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Settings

BusyCal's Settings window offers numerous ways to configure its appearance and behavior to suit your needs.

To display the Settings window, choose BusyCal > Settings (also known as "Preferences" on earlier macOS versions). Pick a section in the sidebar on the left to see its settings. Some sections divide their settings into tabs, shown across the top of the section.

A search field sits at the top of the sidebar. Type part of a setting's name and BusyCal lists the settings that match, each with the section, tab and group it belongs to. Choose a result and BusyCal opens that section, switches to the right tab, and briefly highlights the setting.

General​

To customize the start of the week, number of days or weeks shown, day start and end times, and other settings, select General.

Dock​

  • Dock badge count — Choose what the number on the BusyCal Dock icon counts: None, Today's Remaining Items, Tasks Due Today, Tasks Due Today + Overdue, All Overdue Tasks, Inbox Notifications (the default) or Current Day of Year. Most counts are produced by BusyCal's alarms, so the label is dimmed while Show alarms is off in Alarms settings; the menu still works.

Views & Ranges​

  • Start week on — The first day displayed in the leftmost column of the Week/Month view.
important

This setting only determines which day appears first in the Week/Month view. It does not control how BusyCal pins to a specific day in Week View. If you want the week to always start on the same day regardless of the current weekday, set Week view shows (explained below) to One Week instead of a custom number of days. Watch demo to understand the difference.

  • Week view shows — Controls how many days are displayed in the Week view. Choose One week or Two weeks, or any range from 2 days from today up to 31 days from today, plus 42 Days (6 Weeks) from today and 90 Days (Quarter) from today. The default is 7 days from today.

    • If One week or Two weeks is selected, the leftmost column always starts on the Start week on setting above.
    • If a custom range is selected, the leftmost column begins with today, allowing you to focus on upcoming days. These entries say so in the menu, for example 7 days from today.

  • Month view shows — Controls how many weeks are displayed in the Month view. Choose One month, or from 1 week from today to 12 weeks from today. The default is 6 weeks from today.

    • If One month is selected, a traditional month view is shown with the 1st of the month in the topmost row.
    • If a custom range is selected, the topmost row starts with the current week and shows x weeks forward, making it easier to focus on upcoming weeks.

  • Start from current week — Appears only when Month view shows six weeks, and is off by default. Turn it on to begin the six-week grid at the current week rather than at the start of the month.

  • Day view shows and Week view shows — Determine the number of hours shown at a time (the zoom level) in the Day view and the Week view. Each view has its own setting.

tip

While in Day/Week view, you can dynamically set the hours shown by holding down Option and scrolling with a mouse scroll wheel, two-finger swiping up or down on a trackpad, or one-finger swiping up or down on a Magic Mouse.

  • Day starts at — Shade the times before the start of day in Day view and Week View.
  • Day ends at — Shade the times after the end of day in Day view and Week View.
  • Show Only Working Hours (Day Start – End) — Limits visible time to your configured workday range.

Work Week​

Click the weekday buttons to choose your working days. Days outside the work week appear shaded in the calendar. Once you have set your own work week, a Reset button appears to restore the days derived from your region.

Defaults​

  • Default calendar for Events — The default calendar for new events.
  • Default calendar for Journals — The default calendar for new journal entries.
  • Default start time — The default start time for new events.
  • Default duration — The default duration for new events, in minutes.

Calendars​

  • Show Birthdays calendar — See Birthdays and Anniversaries.
  • When death date is detected — Choose whether to continue showing birthdays, stop showing birthdays, or show death anniversaries.
  • Show Anniversaries calendar — See Birthdays and Anniversaries.
  • Contacts from — Choose contact source (Automatic, Apple Contacts, or BusyContacts).
  • Show alternate calendar — Display an alternate calendar system (for example Chinese, Hebrew, Islamic, Persian, Day of Year, or World Season Calendar).

These settings are for the BusyCal Menu & Alarm helper extension. The menu-bar app can run all the time in the background to display alarms as well as upcoming events.

  • Show BusyCal Menu in menu bar — See BusyCal Menu & Alarm. The helper starts at login and keeps running after BusyCal quits.
  • Open new event in BusyCal after creation — Opens an event you create from the menu in the main BusyCal window.
  • Set Menu Shortcut — Set a keyboard shortcut to open BusyCal Menu.
  • Menu icon shows — Choose the menu-bar icon format (Date, Date & Weekday, Date & Month, or Current Calendar Week).
  • in color — Show the menu icon using color.
  • Display style — Choose mini-calendar event indicators (None, Banners, Dots, or Heat Map).
  • Show upcoming conference call indicator — Adds a conference-call indicator to the menu icon for an upcoming event that contains a conference call, such as Zoom, Google Meets or Teams.
  • Emphasize in color — Tints the conference-call indicator for visibility.

