1. Setup

Start by connecting your Google Calendar to Caltimate. It takes under a minute.

1. Open the app and choose Add account

   You will find it at the bottom of the sidebar, or in the Accounts tab of Settings.

2. Sign in to Google in your browser

   If you see “Google hasn’t verified this app”, press Continue on the left. That screen is what Google shows while an app is waiting on review. It is not a sign of danger.

3. Allow access to your calendars

   Once allowed, every calendar loads with its own colour and you can read, create, edit and delete events.

Several Google accounts

Repeat Add account and work, personal and any other Google account appear together, all editable. Settings let you choose how they are shown (all at once, or one at a time) and which calendar new events go to by default.

2. Creating events

Speak it, type it, paste it. One sentence becomes an event, with no form to fill in.

Type it in plain language

Write the event the way you would say it. Caltimate reads the date and time, the place, the guests, the meeting link, the repeat rule and the alert out of your sentence.

That one line is read like this. Other things you can write:

• Date and time: “tomorrow 3pm”, “the 27th 2:00 to 3:30pm” and so on
• Place: “@Shibuya”, “@Room A”
• Meeting: “zoom” or “meet” creates the link for you
• Repeat: “every Tuesday”, “the second Monday of each month”
• Alert: “10 minutes before”, “an hour before”

Voice, global input and pasting

• Voice input: speak into the microphone and it becomes an event or a task. For when your hands are busy.
• System-wide quick entry: whatever app you are in, ⌃⌥Space brings the entry panel to the front. Nothing to switch to.
• Event from text: paste a whole email or chat message and Caltimate pulls out the date, place, guests and meeting link as a draft.
• Command palette: ⌘K searches and creates in one place.

3. Booking links (scheduling)

Make your own booking page and send the link. Your guest picks an open slot and the event lands in your calendar. No more email back-and-forth.

Turn on the booking page

1. Settings → Booking links tab

   Every connected Google account is listed there.

2. Choose Enable booking page on the account you want

   That registers the account’s connection with the server, so people can book at any time even when your Mac is off.

Create a link and send it

1. Set the rules and publish

   Pick the title, the length, the hours you accept, weekdays only, how far ahead to open, and the calendar bookings land in. Your own URL (book.caltimate.com/l/…) is created and copied to the clipboard.

2. Send the URL

   They open the page and pick a time from the open slots. They do not need to install anything.

3. The booking lands in your calendar

   When someone books, the event is created in your calendar and Google sends them the invitation.

Block time with private calendars (no double booking)

When you publish a link, the calendars counted as busy can include private, internal calendars, not just the public one. Anything booked in those calendars closes the slot automatically. Your guest never sees what the event is, only that the time is taken.

Each account stays separate

Bookings only ever go to the calendar you chose. Turn several accounts on and each gets its own booking page; links and events never mix between them.

4. Meetings and guests

Online meetings and invitations are handled inside the event itself.

• Meeting link detection: Zoom, Google Meet, Teams and Webex are recognised and given a one-click join button.
• Creating Zoom and Meet links: a meeting link can be issued as you create the event. Delete an event with a Zoom link and the Zoom meeting goes with it.
• Guests, invites and RSVP: add an email address to send the invitation. Yes, no and maybe are colour-coded, and your own reply is one tap.

5. Logistics and alerts

Meetings, travel and tasks are lined up before you ask.

• Real travel time: for events with a location, MapKit works out the trip from home or from your previous event and puts a travel block right before it. Measured automatically, or set by hand.
• Time to leave alerts: a macOS notification at the moment you should set off.
• Tasks and Reminders: Apple Reminders are read in, and dated tasks appear in the calendar and the sidebar.
• Daily digest: how many events, the first one, your tasks and the weather, at the top of the menu bar and in a morning notification.
• Maps and places: the location shows on a mini map and opens in Apple Maps in one click.
• Alert: set how many minutes before an event you are told, per event or as the calendar default.

6. Views and customising

The shape you want, showing only what you want. A view worth opening every day.

• Five views: month, week, day, year and list. The year view shows twelve months at once; the list runs in order.
• Calendar sets: save combinations such as work and personal, and switch with one tap.
• Holidays and ICS feeds: overlay public holidays or a sports schedule from a single webcal or ICS URL.
• Repeats and alerts: weekly, the Nth weekday of a month, several rules at once, and per-event alerts.
• Duplicate and right-click: right-click an event to duplicate it, copy it to tomorrow or next week, or delete it.
• Drag and resize: move events smoothly in the week and day views. Repeating events ask what the change applies to.
• Appearance and background: pick a colour theme and lay an image or a video behind it. Choose from free stock, or let Caltimate set one to match the time of day and the season. Lower the opacity of the event blocks and more of the photo shows through.
• Design templates: save a theme and background together, and bring the pair back whenever you want.
• Weather: the local forecast (current, high and low, humidity) in the toolbar and the day and week views. Decline location access and it shows Tokyo instead.
• News: headlines from free RSS feeds (BBC, NYT, Google News and others) under the left menu. Click to open in your browser, hover for a preview. Paste a custom RSS URL to add your own source.
• Stocks: the tickers you add, with the change since yesterday, and a chart on click. It can sit in the menu bar too. US stocks as "AAPL", Japanese as "7203.T", currency as "USDJPY=X", crypto as "BTC-USD".
• Display language: 32 languages. It follows your system by default, and switches the moment you pick one in Settings.
• Always in the menu bar: your next event, the daily digest, a mini month and quick add, all from the menu bar panel.
• Full-text search: across titles, places, notes and guests.

7. Power features

Two things other calendars do not do.

Double-booking detection

Pick a time while creating or editing an event and Caltimate warns you about the events it overlaps on the spot. It also offers open slots of the same length as buttons, so one click moves the event there.

One event on several calendars (shown or hidden)

As you create an event you can put it on other calendars too, and choose for each one:

• With details: the title, notes and place are copied across
• Hidden: the other calendar only shows a block marked Busy, with nothing about the event

Copies made this way are linked as one group, so deleting any of them removes it from every calendar, and changing the time moves them all. It fits the way people keep a public calendar and a private one side by side.

8. Shortcuts

The things you do most, on one key.

• ⌃⌥Space System-wide quick entry
• ⌘K Command palette (search and create)
• ⌘Z Undo the last create, edit or delete
• ⌘[ / ⌘] Back and forward through where you have been
• ←→ Move the selected day (month and week views)
• ⌘, Open Settings