GET STARTED WITH Calendar

Take the stress out of having to remember appointments by using Calendar

- KENNY HEMPHILL

THE CALENDAR APP has been around on the Mac in one form or another for decades. And it's been part of iOS and iPadOS for as long as they've existed. It gets more powerful and useful every year, yet it remains underused and underappreciated. Using it habitually and sharing calendars with friends and family members really will help you be better organized and less stressed as a result.

At the heart of Calendar is iCal. Once the name for the app itself, iCal is the format and behind-the-scenes service that enables you to sync, share and subscribe to calendars. You can download any file with an .ics extension and add it to Calendar just by double-clicking it.

Perhaps the real power of Calendar lies in its integration with other Apple services such as Maps, Contacts, and even Siri. For example, if you book tickets for an event and receive a confirmation email, Siri can create a calendar event from the details in the email and suggest it to you. With one click, you can add that event to your Calendar. When you open a Calendar event with address details in it, you will see a map of the location and, if it's available, a Look Around preview. Tapping on that takes you to the Maps app. There's so much you can do with Calendar, so let's get started.

How to use Calendar

If you've never created a calendar, you'll love how easy it is

THE CALENDAR APP can host multiple calendars. These include calendars you create from scratch and calendars you import from other accounts such as Google and Microsoft. If you have, for example, a Gmail address set up in Mail, you can add the calendar for that Google account to the Calendar app. Friends and family members can also share calendars with you.