The Upcoming Items group controls what the menu bar shows next to the icon:

  • Show upcoming items in menu bar — Turn on the upcoming item display.
  • Events, Events with Conference Calls, Events with Attendees and To Dos — Choose which kinds of item the menu bar considers.
  • Starting within — Limit which upcoming items are considered.
  • Switch to upcoming event if starting within — The current event is shown unless an event or task starts within the time you set here.
  • Show ongoing events — Include currently running events.
  • Show all-day events if no upcoming events are found — Fallback to all-day events when no timed event matches.
  • Show event titles — Include event titles in the menu bar text, up to the Max Length you set in characters.
  • Countdown Style — Choose countdown vs start-time display. Ongoing events switch to a count-up.
  • in gray — Display time text in gray.
  • Hide menu bar events during Do Not Disturb — Suppress menu-bar upcoming items while BusyCal Do Not Disturb is enabled.

Accounts​

To add or modify calendar accounts (including iCloud, Google, Exchange, and other CalDAV accounts), select Accounts.

Your accounts are listed on the left under Active, Disabled and Added on Another Device. Click + (plus) below the list to add an account, or select an account and click - (minus) to remove it. The third button adds a calendar subscription.

An account under Added on Another Device came from another Mac through iCloud. Select it and click Use Account — you will need to sign in, because passwords are not synced between devices. A subscription offers Use Subscription instead.

Selecting an account shows its settings on the right. Which tabs an account has depends on what its server supports:

  • Account Information — The account's description, login details, refresh interval and calendar defaults.
  • Server Settings — The server addresses BusyCal connects to.
  • Delegates — The accounts you can act on behalf of.
  • Sharing — The calendars other people have shared with you on this account.
  • Automation — Rules that tag events as they arrive. See Automatic Tagging.

For information on adding and configuring various account types, refer to the following pages:

These settings appear for every account:

  • Enable this account — Turn syncing off without removing the account. Its other settings become unavailable while it is off. Calendar subscriptions show Enable calendar subscription instead.
  • Description — The name shown for this account in Settings and the calendar list.
  • Login details — Depending on the service, an Apple ID, Email, Yahoo ID or User Name, and a Password. These are locked until you click Modify details, which becomes Save while you are editing.

Beneath them, BusyCal shows the last sync result or any account error.

The following settings appear only when the account in question supports them:

  • Refresh calendars — How often BusyCal checks the server for changes: Push where the server advertises it, or every 5, 10, 15 or 30 minutes, hour, day, week, month or year. Apple Calendar, Reminders, Google, Exchange and Microsoft Graph accounts start on Push; iCloud, Yahoo, Fruux, FastMail, Todoist and generic CalDAV accounts start at 15 minutes. Your own edits are sent to the server immediately regardless.
  • Meeting calendar — Meeting invites sent by others will be added to this calendar by default.
  • Meeting organizer email — Certain accounts allow you to specify aliases or additional email addresses as part of your primary account, such as iCloud and Fastmail. In case you have several aliases available in your account, you can pick the email address you would like to send meeting invites as (i.e. meeting invites will be sent out with the selected email as the Organizer).
  • Minimum supported TLS — Some accounts will show this additional setting. TLS is a cryptographic protocol that provides end-to-end security of data sent between applications over the Internet. This is for advanced users. Setting this to Automatic is recommended, unless your server only supports a particular version of TLS, in which case you should set it to the minimum version it supports. The other choices are v1.0, v1.1, v1.2 and v1.3.
  • Hide tasks assigned to others — Todoist only. Leaves out tasks assigned to someone else.
  • Enable Microsoft Teams Integration — Office 365 accounts using Exchange. Your Office 365 administrator may need to approve this.
  • Add Google Meets to new meeting invites — Google only. Requests a Meet link for meetings you create.
  • Add meeting URL to event location — Zoom, Webex and GoTo Meeting. Also copies the meeting link into the event's Location field.

The Delegates tab lets you grant other people access to your calendars and set what each may do. The Sharing tab lists the calendars others have shared with you, and Public Calendars… browses your organization's public folders.

Automation​

Tags can be automatically assigned to events as these are pulled during sync. See Automatic Tagging for more information.

To Dos​

To customize how tasks are created and displayed, select To Dos.

  • Enable Reminders — Turn on to sync directly with the Reminders app. This has now become necessary if you have upgraded your Reminders app starting Catalina / iOS 13 as To-Do calendars no longer sync via your iCloud account like before.

The following options are available for new tasks:

  • Default calendar for To Dos — The default calendar new tasks are created in.
  • Default priority — The priority new tasks are given: None, Low, Medium or High.

The following settings affect the Task List that appears in the right sidebar.

  • Sort Task List by — The sort order for the Task List. You can check the 'Group by Calendar' option to apply a secondary grouping to your ToDos by calendar. This way, all the Home Todos, for instance, will group together. The groups follow the order the calendars appear in the Calendar List.
  • Show dated Tasks — The date range for tasks displayed in the Task List. The default displays tasks due within the next month. You can select a different range if you want to view fewer or more tasks.
  • Show undated Tasks — Whether to display undated tasks in Task List.
  • Show completed Tasks — The date range for completed tasks displayed in the Task List. The default displays tasks completed today. You can select a different range if you want to view fewer or more completed tasks. Check in lighter colors to dim them.
  • Duration in day & week view — The amount of vertical space each To-Do occupies visually in the time line.
  • Show date and time in Task List, Show location in Task List and Show notes in Task List — Add these details to each row.
  • Display indicators for contacts, locations, tags, etc., in the Task List — Show small indicators on rows whose task carries those details.

