Auto-Schedule Appointments In iCal With These Phrases

Blogging superstar Jason Kottke recently noticed something interesting about iCal you might already know: If you create an appointment for “Lunch with Adam”, iCal automatically puts the appointment at noon, for one hour. It turns out iCal recognises a few different mealtimes.

Here are the ones I could find:

• Scheduling an appointment for “breakfast” creates a one-hour appointment starting at 9am.
• “Brunch” creates a one-hour appointment at 11am.
• Scheduling “lunch” creates a one-hour appointment at noon.
• “Dinner” creates a one-hour appointment at 8pm.

While Apple meant for these to be quick ways to schedule mealtimes without fussing with the start and end times, you can also use it to schedule other appointments. “Pick up my prescription at brunch”, for example, creates a one-hour appointment at 11am to pick up your prescription. Of course, if you actually want to schedule dinner and don’t want it to be at 8pm, you can change it, but it’s a handy way to add an appointment to iCal without having to open it and set the time.

jkottke [Twitter]