Connect Calendar to iCloud

iCloud syncing with Calendar lets your events appear on your other Apple devices connected to the same iCloud account. Make a change on one device and it appears automatically on all the others. Set an alarm on one, and it chimes on the others when the time comes. This can be extremely convenient when you’re on the go. iCloud also lets you share calendars with other people, whether they use iCloud or not.

Start by navigating to your iCloud settings:

• In Catalina through Monterey: Go to System Preferences > Apple ID > iCloud.

• In Ventura: Go to System Settings > Account Name > iCloud.

Now make sure Calendars is checked or enabled in the list of services: Figure 11 shows Monterey; Figure 12 shows Ventura.

Connect Calendar to Other Accounts

In addition to the iCloud account that I just discussed, Calendar can also use calendars from other accounts, including Exchange, Google, Yahoo, and AOL. Here’s how to add one:

1. Choose Calendar > Add Account, select the account type, and then click Continue.

2. Sign in to your account, following the prompts on screen. (A webpage may appear or you may be switched into Safari to carry out some steps in the sign-in process.)

3. Choose which services—Calendars, for one—you want to use with this account (Figure 13).

   

4. Click Done.

The added account is listed as a separate header in the Calendars list.

Create More Calendars

It’s a good idea to take a moment to think about whether some types of events need to be kept in their own calendars. Organizing events this way allows you to:

• Show and hide calendars: Select or deselect a calendar’s checkbox in the Calendars list to make its events appear or disappear from the main calendar display.

• Color-code calendars: Color-Code Your Calendars so you can distinguish event categories at a glance.

• Share calendars: Share certain calendars (project deadlines, a conference room schedule, a kid pickup schedule, and so on) with others. See Share & Subscribe to Calendars.

To make a new calendar, choose File > New Calendar or File > New Calendar > Cloud Provider. Now:

• If you haven’t connected the Calendar app to any cloud accounts, an Untitled entry for the new calendar appears in the Calendars list. Type a name for the calendar to replace Untitled. So long as the checkbox adjacent your new calendar’s entry remains selected, your new calendar’s events display in the main Calendar view.

• If you’ve connected the Calendar app to one or more accounts, you may see a File > New Calendar submenu that includes an On My Mac option. (If you don’t, see How Can I Get an On My Mac Option?.) Choose On My Mac to store the new calendar only on your Mac. Choose a cloud account to be able to access it on other devices through that account or share it with others via that account. A new Untitled calendar appears in the Calendars list, and you can type a name for it to replace Untitled (Figure 14).

If you realize, after the fact, that you got a little crazy with the calendar making, you can merge the many into one. See What If I Made Too Many Calendars? for details.

Tap into Special Calendars

One more category appears on your Calendars list—Other. These special calendars appear by default, but you can opt to hide two of them by choosing Calendar > Preferences/Settings > General and then deselecting any or all of these options:

• Show Birthdays calendar: This calendar brings together birthdays listed for your friends and colleagues in the Contacts app.

• Show Holidays calendar: This calendar includes holidays based on your region, like the United States.

The third, Siri Suggestions, includes events that macOS has detected after scanning Mail and Messages. For example, an event might show up in this calendar if you receive an email confirming an airline flight or a reservation from OpenTable. To make this calendar disappear:

1. Go to System Preferences > Siri (Monterey and earlier) or System Settings > Siri & Spotlight (Ventura).

2. Click the Siri Suggestions & Privacy button.

3. Select Calendar in the list.

4. Disable Show Siri Suggestions in App.

5. Click Done.

For advice on working with this calendar, see Add a Suggested Event.

Color-Code Your Calendars

Color-coding your calendars makes them easier to distinguish from each other. At a glance, you can see what your obligations are for work and what fun activities are coming up on the home front (Figure 15).

You’ll see a calendar’s color in these places:

• The checkbox next to its name in the Calendars list

• In Week and Day view, the event background

• In Month view, the dot next to each event (all-day events don’t have dots)

• The banner behind all-day events

• The highlight of a selected event

To change a calendar’s color, Control-click or right-click its name in the Calendars list. In the contextual menu that appears, click the dot that’s the color you want (Figure 16).