The following setting affects regeneration of recurring Tasks when marked done. This is a global setting that applies to all repeating tasks and cannot be applied separately to individual tasks (given this feature is not supported by iCloud / Google / Exchange etc).

  • Default regeneration style — Choose Take out trash, Pay rent (the default) or Completion Date.

The Take out trash style ignores all overdue occurrences and sets the next occurrence to a future date based on the task's due date. For example, you have a to-do to "Take out trash" due daily. The last time you took out the trash was two days ago, before you went away for the weekend. If you take out trash today and mark this, now overdue, to-do as complete, the next occurrence will be set to "Tomorrow" since all of the trash has been taken out.

The Pay rent style does not skip any overdue occurrence, and sets the next occurrence based on the task's due date. If there's an overdue weekly subscription you haven't paid for several weeks, marking it complete would set its due date to next week from the date it was last due. You would need to explicitly mark each occurrence as complete.

Conversely, with the Pay rent option set, completing an overdue "Take out trash" to-do would have re-created a todo and set its due date to "Yesterday". Marking that complete would have moved it to "Today" and so on.

The Completion Date style will simply set the next occurrence based on the completion date. So if the task was due on the 1st of Oct, set to repeat weekly and is completed on the 5th, the next occurrence will be 12th of Oct (5th + 7 days) instead of the 8th.

BusyCal follows the Pay rent style by default, which is what most task management apps do. Apple Reminders follows the "Take out trash" style instead. This is a global setting that applies to all repeating tasks and cannot be set per task, because iCloud, Google, Exchange and similar services do not support it.

The following settings affect Tasks that appear in the calendar:

  • Show dated Tasks in calendar — Whether to display dated tasks in the calendar on their due dates.
    • Include All-Day Tasks — Whether to include all-day tasks among them. On by default; turn it off and only the dated tasks that have a due time are shown.
  • Show completed Tasks in calendar — Whether to display completed tasks in the calendar. Use on their to place them on their due date or their completion date. When showing by completion date, Day and Week views draw them in the all-day section.
  • Show completed undated Tasks in calendar — Whether to display completed tasks that never had a date.
  • Show due time for completed Tasks in the calendar — Whether completed tasks show the time they were due.

The following setting affects the display of tasks in both the Task List and calendar:

  • Carry forward uncompleted To Dos — Whether to carry forward past due tasks and display them on the current date.

Alarms​

To adjust default settings for alarms and the behavior of the BusyCal Alarms window, select Alarms. This section is divided into three tabs: General, Alert Sounds and Default Alarms.

General​

  • Show alarms — Whether BusyCal raises alarms at all. Switching off every item type below also switches this off.
  • Notification Method — Choose Notification Center or BusyCal Alarms. Compared with Notification Center alerts, the BusyCal alarm window offers persistent notifications, more functionality and deeper integration with the main app. When it is selected, the BusyCal Menu process runs in the background so you still get alerts when the main app is not running.
  • Show alarms for Events, Show alarms for Tasks and Show alarms for Journals — Choose which item types raise alarms.

If you use the BusyCal alarm window, you can configure:

  • Set Alarm Shortcut — Set a keyboard shortcut that opens Alarm Window when alarms exist.
  • Alarm window floats above all others
  • Alarm window takes input focus — Select this option if you want the Alarm window to take the keyboard focus, so you can snooze or dismiss an alarm from the keyboard without first having to click in the window with your pointer.
  • Shake window when a new alarm is added
  • Show event end times
  • Show calendar names
  • Mouse over alarm displays time elapsed
  • Display alarms in ascending order
  • Mark Task as Completed on Dismissal
  • Snooze button is default — Select this option if you want Snooze to be the default button in the Alarm window so you can press Return on the keyboard after entering a snooze value without having to click the Snooze button with your pointer. Otherwise, pressing Return dismisses the alarm.
  • Show in all desktop spaces — Makes the BusyCal Alarm Window available on every macOS Desktop/Space, so alarms remain visible when you switch Spaces, use full-screen apps, or use multiple monitors with separate Spaces. This setting does not create a separate copy of the Alarm Window on every physical monitor; macOS still manages it as one window, but BusyCal allows it to appear across Spaces instead of being tied to only one desktop.
  • Skip missed event alarms older than — Turn this on, then choose 1 hour, 2 hours (the default), 4 hours, 6 hours, 10 hours or 12 hours. After waking from sleep or when Do Not Disturb ends, event and journal alarms older than that are silently skipped. Task alarms are not affected. Off by default, and it may not behave as expected if your Mac wakes periodically for network access.

