Open the field
Use the add control from the calendar. The quick-add field handles creation and English Quick Edit; the preview makes the selected mode visible. In a new event, the title field reads a whole sentence too — type Lunch Friday 1pm and the date and time fill in.
Searching has its own screen, behind the magnifying glass — see Views and Navigation on iPhone.
Add naturally
Type a sentence such as Coffee with Priya tomorrow at 9 at Blue Bottle. InstaCal previews the title, date, time, location and destination calendar. Choose Event or Reminder and confirm.
As you type, Quick Add colors the words it understood — the time, the day, the place. Tap a colored word to change just that detail. The field hands back as soon as you press Return, and a half-typed sentence stays put if you rotate or resize the window.
Natural-language creation works in all 31 languages InstaCal speaks, reading dates, times and repeats in each one. On supported iPhones and iPads, Apple Intelligence can add on-device context. The built-in parser remains available without it.
Add from Image
Photograph a school calendar, a newsletter, an invitation or a gym's weekly class schedule, and InstaCal lists every event, to-do and weekly class on it, ready to review and add.
Touch and hold + and choose Add from Image, then Take Photo, Choose from Photos or, when there is a picture on the clipboard, Paste Image. How It Works shows a short tour. You can also share a photo, a screenshot, a PDF or a web page to InstaCal from Photos, Safari, Mail or any app with a Share button.
The review lists what was found, each with a tick, a kind and its date. Everything is ticked except what is already on your calendar, which is unticked and says so. Untick what you do not want, choose the calendar and reminder list, and tap Add. Tap a row to open it in the full event or reminder editor first, where it can also be turned from an event into a reminder or back. A gym's timetable comes back with every class unticked, for you to pick yours.
For puts a name in front of every title — “Ava Pajama Day” — so two children's days do not read alike. InstaCal remembers the name and the calendar for each school or organizer, so the next newsletter from the same place lands in the same place. Read Again More Carefully takes a slower second look if something was missed, before anything has been added.
Note: Add from Image needs iOS or iPadOS 27 on an iPhone or iPad with Apple Intelligence; on other devices the menu row does not appear. The page is read with Apple's Vision text recognition, then by Apple Intelligence through Private Cloud Compute, which keeps it private to you. Nothing goes to an InstaCal server. Apple sets a daily limit on how much it reads, and InstaCal tells you when you are close to it.
Put one event on several dates
In a new event, tap Add Another Date under Date & Time, pick the day and set the time, and repeat for as many dates as you need; the red minus removes one. Adding then makes a separate event for each date, with the same title, location, alerts, notes and length, so any one can be moved or deleted on its own. It is not a repeating series. With All-day on, each date saves as all-day. On a Google calendar with guests you are asked about emailing them once, and with Zoom added each date gets its own meeting.
Pick an address from Contacts
Type a person's or a company's name in an event's Location field and their addresses from Contacts are offered above Apple Maps' places. Choosing one fills in the address alone, so the map, travel time and directions work from it. If InstaCal has never been allowed to read Contacts, the list ends with Find addresses in Contacts and a button that asks; typing alone never raises a prompt.
Say it repeats
Put the repeat in the sentence and InstaCal makes the series instead of one event. Run payroll every Monday at 9am saves a weekly event starting on the coming Monday, with every Monday taken out of the title.
It knows every day and daily; every week, weekly, every Monday and on Tuesdays; every other week, every two weeks, fortnightly and every other Friday; every month and monthly; every year, yearly and annually. Naming a weekday pins where the series starts, so typing every Monday on a Wednesday begins the coming Monday rather than today.
Every language InstaCal speaks has its own forms, inflections included — jeden Montag, tous les lundis, cada lunes, 每周一. Reminders made from Quick Add repeat too, and the same phrases work from Siri, from Shortcuts and from the Watch's preview.
Times, days and places it reads out of the sentence
A time written in words counts as a time. at noon tomorrow saves a 12:00 event tomorrow rather than an all-day one at a venue called noon, and midnight is read as midnight rather than midday. The same holds in every language InstaCal speaks — Polish jutro w południe, French demain midi, Malay esok pada tengah hari.
Where a language names a part of the day rather than an hour, the hour moves to the half the words say and those words leave the title with it: Indonesian pukul 3 sore is 3 PM, not 3 AM. A day named after the time wins over the day the clock implies, so Vietnamese 12 giờ trưa mai lands tomorrow.
The title survives a sentence that is almost all date. Dinner on friday and Lunch on the 12th keep their titles instead of saving an untitled event.
Words after at that name a place are offered as places. Typing Lunch tomorrow at grassis shows matching nearby places directly under the title, above the keyboard; tap one to fill Location, and deleting the words from the title takes it back out. Matches are drawn from near your last known position, which needs no new permission prompt.
Change an item
English commands typed into the quick-add field can move, rename or cancel a matching event. For example: Move design review to 3, Rename gym to Strength training or Cancel dentist Friday.
InstaCal shows the proposed match and change before writing it. Review the date and calendar carefully when several events share a similar title.
Use Siri, Shortcuts and Controls
InstaCal exposes actions to add or change an event, get the next event, request a Day Briefing and open the app. Add them to Shortcuts, ask Siri using the shortcut’s phrase, or place Quick Add in Control Center where supported.
Tip: Star the calendar you use most under Settings → Calendars. The destination remains visible in every preview, but a good default removes one decision from each quick entry.