Or, select the calendar in the Calendars list and choose Edit > Get Info. Click the pop-up menu with a small colored square and choose a color in the list (Figure 17).

Customize Calendar

Do you want to see only events for Monday through Friday? Are you tired of new events appearing in the wrong calendar? Get a jump on these problems and more by setting up Calendar to work your way using options in Calendar’s Preferences (Monterey or earlier) or Settings (Ventura) window, especially in the General preferences and the Time Zone Preferences on the Advanced pane.

General Preferences

Choose Calendar > Preferences/Settings > General to see the basic options, which concern your default Calendar app, your default calendar, and various details relating to times and days (Figure 18).

Here’s a rundown of what you can change in General settings:

• Default calendar app: macOS assumes you want Calendar to be your default app. (We’d expect nothing else, Apple.) However, if you have an alternative app, you can change that by clicking the “Default calendar app” pop-up menu and choosing it.

  When Calendar is the default, the app launches whenever you open a calendar (.ics) file or click a link to subscribe to a calendar.

• Days in a week: If you use your calendar exclusively for work, it might be easier to see only the days that count—Monday through Friday. Select 5 in the “Days per week” pop-up menu. Your shortened week appears only in Week view (Figure 19).

  

  In Month view, you’ll still see all the days, with weekends in gray.

• When the week begins: Have you ever wondered why the calendar week starts on Sunday when we all know the actual week starts on Monday? You can fix that, or choose another day as your beginning if your workweek kicks off then. Choose the day you want in the “Start week on” pop-up menu.

• Hours in a day: In Day view, Calendar launches with a focus on the 12 hours Apple figures you’re most likely awake. To get an expanded or narrowed view, choose the number of hours you want to see from the Show pop-up menu. (Glenn prefers 16: it fits his working and personal day better.)

  You can also choose when your day begins and ends. This makes a subtle change in the Day and Week views. The hours before your starting time appear with a dimmer line next to them (Figure 20).

  

• Default calendar: A common annoyance with Calendar is that new events show up in the wrong calendar. To fix that, pick the one you want to use most often in the Default Calendar pop-up menu. If you choose “Selected calendar,” new events are added to whatever calendar is selected in the Calendars list.

  If you use Siri on your iPhone or iPad to add events, they’ll be placed in the device’s default calendar, so make sure you’ve designated the one you want to use on that device, too. Tap Settings > Calendar > Default Calendar and choose it from the list.

Time Zone Preferences

When you travel, say with your MacBook, it can be disconcerting for Calendar events to shift to new times and for alerts to go off early or late. This can happen if macOS has “Set time zone automatically using current location” enabled (it is by default).

Usually that’s a helpful feature, but in Calendar it means that if you scheduled a 3 p.m. meeting when you were in Pacific time, the event shifts to 12 p.m. when you’re in Eastern time zone.

To avoid this hiccup, use a key setting in Calendar’s Advanced preferences pane, “Turn on time zone support.”

When you select this box, two Time Zone menus appear in Calendar:

• Toolbar: Use this (Figure 22) to override where your Mac thinks it is, based on the settings in System Preferences > Date & Time > Time Zone (Monterey and earlier) or System Settings > General > Date & Time under Time Zone (Ventura). Whatever you choose becomes the default time zone for new events.

  

• Info pane: Use this to set the time zone when you create events for a trip. For example, if you’re traveling from San Francisco to New York for a conference, choose Eastern Time in the Time Zone menu for the events you’re planning for your stay. Events set to a different time zone than your calendar include a special time stamp. In Figure 23, you can see that a group event at 6:15 A.M. Pacific time actually appears at 9:15 A.M. when the viewer reaches New York, which is three hours later.

There’s even a setting for the rare times when you want an event to remain fixed at an absolute time of day no matter in what time zone you are. For example, you might plan on eating lunch at 12 p.m. local time whether you’re in San Francisco or Singapore. In that case, set the event’s Time Zone pop-up menu to Floating (Figure 24).