Open Settings
Choose InstaCal → Settings or press Command-,. The sidebar groups related options; changes save immediately.
Settings areas
The sidebar separates them into runs with a gap, the way System Settings does, and lists them in this order:
| Area | What it controls |
|---|---|
| General | Launch at login, whether InstaCal shows in the Dock and menu bar or the menu bar only, Date & Time (week start, week numbers, the second time zone), Alternate Calendar, Open Links, and iCloud Sync for your settings |
| Menu Bar | Which menu bar items exist (Calendar, Reminders, Tasks), what the Calendar item opens, the icon and date style, the next event, reminders, the event time and countdown, and saved countdowns |
| Panel | The dropdown the menu bar item opens: its height and background, the footer's Button Layout and the Up Next Bubble, and the Mini Calendar at its top |
| Notifications | Where alerts are delivered, event and reminder alerts, tasks, invitations, time-to-leave alerts, Schedule Risk Alerts, Alert Contents and Quiet hours |
| Shortcuts | Global shortcuts, menu commands, views and panel arrow keys |
| Theme | Light & Dark, the accent color, text size, the calendar window's colors and the app icon |
| Agenda | How agenda rows look — layout, event indicators (including Full Color), all-day events, past events, separators — the detail lines, Pictures, the day header, Happening Now, behavior and colors |
| Calendar Views | The calendar window — event details, its sidebar, snap scrolling — plus Day & Week, Month, Quarter, Year, Week on Week, heat map colors and navigation |
| Weather & Moon | Provider, location, units, icon set and moon phases |
| Accounts | Apple permissions and every direct connection — Google, Microsoft, iCloud, CalDAV, subscriptions, Todoist, Zoom — and how often accounts refresh |
| Calendars | Visibility, default, order, local colors, hidden events, import/export and planning tools |
| Calendar Sets | Named calendar groups and Focus behavior |
| Smart Filters | Saved workspace rules and view settings |
| Reminders | Visible lists, defaults, and whether reminders appear in the agenda |
| Tasks | Task lists, whether tasks appear on the calendar, free-time scheduling hours and the task library |
| Events | What + creates, default calendar and reminder list, the alert on a new event, Apple Intelligence quick entry, which invitations show, travel time, Schedule Warnings and availability |
| Templates | Reusable event and reminder field sets |
| Countdowns | Saved important dates, their photos, the featured moment and which are pinned to the menu bar |
| Privacy | App Lock and Private Calendars |
| About | What's New, the version you are running, what is included with your purchase, and Contact Us |
The sidebar has been reorganized three times. InstaCal 3.8 added the Privacy, Events and About panes. InstaCal 3.9.2 grouped the sidebar and added Calendar Views. InstaCal 4.0 added Panel and Agenda panes, renamed Appearance to Theme, moved Open Links and iCloud Sync into General, and moved what a notification may show into Notifications › Alert Contents. If a setting is not where you remember it, the table above is where it is now — or search for it.
Pictures that show what you are choosing
Most choices that change how something looks are drawn as picture cards: a small picture of each option, so you can see Muted Colors, Glass or Timeline before you pick it. Menu Bar opens on a live preview of your menu bar item and Agenda on a sample agenda day, and both redraw as you change the settings beneath them. Several settings that used to be a switch with a picker under it — travel time, moon phases, the menu bar's event time — are now a single choice whose first card is Off.
Rows carry the same names as on iPhone and iPad, so a setting found on one device can be found by the same words on the other.
Search for a setting
The field at the top of the sidebar searches every pane. It matches a setting’s name, any of its options, and the explanatory text underneath it, so a word you half-remember from the description will find the row — “work days” turns up the Month picker whose title says neither. It also knows a few words people use for things InstaCal calls something else, such as “dark mode” and “font size”, and the old names of rows that were merged. Results are grouped by the pane they live in; choosing one opens that pane, scrolls the row into view and highlights it briefly.
