Working with Calendars

The Calendars indexing rule provides convenient access to your calendars from Calendar.app, allowing you to create events and reminders right from within LaunchBar.

Selecting a calendar or reminder list

To select a calendar or a reminder list, do one of the following:

Once you’ve selected a calendar or a reminder list in LaunchBar, press the space bar to create a new event or reminder.

Creating Events

Events are created by entering a description, followed by a date and time specification, separated by an “@” sign. For example:

Create Event

Locations

Optionally you can specify a location, separated by another “@” sign. For example:

Create Event with Location
Tip You can press the Tab key to insert the required “@” signs.

Alerts

Alerts can be specified relative to the event’s start date, with a leading or trailing exclamation mark (Examples: !15m, !1.5h, 2days!, 1week!). If no alert is specified, the default alert setting of Calendar.app > Preferences > Alerts will be applied.

Note that alerts will always be set to occur before the the event’s start date.

Create the event

Finally, press Return to create the new calendar event.

Tip If you press Command-Return instead of Return, the newly created event will also be opened in Calendar.app, so you can review and optionally amend the event.
Input Result
Car service @ Feb 15 Creates an all-day event
Meeting with John @ Jun 2 2010 Creates an all-day event
Meeting with John @ Jun 12 3-5pm Creates an event with a start and end time
Dinner @ Joe's Cafe @ Tue 7pm 2h Creates a 2 hour with a location
TV Show @ next Sunday 20.15 Creates a 1 hour event at the specified time
Trip to Paris @ Mar 13 5d Creates a multi-day event that spans 5 days
Holiday @ Mar 13 2 weeks Creates a multi-day event that spans 2 weeks
Call John @ tomorrow 2pm 15m! Creates an event with an alert 15 minutes before
Dad's birthday @ Jun 12 !5d Creates an event with an alert 5 days before

Creating Reminders

Reminders are created by entering just a description, and an optional reminder date, separated by a right angle bracket.

Create Reminder
Create Reminder
Tip You can press the Tab key to insert the required “>” sign.
Input Result
Buy milk Creates a reminder
Buy butter !! Creates a reminder with medium priority
Clean the house > next sun Creates a reminder on a particular day
Watch TV > May 15, 8pm Creates a reminder with an alert at the specified date and time

Date and Time Specification

The date an time of an event can be specified in a variety of different formats in different languages. The date and time format preferences specified in System Preferences > Language & Text > Region are taken into account, but lots of other common formats are recognized as well.

Input Result
today Today, all-day
tomorrow Tomorrow, all-day
Mon Next Monday
next fri Next Friday
Apr 4 The next 4th of April
Aug 17 2011 August 17th, 2011
dec 24 8-10pm December 24, 8 PM - 10 PM
Fri 8:10 30min Next Friday, 8:10 AM - 8:40 AM
jun 23 9 to 11.45 June 23, 9:00 AM - 11:45 AM
Oct 11 5 days 5 days, from October 11 to October 15
Mar 13 2009 2w 2 weeks from March 13, 2009

Third Party Calendar Utilities

Instead of LaunchBar’s built-in calendar event creation method you can select an alternative calendar input method in Preferences > Actions > Options. You can choose between LaunchBar, Fantastical (http://flexibits.com/fantastical) and QuickCal (http://quickcalapp.com/).