doesn't

We make Phone Diet, so here is exactly what its Calendar Cleaner does, checked against the app itself.

• It finds real duplicates. Events with the same title and the same start and end time (within a minute) are grouped. Select All picks every extra copy and leaves the earliest one alone, so the event itself stays.
• It also lists old and cancelled events, so you can clear years of past clutter at once. The age filter goes from 3 months to all past events.
• It leaves out what it shouldn't touch. Holiday calendars, subscriptions and any other calendar you can't edit are skipped. So are meetings you organized with invitees, so nobody gets surprise cancellation emails.
• Deleted events can be put back. They go to a Recently Deleted list in the app for 30 days. A recurring event comes back as a single occurrence.

Fix step 4 first. If a calendar is synced twice, the app sees both copies as duplicates too, and deleting one deletes the event from that account. What it won't do: it only looks at past events (up to the last five years), so it won't find a duplicate of next month's dentist appointment. It can't hide or remove a holiday calendar or an account. That's the Calendars list and Settings, as in steps 2 and 4. And if your doubles are holidays or a calendar synced twice, you don't need an app at all.

Common questions

Why are holidays showing twice on my iPhone calendar?

Almost always because two holiday calendars are turned on: Apple's own (US Holidays, or the one for your country) and a second one that came in with a Gmail, Outlook or work account. Tap one of the two copies to see which calendar it belongs to, then open the Calendar app, tap Calendars, and deselect one of the holiday calendars.

Can I delete a single holiday from the iPhone Holidays calendar?

No. Apple says the Holidays calendar is a subscription calendar and only the calendar provider can add or delete holidays in it. You can only show or hide the whole calendar under Calendars in the Calendar app.

Why does a birthday show up twice in Calendar?

The Birthdays calendar is built from the birthdays saved in Contacts, so two contact cards for the same person with the same birthday give you two entries. Apple's advice is to search Contacts for the person and merge or delete the extra card. A second birthdays calendar from a Google account can also double them; hide one under Calendars.

Should I delete duplicate events one by one?

Only after you know where the copies come from. If the same calendar is synced twice, the two copies are one event, and deleting either removes it from the account for real. Hide or remove the extra account or subscription instead. Delete only true duplicates, such as an invite you added twice or an .ics file you imported twice.