It is the quickest answer to “where did that move to”, and it is worth reaching for before the table above.
Right-click to go straight to its settings
The things Settings changes have a way into it:
- Right-click or Control-click any InstaCal menu bar item for Menu Bar Settings…, Settings… and Quit InstaCal. A plain click still opens the panel.
- Right-click an event in the agenda for Agenda Settings…, at the foot of its menu.
- Right-click a day header in the agenda for Day Header Settings….
- Right-click the mini calendar for Mini Calendar Settings….
Each opens Settings at that section rather than at the top of the window.
What an alert says
Under Settings → Notifications → Alert Contents, Event length adds how long an event runs: End time reads “Today at 9:00 – 10:30 AM” and Duration reads “Today at 9:00 AM · 1 hr, 30 min”. It is set to Don't show out of the box. Show location beside it decides whether the place appears, and is on.
Both settings apply to notification banners and to the list in the Alarms window. A location written over several lines, as Maps and Outlook addresses often are, is joined onto one line with commas. Changing either setting, or editing an event's location or end time, updates alerts that are already waiting to fire — you do not have to move the event to make its banner catch up.
Notification detail, in the same section, decides how much of an event a notification is allowed to show: Full Details, Calendar Names Only or Hide Titles and Details. It is applied before the notification reaches macOS, so a hidden title never leaves InstaCal, and it is shared with Apple Watch.
Quiet Hours
Under Settings → Notifications → Quiet Hours, switch on Quiet hours to stop InstaCal interrupting you during a window you choose. Quiet starts and Quiet ends set that window; out of the box it runs from 10:00 PM to 7:00 AM. A window that crosses midnight is understood — you do not need to split it into two.
Quiet Hours covers every kind of interruption InstaCal raises: event alerts, reminder alerts, departure alerts for travel time, Schedule Risk Alerts, invitations, and the Alarms window.
Alerts inside the window are skipped, not saved up. InstaCal does not queue them and deliver them when the window closes, because an alert that arrives after the meeting it was about is worse than no alert. If you need to be told about something overnight, leave Quiet Hours off for that period.
Setting Quiet starts and Quiet ends to the same time makes the whole day quiet.
Theme, accent color and app icon
Settings → Theme opens on Light & Dark: System, Light or Dark. Colors you set elsewhere are kept separately for Light and Dark, and you edit whichever palette is showing.
Accent color chooses the color InstaCal draws its highlights in: System follows the accent chosen in System Settings, and is where a Mac starts; Blue and Red are fixed; Custom opens a color well. With Custom, Dark's color is made from yours automatically; pick a different Dark only if the automatic one does not suit you, and Automatic puts it back. Every window, sheet and widget follows the choice, and your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch can follow it too.
App Icon picks the Dock icon: Original, Blue (the original calendar with a blue band to match the accent), Date, Blocks, Agenda, Month, Done, Simple Date, Outline or Mono. The choice is saved on that Mac. In dark appearance the icon's red band and grid dots dim rather than glare.
Calendar Window sets the calendar and sidebar background colors of the calendar window, separate from the menu bar panel.
Text size, panel and window separately
Settings → Theme → Text Size has two steppers, Panel and Calendar Window, each running from −2 to +3 with System in the middle, each with a preview beneath it. A panel glanced at for a second and a window read at length often want different sizes, and the two are frequently on screen together, so they are set apart from each other. The calendar window's step also covers its sidebar.
Day numbers keep their size at every step — in the month grid, the mini month and the week view's header — while event titles, times, chips and the “+N more” label grow and shrink. At larger steps Month view grows with the text, so a cell shows fewer events rather than overlapping them, and Week view's all-day strip does the same. Settings itself always stays at the normal system size, so a step that turns out to be unreadable can still be stepped back.
The Panel pane
Settings → Panel is the dropdown the menu bar item opens. Menu Bar is the item itself; Agenda is the list inside the panel.