The Snooze group below it sets what the alarm window's Snooze button starts from:

  • Default Snooze — Turn this on to pre-fill the Snooze value, then set a number and a unit: minutes (the default), hours, days, minutes before start or hours before start. It starts at 5 minutes and is on by default. This is available only when the BusyCal Alarm Window is selected as the notification method.

Two invitation settings sit at the bottom of this tab:

  • Show meeting invites in Notification Center — Show invite notifications in macOS Notification Center.
  • Add default alarm when accepting meeting invitations — Any meeting invitation you accept automatically includes your default alarm.

Alert Sounds​

  • Default Alarm Sound for New Tasks and Default Alarm Sound for New Events — Choose the sound that plays when an alarm occurs. Tasks and events can use different sounds.
  • Use for all alerts — Applies the selected sound to alerts for all tasks and events, existing and new. This overrides any custom sound set on an individual event, which is useful when events arrive from a server carrying their own sound.

Default Alarms​

Although you can manually set alarms for any event or task, you may want to add an alarm automatically to new items. There are five rows, one per kind of item, and each row holds three independent alarm slots so you can add up to three default alarms. Switch a slot on, then set it: for timed items enter a number and choose minutes before, hours before, days before, minutes after, hours after or days after; for all-day items set a time and choose the same day, days before or days after.

  • Timed Events — The first slot is on, at 5 minutes before.
  • All-day Events — The first slot is on, at 9:00 AM the same day.
  • Timed Tasks — The first slot is on, at the start time.
  • Dated Tasks — All slots off.
  • Birthdays & Anniversaries — All slots off; the first is preset to 9:00 AM 7 days before.
note

Multiple alarms are not supported by some accounts, including Reminders, Exchange and Office 365. Local "My Alarms" will be added automatically.

Info Panel​

To customize the Info Panel to show only the fields you want to see, select Info Panel.

The first three settings affect the display of the Info Panel as a whole:

  • Open Info Panel for new events — If you select this checkbox and the right-hand sidebar is visible, then when you create a new event, the title field is selected in the Info Panel. If it is selected and the right-hand sidebar is not visible when you create a new event, the Info Panel popover (or floating window, depending on the state of the next checkbox) appears, with its title field selected.
  • Display Info Panel in floating window — If you select this checkbox, BusyCal displays the Info Panel as a floating window rather than as a popover when the righthand sidebar is not visible. When the sidebar is visible, double-clicking an event opens it in a separate detached window so you can view multiple events side by side.
  • Use fuzzy matching for calendar picker — When enabled, typing in the calendar picker field uses fuzzy matching, where characters can match with gaps in the calendar name (e.g., typing oe would match a calendar named "Broken"). When disabled, only contiguous (exact substring) matches are used. This is enabled by default.

Under Show fields, select the fields you want:

  • Location — Displays a text field for entering location information.
  • Location URL — Displays a URL field for entering location URLs, such as a link to Google Maps.
  • Map — Displays a map preview/field for mapped locations.
  • Time to Event — Displays time-remaining context for the event.
  • Favorite time zones — Shows a Time Zone Conversion card for the favorite zones configured in BusyCal > Settings > Time Zones. This does not display either event time-zone field; enable Start time zone separately.
  • Start time zone — Displays a time zone menu for the event start time. See Time Zones for more information.
  • End time zone — Displays a separate menu when an event ends in a different zone, such as a flight. For ordinary events, the end uses the start zone. See Time Zones for more information.
  • Repeat — Displays recurrence controls.
  • First occurrence — Displays the first occurrence date of a repeating event and current sequence number.
  • Color — Displays event color controls.
  • Travel Time — Displays a menu enabling you to see or specify the travel time for that event.
  • URL — Displays a URL field for inserting links.
  • Tags — Displays a field for entering tags. See Tags for more information.
  • Graphic — Displays a field for attaching graphics. See Graphics for more information.
  • Attachments — Displays a menu for attaching files.
  • Attendees — Displays a field for adding attendees. See Meetings and Invitations for more information.
  • Contacts — Displays a field for linking to contacts in BusyContacts.
  • Private — Displays a checkbox to indicate that the event is Private. When sharing a calendar with others through Exchange, Google, and some CalDAV Servers, events marked Private appear to other people with a title of “Private Event.” The event blocks your free time for scheduling purposes, but no other details are shared. Note that only timed-events can be made private.
note

This checkbox is enabled only when syncing with a calendar server that supports this feature. It is not supported by iCloud.

  • Busy — Displays a checkbox to indicate whether an event affects your availability as free or busy.
  • Task Duration — Displays task duration controls.
  • Task Status — Displays task completion/status controls.
  • Google Meets / Zoom / Webex by Cisco / GoTo Meeting / Microsoft Teams — Displays conference-link fields (availability depends on account type and setup).
  • Created time — Displays the date and time the event was created.
  • Last edit time — Displays the date and time the event was last modified and the user account that last modified it.
  • My alarms — Private alarms that are stored locally and do not sync with other apps and services.
  • My tags — Private tags that are stored locally and do not sync with other apps and services.
  • My URL — Private URLs that are stored locally and do not sync with other apps and services. You can drag files, email messages, bookmarks, contacts, and other items to the my URL field to create links that open the source document.
  • My notes — Private notes that are stored locally and do not sync with other apps and services.

