Fantastical: the setup order that holds up

Fantastical's settings on the Mac live under Fantastical > Settings and are split across eleven tabs: Flexibits Account, General, Appearance, Events & Tasks, Alerts, Accounts, Calendars & Lists, Mirroring, Openings, Weather, and Advanced. Most problems people blame on the app come from five of them, set in the wrong order. Default calendar and event duration in General decide where every new event goes and how long it runs. Alerts and Calendars & Lists decide which calendars may interrupt. Mirroring changes what other people see, so it belongs last. This guide walks the tabs in the order that each one depends on the last, using the names shown in Flexibits' own help for the Mac app, checked on 18 October 2026 (Fantastical for Mac Help: Settings). Where a setting is limited on the free tier, the limit is noted.

What each settings tab controls

The table below maps each tab to the decision it holds. Reading it once saves hunting through all eleven later.

Tab	What it decides	Set it
Flexibits Account	Sign in, premium status, the Account Encryption Key	First
Accounts	Which calendar services are connected	Second
General	Default calendar, default duration, week and day ranges, Mini Window shortcut	Before the first event
Calendars & Lists	Calendar sets, per calendar alerts, colors	After accounts
Alerts	Time to leave, invitation and shared calendar messages, default alerts	After calendars are trimmed
Appearance	Menu bar icon, upcoming item, theme	Any time
Events & Tasks	What shows in views: declined, mirrored, hidden, combined events	Any time
Mirroring	Copying events between calendars as busy blocks	Last
Openings	Free time slots shared through Flexibits	When needed
Weather	Forecast location in the calendar	Any time
Advanced	Maps app, call app, time zones, update checks	Any time

Two kinds of data sit behind these tabs. Events stay in the calendar services. Settings such as calendar sets and mirroring rules sync through the Flexibits account; the Mirroring help states that rules are stored on Flexibits' encrypted servers and include calendar names but no event information (Calendar Mirroring help). That split is why the account comes first: every later setting is stored against it.

Flexibits Account and Accounts: connect only what gets read

The Flexibits Account tab is where sign in happens, premium features unlock, analytics are managed, and the Account Encryption Key can be viewed or copied. Keeping a copy of that key in a password manager on the first day avoids a search when a second device asks for it.

The Accounts tab adds calendar services. The help lists iCloud, Google, Exchange, Microsoft 365, Zoom, Todoist, fruux, Meetup, and any CalDAV account. The steps are short: choose "+" at the bottom of the sidebar, pick the account type, fill in what it asks for.

Three details on this tab cause most confusion:

• Enable this account. An account can be switched off without deleting it. This is the right tool for an old work account that is rarely needed, rather than removing and re-adding it.
• Manage Delegates. Google and CalDAV delegated calendars are turned on here. For a Google calendar shared by someone else that does not appear, the help points to the link under "Hide or show shared calendars at", which opens Google's Sync Settings.
• Microsoft 365 delegates. The help notes that Microsoft Graph syncing does not support delegated calendars for Microsoft 365 accounts. Shared calendars added in Microsoft's web interface should still appear.

The Calendar section of the same tab has Show On My Mac Calendars for local calendars, including the built in Birthdays and Holidays. The help is explicit that iCloud, Google, or Exchange accounts already set up in Apple Calendar are not picked up this way. They have to be added to Fantastical directly. A calendar that shows in Apple Calendar but not in Fantastical is usually this.

General: the settings that shape every new event

General holds the values applied each time an event is created, so it should be set before the first one.

Default calendar sets where events go unless another calendar is chosen while creating them. Default task list does the same for tasks. Default event duration sets the length, and the end time fills in automatically. If most meetings run 30 minutes, setting 30 here removes a correction on almost every entry.

The view settings decide how much of a week fits on screen:

• Days in week view sets how many days a week view shows. Five days gives wider columns for a work week.
• Show (hours) at a time sets how many hours one page of the day and week views holds, which decides whether a full working day is visible without scrolling.
• Start week on and Start week view on decide whether the week begins on a fixed weekday or on today. Starting on today keeps the next several days in view.
• Day starts/ends at sets the highlighted hours in day view. It matters more than it looks, because travel time uses these hours to choose a starting address, covered below.

Run in background keeps syncing and the Mini Window working after the main app is quit. Mini Window keyboard shortcut sets a system wide shortcut: choose Record Shortcut, press the keys, release. The help advises a combination that does not clash with default shortcuts. With it set, a new event can be started from inside any app.

Date and time formats are not set in Fantastical. The help sends them to System Settings, Language & Region, and General has a "Date & Time Formats..." button that opens that panel.

Calendars & Lists and Alerts: decide what may interrupt

Once several accounts are connected, alerts arrive from calendars that rarely need action: a team calendar, a subscribed sports feed, a colleague's leave. When most alerts are noise, the real ones get dismissed too.