Panel height
Size & Background → Panel height offers four presets:
| Preset | Height |
|---|---|
| Compact | 520 pt |
| Standard | 640 pt |
| Tall | 748 pt — the height a new install starts at |
| Extra Tall | 800 pt |
You can also drag the panel’s bottom edge to any height between 520 and 1000 pt; the picker then shows whichever preset is nearest. Panel background beside it chooses Frosted, Glass or Solid, and Background color fills a Solid panel and tints the other two.
Button Layout holds the footer's buttons, covered under the menu bar panel, and the Up Next Bubble.
Mini calendar
Settings → Panel → Mini Calendar shapes the month grid at the top of the panel. Highlight weekends puts a soft band down the Saturday and Sunday columns; Highlight the current week puts one behind the row today falls in. Bold numbers draws the day numbers in a heavier weight, and is off unless you turn it on. Start with the current week begins the month at the week today falls in, so upcoming weeks are not pushed off the bottom by ones already past.
Mini calendar marks — Dots, Bars, Timeline or None — chooses how the grid marks days with events. It normally follows the agenda's Event indicators; it becomes a choice of its own when the agenda is set to Full Color or None, which leave the calendar's marks alone.
On iPhone and iPad the same switches are on the Agenda page under Mini Calendar.
The Agenda pane
Settings → Agenda opens on a sample day that redraws as you change anything below it.
Rows
Agenda rows puts the time on the left, above the title or below it. Event indicators chooses how each timed event shows its calendar:
| Choice | The row |
|---|---|
| Dots, Bars or Timeline | A mark of the calendar's color beside each event, in that shape. Bars is where InstaCal starts |
| Full Color | The whole row painted as a solid block of the calendar's color, like the all-day events above it |
| None | No mark at all |
Dots, Bars and Timeline also set how the calendar marks days with events; Full Color and None leave that to Mini calendar marks in the Panel pane. With Full Color on, reminders and tasks in the agenda are outlined in their list's color over a light tint, so their tick circle still reads as something to click.
Past events decides how events already over are drawn, and Day separators and Event separators add a hairline between days and between events. Event separators are off to start with.
How loud the all-day bubbles are
The bubbles across the top of a day can be drawn three ways, under Agenda → Rows → All-day events:
| Style | What it looks like |
|---|---|
| Filled | A solid block of the calendar's color, which is how every earlier version drew them |
| Muted Colors | A soft tint of the same color, so four all-day events read as quietly as the timed rows under them |
| Outlined | The edge only, with the title sitting on the panel |
Filled is what you get if you never choose. The Up Next widget's all-day and countdown bars follow the same setting, so your Home Screen and your menu bar can be made to read the same way.
On iPhone and iPad the same choice is under Settings → Agenda → All-Day Events.
Detail lines
Agenda → Details chooses up to two extra lines under each title, separately for Events, Tasks, Reminders and Countdowns. An empty or unavailable detail is skipped rather than leaving a blank line, and the same choice applies in your widgets. See Home Screen and Mac Widgets for the full list of what each kind can show.
Pictures
Agenda → Pictures has two switches, both off until you turn them on:
- Place photos puts the place's street view behind events there — the storefront of the business, or the street at the address — found from the event's location or, when there is none, its title.
- Event art adds a picture of what an event is about, for plans like Haircut, Gym or Halloween.
With either on, Pictures show in chooses Every Style or Full Color Only, and Pictures in Day view puts them on Day view's tiles too. An event's details always show both, whatever you choose here. Places are looked up in Apple Maps; everything else stays on your Mac.
Change a place's photo
When the street view is the wrong building, or you would rather see your own photo, open the event's details and use the picture's menu (or right-click the event in the agenda while place photos are on):
- Change Photo… uses a picture of your own, which you can frame the way you like.
- Use This View keeps the angle you have turned to in the live street view as the place's photo everywhere.
- Reset to Default View goes back to the automatic street view.
- Don't Show Photo stops showing a picture for that event; Show Photo in its menu brings it back.