Any field you leave unchecked stays hidden unless the event already has a value for it. You can also click the down-arrow button below the Info Panel at any time to expand and reveal hidden fields as needed.

The Rooms picker is not listed here. It appears on its own for events on Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 accounts with room resources configured by the organization's admin.

Suggestions​

BusyCal can suggest existing events and tasks as templates while you type a title for new items. Select Suggestions to configure:

  • Search only in enabled calendars
  • Automatically show suggestions while typing in — Info Panel, Month View, and Day & Week View
  • Which properties should be copied from a selected suggestion:
    • Copy Calendar
    • Copy Start Time
    • Copy Start / End Duration
    • Copy Recurrence
    • Copy Alarms
    • Copy Locations
    • Copy URL
    • Copy Tags
    • Copy Attendees
    • Copy Contacts
    • Copy Graphics
    • Copy Notes
    • Copy My Notes

Appearance​

To customize the calendar date and event formatting, select Appearance. The section is divided into three tabs: View, Mini Calendar (the small calendar that displays below the left side panel), and Fonts.

View​

  • Date placement — Controls where BusyCal places the date within day cells, either Left Position or Right Position.

  • Day number color — The color used for dates in Week/Month/Year view. If you choose Black & Gray or Black & Red, black is used for weekdays while gray or red is used for weekends and holidays.

  • Banners — Display style for Banners (all-day events): Rectangular or Rounded.

    • Use true color for selected banners only — Turn this setting off to see more vivid (true) colors for all-day banners, as well as multi-day timed events.

  • Show multi-day events — Display style for timed events (i.e. non-all day events), that start on one day and then end on another. For example, a conference call that starts at 9pm on Sunday and ends at 3am on Monday is a "multi-day event". Choose Separated to show them as separate events on each day, or Combined to show them as a single strip similar to all-day banners.

  • when duration is more than — When set to Combined, you can choose to ignore combining events that are shorter than the selected duration.

  • in all-day section of day & week views — Controls whether multi-day timed events also appear as a banner-style strip in the all-day section of Day and Week views, in addition to being drawn in the time grid. This applies in both Combined and Separated modes:

    • When set to Separated, leave this unchecked if you want a multi-day event (such as a vacation) to display as blocks down each day in the time grid only, with no duplicate banner across the top.
    • When set to Combined, uncheck it to keep the combined multi-day strip out of the all-day section.

  • Event times — The formatting for event times in the Month view. There are several different time formats to choose from. The menu is divided into two sections—one for displaying the event times on the left, and the other for displaying event times on the right. If you tend to have lots of events with long titles, you may want to choose a compact time format (such as 10a) and experiment with left or right justification. Turning Word Wrap off can help fit more events in Month view too.

  • in gray — Displays event times in gray where applicable.

tip

Select “10:00 AM - 12:00 PM” or “10 AM - 12 PM” if you want to view both the start and end times for each event.

  • Event text color — Choose Black, Calendar/Tag Color, or Calendar Color Only to control how event titles are colored in calendar views. When event text is black, bullet characters appear next to event names in Month and List views with the color of the calendar or tag.
  • Increase text contrast — Improves text readability when using colored event text styles.
  • Reduce the brightness of past events — Dims past events so upcoming items stand out more clearly.
  • Show week numbers — Display week numbers in the calendar and mini months.
  • Group entries by Calendar — Events and Tasks can be grouped by calendar first before sorting these by their respective times.
  • before sorting by time — When grouping by calendar is enabled, this determines whether grouping is applied before time-based sorting.
  • Allow events to overlap in Day & Week View — When enabled, timed events can overlap in the Day/Week timeline. Turn this off to force a side-by-side column layout.
  • Show Notes in Day and Week views — Display notes for events in Day and Week views.
  • Show Graphics on all days of a multi-day event — Displays event graphics on each day spanned by a multi-day timed event.

Mini Calendar​

The Mini Calendar tab controls how the small month grid in the sidebar behaves:

  • Highlight visible range
  • Show events on mouse-over
  • Display style — Choose None, Banners, Dots, or Heat Map.
  • Increase heat map intensity for all-day busy events — Available for Heat Map style.
  • Show only busy events — Available for Heat Map style.

Fonts​

Fonts used within the calendar and other parts of the app can be adjusted on the Fonts tab. Each row offers the fonts you have recently chosen for it, plus Restore Defaults and Other… to open the font panel.

  • Day number font — The font face and size for dates and days of the week in Week/Month view.
  • Default event font — The font face and size for all events / tasks / journals in week / month view.
  • Default sticky font — The font face and size for all sticky notes.
  • Calendar list font — The font face and size used for displaying calendar names in the left side panel.
  • Notes font — The font face and size used for displaying notes for each event in the info panel.

Accessibility​

Further appearance and readability settings are in the Accessibility section.