Silence calendars one by one

In Calendars & Lists, right click a calendar and choose Get Info. Checking Ignore Alerts there stops its alerts and invitation notifications. A practical test for each calendar is whether an event on it ever means leaving the room or joining a call. If not, ignore its alerts.

Set the Alerts tab

The Alerts tab then sets the defaults for what remains:

• Show time to leave notifications, with a Default transportation type of Driving, Walking, or Transit.
• Show shared calendar messages in Notification Center, for changes another person makes to a shared calendar.
• Show invitation messages in Notification Center, for invitations and replies.
• Add default alerts when accepting invitations.
• Default alerts for Timed, All-Day, and Birthday/Anniversary events, each with its own types and times. Setting one to "None" turns it off.

How time to leave decides when to warn

The travel time help explains the behavior behind the first setting (Travel Time help). Time to leave notifications use the Mac's current location and appear when the Mac is within three hours of the next event's location. They only work when the location was chosen from the suggestion list, not just typed. For travel time used in scheduling, the starting point is the last event if one falls within three hours; otherwise the work address if the event is inside the day hours from General; otherwise the home address. Both addresses come from the My Card in the Contacts app. A Mac with no My Card has no starting point, which is why travel time can seem to do nothing.

Calendar sets: save the views that get used

A calendar set is a named group of visible calendars. In Calendars & Lists, "+" at the bottom of the left pane adds one, and checking calendars on the right decides what the set shows.

The Calendar Sets help lists the controls that make sets quick to use (Calendar Sets help):

• Control and 1 switches to All Calendars. Later sets take Control and 2, Control and 3, and so on.
• Option and click on a checkbox toggles every calendar on that account.
• Option, Shift and click shows that calendar and hides all the others.
• Each set can override the default calendar and task list, so a "Family" set can send new events to a family calendar while a "Work" set sends them to the work one.
• Automatically activate at switches a set by time of day or by arriving at or leaving a location.

The override is the setting most worth using. It removes a whole category of events filed in the wrong calendar, because the visible set and the destination for new events always match.

Appearance and Events & Tasks: reduce what has to be read

These two tabs do not change data. They change how much has to be read to know what is next.

In Appearance, Show upcoming item in menu bar puts the next event beside the Fantastical icon, Show remaining time for current item adds a countdown, and Show upcoming conference call icon in menu bar marks when the next event has a call. With these on, a glance at the top of the screen often replaces an alert, which makes it easier to silence more calendars.

In Events & Tasks, several switches clean up a crowded view:

• Combine identical events merges events with the same time, name, and location, which helps when shared calendars carry the same meeting.
• Show declined events can be unchecked to hide declined invitations.
• Show mirrored events can be unchecked to hide blocks created by mirroring rules.
• Dim items on previous days fades past events in List, Month, Week, and Day views.
• Go to today after adding items returns to today a few seconds after an entry. Unchecking it keeps the view on the day just edited.

Mirroring: add it last, one rule at a time

Mirroring copies events from one calendar to another so time is blocked on both. Rules are made at Fantastical > Settings > Mirroring with "+" in the bottom left. The fields, as the help describes them:

Field	What to know
Source calendar	Any calendar with events. Write access not required. Cannot be changed later
Destination calendar	Must be writable and support custom properties (CalDAV, Exchange, Graph). Cannot be changed later
Mirrored range	How far ahead to mirror. Fantastical also always looks 2 weeks back
Include all-day events / timed events with Free status	Include or skip each
Title	"Blocked Time" by default, or the original title
Include event location	Off leaves the location empty

Mirrored events share start, end, time zone, date, recurrence, and free or busy status with the original. Only one rule can exist per source and destination pair, and rules do not chain: a rule from calendar 1 to 2 and another from 2 to 3 never put calendar 1's events on calendar 3. Events created by other mirroring services, the help names Reclaim and OneCal, are not mirrored. Disabling a rule leaves existing blocks in place but stops updating them, so deleting old blocks is a separate job.

Because the destination is usually a work calendar that colleagues read, starting with the default "Blocked Time" title and location off keeps personal details off it. One rule watched for a week shows whether the blocks look right before a second rule is added.

Which settings depend on a subscription

Flexibits' pricing page, rendered on 18 October 2026, lists Free, Individual, Family, and Teams plans, with a 14 day free trial on the paid ones (Flexibits pricing). Its feature table shows where the free tier stops for settings in this guide:

Feature on the pricing page	Free	Premium
Calendar mirroring range	2 weeks	6 months
Weather forecast	3 days	10 days
Email support	Standard	Priority

The Mac App Store listing also labels Flexibits Premium as requiring a subscription. Settings such as mirroring and weather therefore exist on the free tier but with shorter ranges, which is worth knowing before building a setup around them.

What to change first

Set Default calendar and Default event duration in General, then use Ignore Alerts on every calendar that never needs action. After a week, if most remaining friction is travel between meetings rather than settings, compare how full Mac calendars handle it on the comparison page, or see how Caltimate blocks travel time from measured routes.