With Countdowns & Templates switched on under Settings → General → iCloud Sync, these choices follow you to your iPhone and iPad.
Day header, Happening Now and Behavior
The Day Header section chooses the day name, the date format, whether Show days until labels appear, and the header's colors; temperatures appear when weather in day headers is on in Weather & Moon.
Happening Now holds the progress bar for the event you are in. An event under way always gets a soft tint of its calendar's colour and says how long is left; Progress bar chooses the bar.
| Setting | The row |
|---|---|
| Subtle | A hairline along the foot of the card that fills as the event runs |
| Full Row | The row itself becomes the bar, filling as the event runs |
| Off | The tint and the time left, with no bar |
Subtle is what you get if you never choose. With the bar on, Include all-day and multi-day events extends it to the all-day bubbles across the top, which are left plain otherwise; it is off to start with. The Up Next Bubble, in Panel → Button Layout, can keep naming the event under way too — see the menu bar panel.
Behavior holds Selected day only, which lists just today or the day you pick instead of continuing into the days after it, and Today opens at. Colors sets the agenda's background, title, time and detail colors, separately for Light and Dark.
Calendar Views
Settings → Calendar Views shapes the full calendar window.
Calendar Window → Sidebar chooses what its left column holds — Agenda, Months, Calendars, Months and Calendars or Hidden. Event details in the same section chooses whether a selected event's details open in a Side panel beside the calendar or a Popup. Snap scrolling and Snap agenda scrolling are there too.
Day & Week holds Days Shown — how many days Week shows at once, from 2 to 7; a Mac starts on 7 — and Stack overlapping events. Month holds Month shows (All days or Work days) and Weeks visible. The Mac’s Month grid is always one continuous run of weeks, so there is no Grid scrolling picker here; that choice lives on iPhone and iPad. Quarter holds the current month's position, Quarter cells, the Quarter heat map and week numbers; Year chooses Month Grid or Wall Planner and the Year heat map.
Snap scrolling
Snap scrolling rests a scroll through Month, Quarter, Year or the run of months on a whole week or a whole row of months, never a sliver of one. Snap agenda scrolling does the same for the agenda, easing a stopped scroll so an event's top sits just below its day header. Both are on out of the box, and each works without the other.
A trackpad flick settles on the nearest row; a mouse wheel moves on to the next row in the direction you turned it, so a few slow notches do not pull back to where you started. In the agenda only an event close to the top pulls — stop partway through a long day and the list stays where you left it.
How many weeks Month view shows
Settings → Calendar Views → Month → Weeks visible fits 4 to 8 weeks in the window, from about one month to about two. Fewer weeks make each day taller, with room for more event titles. It sits beside Month shows, which chooses between all days and work days.
Heat map colors
Settings → Calendar Views → Heat Map Colors switches the heat maps from Automatic to Custom, where each number of events gets its own color and the last level covers that many events or more. Custom starts from InstaCal's own amber-to-red ramp at five levels, allows 2 to 15, and stays identical to the built-in ramp until you change a color. Giving neighboring levels the same color merges those counts. One palette covers the Quarter heat map, the Year grid, the wall planner and the Up Next widget, and it syncs to your iPhone and iPad.
Tip: Keep the menu bar panel open while changing Panel or Agenda settings. It updates as a live preview.
The Chinese lunar calendar
Settings → General → Alternate Calendar offers Off or Chinese Lunar. With it on, every day in Month, Quarter, the panel's month and the desktop widgets carries its lunar date — 初五 — under the day number, and Day view spells out the full date, such as 农历九月十九 · 丙午年【马】.
Two switches beneath it decide what else is marked: Festivals, such as 春节 and 中秋, and Solar terms, the 24 points of the solar year. Both are drawn in the accent color. Your iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch have the same setting under Settings → Date & Time → Alternate Calendar.
Choose what + creates
Settings → Events → New Items holds the choices that are easy to miss.