  • Show all titles for the calendar view selector in the toolbar — Expands view selector labels in the toolbar.
  • Display account icons in calendar list — Shows account/service icons in the left calendar list.
  • Show month separators in Month view — Display a more visible, thick outline to separate days between adjacent months.
  • Show month name on every day in Month View — Month view will display the month's abbreviated name on every day.
  • Show month names when scrolling — Displays month names while scrolling month grids.
  • Use darker gridlines — Gridlines in day, week and month views will appear in a darker color.
  • Show 30 min grid lines in Day & Week views — Adds additional timeline gridlines.
  • Always highlight "Today" in calendar — Make today's date stand out by displaying a highlight border around it.
  • Always highlight "Today" in Week View — Highlights today in the Week view timeline.
  • Click & drag on calendar to create a new event
  • Snap to 1 minute when dragging in day & week views with Shift key
  • Auto-show events after calendar change
  • Begin editing event after duplicating on calendar — Only applies with the pop-over style info editor.
  • Show time difference tooltips when dragging
  • Show duration tooltips when resizing events
  • Disable timeline scroll zoom in Day & Week views — Prevent accidental zooming when scrolling directly over the timeline bar.
  • Overflowing days in Month View require Option key held-down to scroll
  • Reduce transition animations

Weather​

To adjust the display of weather, or moon phases on your calendar, select Weather.

Weather​

  • Show weather — Display forecasts for the next 7 days. On by default.
  • Temperature scale — Fahrenheit or Celsius. This starts out matching your region.
  • Weather graphics — Small (the default), Large or Background. With Small or Large, hovering the pointer over the weather icon shows an extended forecast.
  • Show moon phases — Display moon phases. On by default, and independent of Show weather.
  • Moon graphics — Realistic, Symbols (the default) or Astrological.

Powered by Weather at the bottom of the section opens Apple's list of the underlying data providers.

Location​

Choose At current location (the default) or At city / town. For a city, click Find…, type a name, click Lookup and pick a result. These options are unavailable while Show weather is off.

note

To display weather at your current location, BusyCal requires access to Location Services. The first time you open BusyCal you should be presented with a dialog asking if you want to grant BusyCal permission to access Location Services. If you did not grant BusyCal access to Location Services at that time, you must do so manually, by going to System Settings > Security & Privacy > Privacy > Location Services and then selecting the checkbox next to BusyCal. If Location Services are off, the Weather section shows an Open System Settings… button that takes you straight there.

If BusyCal cannot work out where you are, or cannot fetch a forecast for the city you chose, it says so beneath the location options and keeps trying.

Backups​

BusyCal automatically backs up your calendars every 24 hours and saves your last 10 backups. You can restore entire calendars and all its events or individual events / tasks. Please see Backup & Restoring for more information.

Backup settings include:

  • Automatically back up — How often backups are made: never, every hour, every 2 hours, every 4 hours, every 8 hours or every day (the default).
  • Backups to keep — How many backups are kept: 5, 10 (the default), 25, 50 or 100.
  • Backup location — Where backups are stored, by default the BusyCal Backups folder in your Documents folder. Click Choose to pick a different folder.
  • Restore From Backup — Choose a backup file, then pick which calendars to restore from it. Calendars whose original account is no longer available are restored as local copies, and you can choose to restore everything as On My Mac calendars instead. Restoring replaces the data in the calendars you selected and cannot be undone, so any changes made since that backup will be lost.

Advanced​

A number of advanced calendar configuration options are found on the Advanced settings section. These settings allow you to customize BusyCal's behavior for meeting invitations, travel time, natural language processing, general sync options, and more. The Advanced settings are organized into four tabs: Meetings, Locations, Sync & LAN, and Other.

Meetings​

The Meetings tab contains settings related to meeting invitations, conference calls, phone calls, and how BusyCal handles meeting-related notifications.

  • Open conference calls in — Choose which browser opens conference call links. The menu lists the browsers installed on your Mac, and the System Default entry names the one macOS currently uses. This setting appears only when you have more than the system default available.

  • Open phone calls with — Choose which app opens a phone number when you click one in BusyCal. Pick System Default, which names the app macOS currently uses, or any installed app that can place calls. This setting appears only when you have such an app installed.

  • Show meeting invites from shared calendars in the Inbox — Typically you don't want to see invites sent to people that are sharing their calendars with you, since these aren't explicitly addressed to you. Such meetings would still appear in the calendar - but not as a notification in the Inbox. However, if you're managing someone else's calendar for them (such as an assistant or a secretary), you would want to turn this option ON. This would route all invites, sent to people that have given you read and write permission on a shared calendar, to the Inbox as notifications.

  • Automatically send invites after delay — After adding attendees to an event, BusyCal will automatically send the invite after a brief delay. Disabling this preference will require you to manually click the 'Send Invite' button each time.

  • Remember recently invited contacts — Keep track of contacts you've recently invited to meetings, making it easier to invite them again in the future.

The options under For meetings on local calendars and older CalDAV servers apply to:

  • Local On My Mac calendars that are not connected to a cloud service.

  • Older or self-hosted CalDAV servers that lack the ability to send and receive meeting invitations.

