Importing a city calendar
Reading a city calendar out of a photo: coming soon, and what to do meanwhile.
Coming soon. Reading dates out of a photo isn't reliable enough to trust yet, so Import from a photo / PDF on the schedule page is switched off and marked Coming soon. Set your days under Recurring schedule and add holiday exceptions by hand — that's a five-minute job for a year, and it's what the import was always a shortcut for.
Most cities hand out a collection calendar as a PDF or a picture. The rest of this page describes how the import will work when it returns.
How it works
- Choose file and pick the photo or PDF.
- Wait while it's read — a few seconds.
- Review the dates it found. Each one is a draft: a date and a waste type.
- Apply all dates to add them to your schedule.
Review before you apply
This step reads a document, and documents are messy — a smudged photo, an unusual layout, or a calendar covering three neighborhoods at once will produce wrong dates. Nothing is added until you apply, so read the list first.
Check especially:
- The year — calendars often print only the month and day.
- Which trash and recycling days are yours, if the calendar covers several zones.
- Holiday shifts, which are often footnotes rather than calendar entries.
This is an extra, not the source of truth. If the import struggles with your city's calendar, set the recurring days and add holiday exceptions by hand — it's a five-minute job for a year.
If it fails
You'll get a "could not parse the file" message. A clearer photo, or the original PDF instead of a photo of a printout, usually fixes it. Very large files can also be rejected — crop to the calendar itself.
Last checked against the app on August 27, 2026.