New items create picks what the footer's pencil and the window's + make on a plain click: Event, Reminder or Task. Their menus still name every kind, so this sets the default rather than removing a choice.
Default calendar and Default reminder list say where new items go; Automatic uses the default from macOS Calendar and Reminders, and the star beside a calendar in Calendars sets the same thing.
Alert for new events sets the alert a new event starts with — the calendar's own default, none, at the time of the event, or a fixed lead from five minutes to a week. Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook can apply their own calendar default; Apple does not expose that setting, so Apple events start with no alert. Events you already have are left alone.
Choose which app opens your links
Settings → General → Open Links decides where a link goes when you click it in InstaCal. There are separate choices for Websites, Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams, plus Maps and Call phone numbers with. Each choice is saved on that Mac only, and it is not synced to your iPhone.
Websites lists every application on the Mac that has registered itself as able to open a web link, so whichever browsers you have installed appear by name. The three meeting choices start on Use Website Browser, meaning a meeting link follows whatever you picked for websites. Point one at its own app — Zoom, say — and only Zoom links go there. System Default deliberately ignores the website choice and hands the link to macOS.
Maps offers System Default, Apple Maps or Google Maps, and both the map preview in an event and its directions follow it. Google Maps has no Mac application, so it opens on the web in your website browser.
Call phone numbers with decides what opens when you click a phone number in an event's notes, location or dial-in row: FaceTime (the system handler for a tel: link — on a Mac that relays through a nearby iPhone, and on iPhone it is simply Phone), FaceTime Audio, WhatsApp, Google Voice or Zoom Phone. A number typed without a country code is passed on exactly as typed rather than being guessed at.
Open one link somewhere else, just this once
Right-click a link, a Join button or an address and InstaCal offers the other applications that can open it. Choosing one there opens the link in it without changing the saved preference, so a single Teams call that has to go through a browser does not cost you the setting.
The same menu has Copy Link, which copies the original address exactly as the organizer wrote it — never rewritten into an app-specific form, and it does not open anything.
An event that carries both a meeting room and a calendar web page — a Google event with a Meet link, typically — names the two apart: Copy Meeting Link and Copy Event Link. With only one of them it stays Copy Link, preferring the meeting, which is what Share Link already does. An event whose call is written into its location or its notes rather than attached as a link gains a Copy Link it never used to have.
If the app you chose is gone, InstaCal falls back to your website browser and then to the system default rather than doing nothing. A choice pointing at an application you have since removed shows as Unavailable app in the picker.
Give Reminders and Tasks their own menu bar items
Settings → Menu Bar → Menu Bar Items lists Calendar, Reminders and Tasks, each with a switch. Turn on more than one and InstaCal keeps a separate menu bar item for each, so Reminders or Tasks is one click away without going through the calendar. At least one has to stay on, so the last remaining switch is dimmed.
When Reminders or Tasks is on, a picker below chooses what its icon opens — the Panel, which closes when you click away, or the Window, which stays open and can be resized.
Ask for a feature
Settings → About → Contact Us holds two rows. Support Options opens a mail message for a problem you need help with. Request a Feature opens a form inside InstaCal instead — no mail client, no account.
Choose a Type — New feature, Improvement, Bug report, Design or Something else — write a one-line Summary of 3 to 120 characters, and add Details of up to 4,000 characters if you have them. Email and Screenshot are both optional: the request is sent anonymously, and an email address is only so you can get a reply. Choose Send Request.
Requests go to the people who build InstaCal, and one install can send ten a day. The same form is on iPhone and iPad under Settings → About → Request a Feature, where the screenshot comes from your photo library and is resized on the device before it is sent. See Privacy and Data Handling for exactly what leaves the device.
VoiceOver and Reduce Motion
VoiceOver reads the calendar rather than its pieces: every agenda row, month chip, time-grid block and list row is one spoken sentence, with its actions on the actions rotor, and icon-only buttons carry real names. InstaCal honours the system Reduce Motion setting throughout.
