How to Get the Most Out of Apple Calendar on Your Mac

And not just because it’s an easy option to keep the default Calendar app on your Mac. Just beneath the surface, there’s some seriously untapped potential for users looking to maximize productivity or better organize their time.

While this may sound like a small difference, there is actually a pretty big difference between a calendar and a calendar app. A calendar app is an app that you can use to access and view your calendars. With a calendar app, you can add events to your calendar, create new calendars, set up and receive notifications, and take any other actions that you plan to use with your calendar.

A calendar, in the context of using an app, is a continuous view of your day, week, month, or year that you can add events to and even share with others. You can keep multiple calendars in a calendar app for different parts of your life. This can be as simple as having a calendar for personal stuff and a calendar for work.

Taking it a step further, not all calendar apps are created equally. Some, like Apple Calendar, use their own calendar database. Other calendar apps that have their own database include Google Calendar and Outlook. On the other hand, some calendar apps simply use other, existing databases.

The first way to improve your Apple Calendar is to create separate calendars. Apple Calendar starts with a single calendar ready for each new user to use, but creating multiple calendars can be useful for a variety of reasons.

With multiple calendars, you can easily separate different parts of your schedule and maintain a much more organized overview of your schedule. This can be as simple as keeping a calendar for work and personal matters, or as complicated as keeping separate calendars to remind yourself of bills, appointments, and really anything else you can think of to separate.

There are several ways to add a new calendar in the Calendar app.

Adding calendars is a great way to organize your schedule beyond keeping a basic schedule in Apple Calendar.

1. Right-click on an empty space in the sidebar.
2. Crash New calendar.

1. On the menu bar, select File.
2. Under Fileto choose New calendar.
3. Choose whether the calendar will be available only on your Mac or in iCloud.

Typically, you’ll want to store your calendars in iCloud so they’re available across all your devices. When you create a new calendar, Apple Calendar will create it in iCloud by default, but there’s a very small area you can right-click on just below the “Other” section of calendars that will create the calendar on your Mac by default.

Once you create a new calendar, it will appear in the sidebar. With multiple calendars in the sidebar, you can drag and drop calendars to reorder them, toggle calendar visibility, and merge calendars. Merging calendars can be done quickly and easily by dragging and dropping a calendar onto the name of another calendar.

All of these features can be incredibly useful. If you need two easily switchable overviews for your work schedule and your personal schedule, you can easily create a separate calendar for each and switch between them at your own convenience.

And if you have two calendars that have intentionally started to overlap, merging them allows you to keep one calendar instead of two. You can also continue merging if you have more than two calendars that need to be merged.

For users new to the Apple ecosystem or Mac users looking to switch to Apple Calendar from another provider, one of the most useful features available in Apple Calendar is adding calendars from other service providers, such as Google, Yahoo, or Microsoft. This involves the same process as syncing information from any non-Apple service on your Mac.

Adding calendars lets you switch to Apple Calendar without having to start over.

1. Open System settings.
2. To choose Online accounts.
3. To choose Add account
4. Select the service you want to use and add your account.

Once you’ve added an account, you’ll be able to selectively sync different services, like email, contacts, calendars, and notes, from that account on macOS. In the Calendar app, these calendars will appear in the sidebar and will be under their own heading for their source service.

The final tip for maximizing the usefulness of your calendars is to make them shareable. There are two ways to share a calendar: a more private, collaborative sharing option, or a public calendar that can be viewed by multiple people.

With a privately shared calendar, you can coordinate and collaborate with team members or friends and family. Anyone who has access to the calendar can modify it just like anyone else, which can be great for collaborative efforts and planning.

On the other hand, a public calendar is a simple, view-only calendar that you can share a link to. This can be great for people who need to maintain a public schedule or for keeping an easily accessible schedule for large groups of people.

Group calendars can be used for personal and professional purposes.

Both of these sharing options are very easy to access and can be done with just a few clicks.

