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.

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.

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.