Choose the date display
Open Settings → Menu Bar. You can show or hide the calendar icon and choose how the date is written. Presets cover compact and full styles; a custom pattern gives you direct control over the displayed components.
Choose what clicking the item opens when InstaCal has more than one Mac surface available.
Show the next item
Turn on Show next event in menu bar to place the upcoming title beside the date. Choose a Calendar Set to control which calendars qualify, and set how far ahead an item can appear.
The Include section controls ongoing events and all-day events. You can make all-day items a fallback only when nothing timed is coming up.
Include reminders
Turn on due reminders to let the menu bar surface the next actionable task. If an event and reminder both qualify, choose whichever is sooner, events first or reminders first. Overdue reminders can remain visible until completed.
Configure the countdown
Turn on Show countdown and choose Countdown or Start Time. Set how long before the event the countdown appears and whether it uses gray text.
The next-item display updates while you work. Near a detected video meeting, the menu bar and panel keep the Join action close without requiring the event to be opened first.
When the item is not on screen
macOS quietly drops menu bar items it cannot fit, and a menu bar manager can park one out of sight — while InstaCal keeps running as though nothing happened. Settings → Menu Bar says so directly, with a notice headed Your Menu Bar Item Is Hidden naming which of three things it is:
- Items that do not fit to the right of a Mac’s camera housing are hidden by macOS.
- There is not enough room in the menu bar at all, so macOS is hiding it.
- A menu bar manager — Ice, Bartender, Hidden Bar or Vanilla — has hidden it. InstaCal names the one it found and offers Open Ice (or Bartender, and so on) to go and show it again.
The notice re-checks itself every couple of seconds, so it clears while you watch as you shorten the date style, trim the next-event text, switch to the icon alone, or unhide InstaCal in the manager.
Relaunching InstaCal while its item is hidden — from Finder, Spotlight or the Dock — opens the panel with the same explanation as a banner, and the same button. The panel opens at the top right of the screen rather than off screen beside an item that is not there. The banner goes away when the panel closes.