1. Open the Calendar app.
2. Right-click on the selected calendar.
3. To choose Share Calendar

Once you open the calendar sharing menu, you can add any contacts you want to share your calendar with. Alternatively, you can simply check the box to share your calendar publicly and start sharing the link.

Aside from viewing your digital calendar, the primary function of a calendar app is to place events on your digital calendar. Creating events in Apple Calendar is incredibly easy, and you have a few different ways to do it.

1. Right-click anywhere in the calendar view.
2. Crash New event.

Creating an event this way will simply place the event on the day you right-clicked. If you are in a more detailed week or day view, your event will be placed at the time you right-clicked.

Once you have placed the event, you will be greeted with a window that, at its simplest, allows you to name the event, as well as change the calendar it is in, and modify the date and time of the event. By default, the calendar you currently have selected in the sidebar will be the calendar that the new event will be inserted into. However, there is a slightly different way to do this process.

1. On the menu bar, select File.
2. Under Fileto choose New event or reminder.

Additionally, you can click the +’ icon just above the month or simply press Command+N. Either of these two methods will do the same thing as going through the menu bar, which will open a small menu. From here, you can click “New Event” to set a general event on any day you last clicked on, or you can use the “Create a quick event” box.

Quickly add an event is a great way to easily enter an event and let Apple Calendar do the rest of the work.

The “Create Quick Event” field lets you quickly enter basic event content, and Apple Calendar does the rest. In the field, you could enter something like “lunch date at noon 10/23,” and Apple Calendar would create an event called “lunch date” at 12:00 PM on October 23. You can’t set anything in the quick event field beyond the event name, date, and time.

One of the best ways to spice up your events is to add attachments to them. This can include including URLs and files for a specific time. If you have a Zoom meeting scheduled for a specific time, you can set Apple Calendar to prompt you to open Zoom for the meeting. Or if you need to view or edit a document at a specific time, you can attach that file directly to the calendar event and even open it when the event starts. The same goes for URLs.

What’s more, you can also attach locations to the event. By attaching a location to the event, you can make Apple Calendar remind you to leave at the exact time you need, based on Apple Maps ETA.

Attached documents can also be made available for opening at a designated time.

1. Open the Calendar app.
2. Create or modify an event.
3. To choose Add notes, url or attachments OR choose Add location or video call.

Included locations can also provide an estimated time of arrival at your destination from Apple Maps.

By leveraging attachments, you can optimize your schedule and efficiency. Whether it’s getting out the door on time or opening an app or URL you might otherwise forget to open on time.

Despite the robust nature of Apple’s Calendar app, your needs may be better met by a third-party alternative. There are more than a few reasons why you might prefer to use something like Fantastical or even Google Calendar.

Fantastical offers a more advanced user experience with an optional subscription providing access to more features.

Something like Fantastical can be great if you want a much more robust version of Apple Calendar’s quick event field. While Apple Calendar’s quick event field can be fairly simple, Fantastical’s add event field can handle much more complex events. If you type “lunch with John every Monday at 1:00 PM until 10/5 at restaurant x,” Fantastical will populate that event, every Monday through October 17th at 1:00 PM, with the restaurant’s location included.

Of course, adding locations would require a subscription to the premium version of Fantastical, which costs $6.99 per month.

What’s more, as you enter an event, you’ll see it updated in real time on the calendar. Fantastical also offers other benefits, such as showing the weather on the calendar, which all come together to create a fantastic user experience that Apple Calendar simply can’t match at the moment.

Another reason you might want to use something else is if you’re paying for a software package that includes a calendar app, like Proton Unlimited for $12.99/month or Microsoft 365 for $6.99/month. If you’re already paying for a calendar app, it might be worth sticking with that.

Apple Calendar is a really great service. With control over some of its most useful features, there’s very little you can’t do with Apple Calendar in terms of actual scheduling and planning. If you’re heavily invested in the Apple ecosystem, you’ll have no problem using Apple Calendar across all of your devices.