  • Automatically notify organizer/attendees of meeting changes — Select this option to automatically notify attendees when you edit or delete a meeting they were invited to. If this option is deselected, an alert will be presented after editing a meeting asking if you'd like to notify attendees.

  • Show outgoing meeting invitations in Mail — If you select this checkbox, you can view outgoing meeting invitations in Mail before sending them. This may be useful for adding a personal note to the email or changing the mail account the invitation is being sent from.

  • Meeting organizer email — When you create a meeting in BusyCal, your default email address is used for the Organizer. You can change the default Organizer email by choosing one of your email addresses from this pop-up menu. You can select any of the email addresses on the Me card in Contacts. If BusyCal cannot read your card, or the card has no email address, the pane says so instead of showing the menu.

important

For meetings created on iCloud, Google, or Outlook/Exchange calendars, invitations are sent automatically by the server during sync—not by your email client. These settings only apply to meetings created on local On My Mac calendars, where invitations are sent via your Mac's email client.

If you're using an account like iCloud or Fastmail, which supports email aliases, you can modify the meeting organizer's email by going to Accounts settings, selecting the account, and updating the Meeting organizer email field.

If you create a meeting on a local calendar, BusyCal sends meeting invitations from the default email account in Apple Mail. You can set the default account in Mail by choosing Mail > Settings > Composing, and choosing an account from the "Send new messages from" pop-up menu. BusyCal also supports several third-party mail clients that allow sending meeting invitations via AppleScript.

Locations​

The Locations tab allows you to configure how BusyCal handles location information in events, including map integration and travel time calculations.

  • Open maps in — Choose whether BusyCal opens a location in Apple Maps or Google Maps.

  • Default Origin for Travel Time — Select the starting point that BusyCal uses by default when it calculates travel time to an event. The pop-up always includes:

    • Current or Recent Location — Starts from the location of the most recent event on your calendar up to three hours before the event you're scheduling. If no such event exists, BusyCal falls back to your Mac's current location.
    • Current Location — Always starts from your Mac's current location (requires Location Services — see Why does BusyCal require access to Location Services?).
    • Label (from Me Card) — One entry per postal address found on your macOS Me card (Home, Work, or any custom label you've defined). These entries appear below a separator in the same pop-up.

    Adding addresses to the dropdown​

    The entries listed as "Label (from Me Card)" are pulled directly from the postal addresses on your system-wide Me contact. BusyCal reads this from the unified Me contact in the system Contacts store, so you can edit it either in Apple Contacts or in BusyContacts — both write to the same underlying contact, and any change appears here the next time you open the dropdown.

    To add a new starting location to this dropdown:

    1. Open Apple Contacts (or BusyContacts) and go to your Me card — in Apple Contacts choose Card > Go to My Card; in BusyContacts choose File > Go to My Card. If no Me card is set, select your own contact and choose Card > Make This My Card (Apple Contacts) or Card > Make This My Card / the equivalent action in BusyContacts.
    2. Add a postal address to the Me card and give it a meaningful label (for example, Home, Work, Office, Cabin, etc.). Any address label you define — including custom labels — will show up in BusyCal's dropdown.
    3. Save the contact.
    4. Return to BusyCal > Settings > Advanced > Locations and open the Default Origin for Travel Time pop-up. Your new address appears at the bottom of the menu as "Label (from Me Card)". Select it to use it as the default starting location for travel-time calculations.
    tip

    BusyCal also uses the Home and Work addresses on your Me card for the Other Starting Location > Home / Work options shown in an event's Travel Time pop-up (see Travel Time). Keeping these labels populated on your Me card is the simplest way to make per-event starting locations available everywhere in BusyCal.

    note

    BusyCal needs permission to read your Contacts data to see the Me card. If you don't see any "from Me Card" entries, check System Settings > Privacy & Security > Contacts and make sure BusyCal is allowed.

  • Add Travel Time When Location Is Set — Automatically adds travel time based on your preferred travel mode whenever a location is set for an event. Choose the mode — car, walking, cycling or transit — from the menu beside the switch. Availability may vary by destination and travel type, and this is supported only by calendars that allow travel time.

  • Last travel time error — Appears only after automatic travel-time insertion has failed. Click the warning symbol to read the last error.

  • Show location suggestions in Info Panel — Enables location suggestions while editing events.

Sync & LAN​

The Sync & LAN tab contains settings for syncing BusyCal data across your devices using iCloud and sharing calendars on your local network.

  • Sync Settings — General settings and preferences will sync across all your Macs using the same iCloud account. Please note that smart filters and related settings will not be synchronized.

  • Sync Accounts — Sync new accounts across all your devices using iCloud. Note: Credentials will not be synced. iCloud Drive must be enabled in System Settings.

  • Sync Smart Filters & Calendar Sets — Sync smart filters and calendar sets across all your macOS devices running BusyCal. iCloud Drive must be enabled in System Settings.

  • Sync Extended Task Properties — BusyCal will append additional task details such as priority, due time, and duration to notes only where these properties are not supported by the syncing service. This ensures these features are preserved and synced across devices using BusyCal.

