Change Default iCal Event Length 12
Tip
Hello
This is going to be a quick tip for any users who regularly use iCal. When you create a new event, either in the day, week or month viewer you will realise that the length of the event is one hour long, for most people this is fine. However if you regularly have meetings which are half an hour long, or book rooms for two ours at a time, it may be beneficial and more efficient to adjust the default meeting time. This means you don’t have to fiddle around with the length slot if you regularly use the same event length.
This trick, as many tricks on this site do, uses Terminal. Open it up from Applications > Utilities. Then type or copy and paste, the following and hit enter.
defaults write com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event' 15
This will change the default event length to 15 minutes. To see the results re-open iCal if you already have it open. The number at the end represents how long the new iCal event will be. You can change this to any length you want, 10 for ten minutes in length or 120 for two hours in length. Don’t make it too small otherwise it may be difficult to see the event in iCal. For example if you set the iCal event to 1 minute long, all you will see is a small strip in iCal and you may find it difficult to adjust the time.
If you want to reset it back to the default time of one hour, simply change the value to 60. You could delete the preference option with this command:
defaults delete com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event'
Again, restart iCal to see the effect. Note that if you don’t restart it will take about 10 minutes for the preference to kick in. Restarting allows you to see the effect straight away.
If you have any questions of comments please leave a comment below. If you want to find out more iCal tricks, either use the related links below. If you fancy a cool book to ready with lots of tips and tricks I recommend Snow Leopard: The Missing Manual. Its a good book with plenty of tricks.
Where To Next?
12 Responses to “Change Default iCal Event Length”
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1
If you don’t want to go the terminal route, you can convert the amount of hours (if that is what you want) to minutes and then put it in the preferences.
Comment By Chris Wanja on February 6th, at 11:30 pm
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2
Where is this preference?
Comment By admin on February 6th, at 11:32 pm
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3
Bless you! Most of my events are 30 minutes, and this has been driving me crazy for years.
Comment By Dave on February 7th, at 6:35 am
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4
Is there any way to make “All Day” the default? I use iCal more like a specific day ToDo list, and I hate having to switch it every time.
Comment By Dave on March 24th, at 5:30 pm
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5
Thank you! A great help
Comment By PDKramer on August 16th, at 3:39 pm
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6
Great tip, thanks!!
Comment By nickbarrow on August 17th, at 3:22 am
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7
please!! Indeed, is there any way to make “All Day” the default?
I use iCal more like a specific day ToDo list,
and I hate having to switch it every time.please help!
Comment By Mary on October 4th, at 5:07 pm
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8
No one has responded to this…but any way to make “All Day” the default? Someone out there must be able to figure this one out!!
Comment By Alex Melli on November 3rd, at 10:46 pm
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9
How can I change the default start time ? It always starts at 10 pm and I must change it. There seems to be nowhere in prefs to control this.
Comment By Wayne on November 21st, at 3:26 pm
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10
MY default is all day and I want it to start at 9am. How do I change it to start at a specific time
Comment By Richard on August 29th, at 7:12 am
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11
I’m using Lion and now the default is the all day. The tried to use your trick but with no success. Any hint how to make 1-hour event the default again?
Thanks
Comment By Luiz on September 1st, at 3:13 pm
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12
I tried several times to make the change in terminal by copying and pasting, but I always get the same message: unexplained argument in; leaving defaults unchanged. I really, really, need to make the default 20 minutes for appointments. Help please?
Comment By Tammy on December 3rd, at 8:05 pm