Mac Basics: Calendar keeps your appointments

Calendar in Mavericks includes maps, weather, and travel time to make setting up and sharing your events easy. Learn how to create events, subscribe to other people's calendars, and connect to Facebook and other services using the Calendar app.

You can find Calendar in the Dock or the Applications folder. 

You can change the calendar view by clicking the Day, Week, Month, or Year tab at the top of the window.

Calendar lets you add events in multiple ways:

• Double-click anywhere on the calendar to add an event at that time. The Inspector window that appears allows you to add invitees, set a time, location and more.
• Drag an event to reschedule it.
• Double-click an existing event to edit it from the Inspector.

The Quick Event field in Calendar app lets you enter events using natural language. Click the Add Event button and enter text that describes the event, such as "Lunch this Friday with Charles at Apple Café 5 p.m." Calendar app uses the words you enter to create a new event with the time, contacts and location fields filled out for you.

Select a topic below to learn more about Calendar features.

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By default, OS X includes two calendars in the Calendar app – Work and Home. If  you want to create a new calendar, choose New Calendar from the File menu. Type a name for your calendar in the text field. For example, if you have kids, you might want to create a separate calendar for each one to track their schedules. You can see and control how your calendars appear by clicking the Calendars button.

To change the color or name of a calendar, select it from the calendars list, then choose Edit > Get Info. To remove a calendar and all of its events, right-click or Control-click the calendar's name,  then select Delete from the shortcut menu that appears.

iCloud is included with OS X. Once you sign up for your free iCloud account, you can push calendar updates across your devices, share your iCloud Calendar, and see your calendar on the iCloud website.

If you have an iCloud account , you can use iCal to access and manage your iCloud calendars. If you set up the iCloud Calendar service on several devices and computers, your iCloud calendar and reminder information is kept up to date on each device and computer.

Set up your iCloud calendar account from System Preferences to see your iCloud-based calendars in the Calendar window.

• In System Preferences:
  1. Click iCloud.
  2. Sign in to iCloud.
  3. If this is your first time signing in from this computer, you'll be asked if you want to use iCloud for contacts, calendars, and bookmarks. Make sure that the calendars option is selected (checked), then click Next.
  4. If you've previously signed in to iCloud, you'll see a list of iCloud services. Select the box next to Calendars.

You can also add appointments from other popular services to your calendar in Calendar app, including Exchange, CalDAV, Facebook, and Yahoo.

1. Choose Apple Menu () > System Preferences.
2. Select Internet Accounts.
3. Click the Add Account (+) button at the bottom of the window. 
4. Choose the account type you want to use, and enter your account credentials. 
5. Make sure the option "Calendars" is selected (checked) to display the events associated with this account in the Calendar app.

The Inspector window appears when you add a new event, or double-click on an existing event. It shows you all the details of your events, including who's invited, and where and when you want the event to occur.

In Mavericks, the Inspector helps you fill out your events using Autocomplete. Start typing an address and Calendar suggests matching locations. Start typing the name of a contact in your Address Book and Calendar suggests matching names based on contacts you've entered in the Contacts app.

In Mavericks, you can see your event locations on a miniature map in the Inspector. If you click this mini map, a full size view opens in the Maps app. 

The mini map includes an estimate of the travel time to your appointment destination from your current location in the event Inspector as well as the weather forecast for that day.
Note: For travel time estimates, directions and weather, you need to turn on Location Services in System Preferences.

Just in case you're meeting someone for lunch or dinner, Calendar in Mavericks offers dining suggestions. 

1. Create an invite and name it. 
2. In the location section of the Event Inspector, type in the type of food you want, such as pizza, burgers, or sushi. 
3. The names of nearby restaurants that serve this type of food appear.
4. Select a restaurant to add it to your event.

Notifications in OS X keep you informed of when an event is coming soon. If you're busy, you can tell Calendar notifications to display again later by swiping them to the right, or by clicking the Snooze button. Click and hold the Snooze button to see additional options.

Calendar in Mavericks displays birthdays pulled directly from the Contacts app. Any change you make to the birthday field of a contact automatically appears in the Birthdays calendar. 

Calendar in Mavericks also automatically displays local holidays. 

Note: If the holidays displayed in the built-in holidays calendar don't match the ones for your region, check that Location Services are turned on in System Preferences. OS X uses your current location to display holidays based on your current region.

The Birthdays and Holidays calendar appear in the Other section of the calendars list. If you don't see the calendars list, click the Calendars button () in the Calendar app window to show the list of available calendars. Check or uncheck each calendar in the list that you want to view in your Calendar window. If you don't see your birthdays or holidays listed here, make sure these options are selected in the General pane of Calendar preferences:

To make a calendar viewable by others, follow these steps.

1. Choose Edit > Share Calendar
2. Enter the names of people from your contacts list or email addresses that you want to share this calendar with.
3. If you want anyone to be able to subscribe to your calendar from the Internet, select the option for Public Calendar.
4. A URL is provided that you can send to others so that they can see the calendar. Click the share button next to the URL to send it directly to a recipient using the built-in sharing options in OS X.

Tip: Any calendar application that is compatible with the iCalendar standard can subscribe to your calendar using this URL.

You can use Calendar app to subscribe to someone's published calendar, such as a family member or your work team.

1. Choose File > New Calendar Subscription…
2. Enter the web address (URL) for the calendar you want to subscribe to, and then click Subscribe.

The calendar you subscribed to appears in your Calendars pop-up list under the heading "Subscriptions." To make changes to the calendar – such as the color of its events, or the name that appears in the calendar list – select the calendar in the calendars list, and then choose Edit > Get Info.

Find more information about using iCloud with calendar subscriptions.

If you have an iCloud account, you can use it to automatically keep your calendar information up to date across multiple computers or devices, including your iPhone, iPod touch, or iPad. See the following for more information:

• iCloud Setup
• iCloud Help

Tip: Want to learn more about the Calendar app? Check out the built-in Help available in OS X. From the Calendar app choose Calendar Help from the Help menu.