  • Sync Tag List — Sync the Tags History across all your devices using iCloud. iCloud Drive must be enabled in System Settings.

  • Enable Spotlight Search for Events — Allow macOS Spotlight to search and index your calendar events for quick system-wide searching.

LAN Sharing​

The LAN sharing settings apply to sharing calendars with other BusyCal users on a LAN (local area network):

  • LAN sharing name — The name your Mac uses for calendar sharing on your local network.

  • Port — The port used for calendar sharing. Choose between:

    • Dynamic — Let BusyCal automatically choose an available port
    • Static — Manually specify a port number for consistent network configuration

For more information on LAN sharing, see Sharing calendars and address books on a LAN via Bonjour.

Other​

The Other tab contains miscellaneous advanced settings for editing, confirmation dialogs, and diagnostics.

  • Use natural language processing for events created in Month view — When this option is turned on, any time you create a new event in Month view, BusyCal can use NLP Natural Language Processing to automatically extract and set the title of the event, its start/end times, as well as location. Available only with the embedded editor. Requires 'Open Info Panel for New Events' to be turned off in Info Panel settings.

  • Detect HTML text in Notes — Automatically detect and render HTML formatted text in event notes fields.

  • Travel time in blocking events — Decides how cross-calendar blocking events treat the travel time on the original event. Choose:

    • Match original event times — Blocking events use the same start and end times as the original event. Travel time is carried along for reference, but won't extend the time shown as busy on other calendars.
    • Include travel time in all — When the original event has travel time, every blocking event starts earlier so that travel time also appears as busy on the other calendar.
    • Include travel time in "Show as Busy" only — Blocking events that show as busy start earlier so that travel time also appears as busy. Blocking events that show full details keep the same times as the original event.

  • Require confirmation for any changes to events — Display confirmation dialogs for all event modifications. Turning it on covers both of the settings beneath it:

    • Confirm changes to events on shared calendars — Select this option to display a warning when you edit or delete an event on a shared calendar.
    • Confirm when deleting events — Show a confirmation dialog before permanently deleting any events.

  • Automatic crash reporting — Automatically send crash reports to help improve BusyCal's stability and performance.

  • Share my usage statistics — Help us improve BusyCal by allowing us to collect completely anonymous usage data, purely to identify features of the app that are underutilized or areas that need further improvement. This would aid us in making accurate, data-driven decisions for future product updates.

Time Zones​

  • Show time zone menu in toolbar — Select this checkbox to enable BusyCal's Time Zone menu, which displays all the events in your calendar in a different time zone. This is useful when travelling. It changes only how BusyCal shows your events — your Mac's own clock and System Settings are left alone, so you can keep the Mac on local time while reading your calendar in your home time zone, or the reverse.
  • Sort time zones by — Choose between GMT Offsets (the default) and Names.
  • Use long time zone names — Select this checkbox to display a city name along with the time zone.
  • Show second time zone in Day and Week views — Select this checkbox to display a second time zone bar in day and week views, then choose the zone from the menu beside it.
  • Show third time zone in Day and Week views — Select this checkbox to display a third time zone bar. It stays unavailable until the second time zone is enabled.

Each time zone menu lists your current zone, then the zones you have used recently along with your favorites. Clear Menu empties the recent list, and Select Time Zone… opens a picker to search for any other zone.

  • Convert GMT times to Local timezone when syncing events — This instructs BusyCal to convert any event with "GMT" set as its timezone to your local time when adding a new event for the first time. Normally, meeting invites or events on shared calendars are added in "GMT" by others as a matter of convenience, as it's easier to reason in GMT time. Such events will automatically get converted to your local date and time. If you would like to keep these in "GMT" time irrespective, uncheck this option. NOTE: The info panel will always show you the actual start / end times along with their respective original timezones, however the day / week / month views will automatically translate these times to your local timezone or one you've manually picked using the Timezone dropdown.

  • Use Floating Time for New Events — Select this checkbox to always use the Floating Time Zone for new events. See Time Zone for more information.

  • Use Floating Time for New Tasks — Select this checkbox to always use the Floating Time Zone for new tasks. See Time Zone for more information.

The Favorite Time Zones list at the bottom holds the zones you use often. They stay visible in every time zone picker and can show conversions in the Info Panel when Favorite time zones is enabled in Info Panel settings. Use the + and - buttons to add and remove zones, and double-click a zone to rename it.

Updates​

If you're on the direct version of the app, you will see an additional Updates section where you can choose how often BusyCal checks for updates. If you're on the Mac App Store or Setapp version, updates are handled through those stores and you will not see this section.

  • Check for updates every — 1 Day (the default), 2 Days, 3 Days, 4 Days, 7 Days, 2 Weeks, 3 Weeks or 1 Month.
  • including beta — If enabled, BusyCal will include beta releases when checking for updates. Off by default. This checkbox appears only for a registered, unexpired direct licence.

Note: This preference may be ignored for important bug fixes or security patches. If you opt-in to beta, update checks may be performed more frequently.

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