Tips & Tricks: Change the Default Event Length in iCal

September 28, 2009 in Tips & Tricks by Bob Faulhaber

Do you schedule events and meetings in iCal that are shorter than 1 hour? Are you frustrated that there is no way to change the default duration in iCal? Well, with a simple Terminal command, you can customize and change the default duration to whatever suits your needs best.

By default, when you create a new event in iCal, it will always make the duration of the event equal to 1 hour as shown below. Of course, if your event or meeting is shorter you can manually adjust the duration to whatever is needed.

iCal_001

To change the default length to 30 minutes, quit iCal, if it’s running.

Open Terminal and enter the following command:

defaults write com.apple.iCal ‘Default duration in minutes for new event’ 30

Now, when you relaunch iCal and create new events, they will have a duration of 30 minutes.

iCal_002

If you want to go back to the one-hour default, quit iCal, using Terminal enter the following command:

defaults write com.apple.iCal ‘Default duration in minutes for new event’ 60

This has been tested in both OS X 10.5 and 10.6.

Do you know any other iCal tips and tricks that make your life easier? Let us know by leaving a comment below.