Why you should use local not iCloud calendars on the Mac

The Calendar app on the Apple Mac can be used to access calendars on iCloud or stored locally on the disk. There are pros and cons of each type of calendar. Let's take a look at the differences.

iCloud calendars on the Mac

This is probably the default for most people and the Calendar app uses iCloud to store your calendar appointments online.

The advantage is that any Mac, iPhone or iPad can access the calendar and so you will see appointments on every computer and device.

This is excellent and it is just what most people want. You can make an appointment on any device and see it and be notified everywhere.

To enable iCloud calendars in macOS:

1. Go to System Preferences
2. Click iCloud
3. Tick the checkbox, Calendars

There are disadvantages of using iCloud calendars and one is the reduced functionality of the Calendar app on the Mac. Yes it syncs, but it removes a couple of great features that you might find very useful. Let's see what the are and why they are removed.

Related: Speak Calendar appointments instead of typing them
Related: Calculate appointment travel times with Calendar

Local calendars on the Mac

If you don't want to use iCloud to store calendars, clear that checkbox. Notice that iCloud calendars disappear they are not deleted, just not shown, and that the title in the sidebar says On My Mac. You may have one or more calendars stored on your Mac.

Turning off iCloud calendars means that calendar appointments are not synced between devices through iCloud, however, it also means that advanced features become enabled in the Calendar app. It's a bit dumbed down when using iCloud calendars.

Ctrl+click in the sidebar and there is a menu option to create a group. If you have several calendars for different purposes, they can be organised into groups.

After creating a group, Ctrl+click it and select Get Info from the menu to rename it.

Now create a new local calendar by Ctrl+clicking in the sidebar and selecting New Calendar. Type in the name for the calendar.

The new calendar you just created can be clicked and dragged into the group you created. This helps to keep multiple calendars organised.

If you switch back to iCloud calendars in System Preferences > iCloud your groups are destroyed. iCloud does not allow calendar groups. That is annoying!

Advanced Calendar appointments

Let's continue with our look at local calendars, assuming you deselected Calendars in System Preferences > iCloud.

Create a new event in the calendar by double clicking. Set the title and the time of the event in the usual way.

Click the Alert box and select Custom at the bottom of the menu.

Now here comes the clever bit.

1. In the top menu you can choose Open file as the action to take when the calendar event is triggered.
2. Click the second item down to select the file to open. It can be anything, an app, music, a photo, video, whatever you want. I selected a file called Send Email.app, which sends a prewritten email created in the Automator app.
3. The third item is set to At the time of event. So when the day and time arrives, the file is opened. You could set a repeating event to play music at the end of the day or when lunch hour starts. In my case, I send an email at a scheduled time and day.

In case you are wondering how my Send Email.app works, load Automator and create this script – there are just two items, New Email Message and Send Outgoing Messages.

Create your email and save the Automator script as an app. You can then attach it to Calendar events and schedule emails to go at any time or day.

Switching from local to iCloud calendars

If you turn on iCloud calendars in System Preferences > iCloud it moves all calendars to iCloud and the feature described above where files are opened is removed.

Calendar cannot open a file as an event with iCloud enabled. The reason is that calendar events are synced to other Macs, iPhones and iPads and the file does not exist on them. Your iPhone, for example, would not be able to execute the event.

Switching to iCloud sets the Alert event to None. Nothing happens.

It is a shame that Calendar does not keep the local calendar with the local event to open a file. You can either have synced iCloud calendars with fewer features or non-synced local calendars with extra features like groups and file opening.

You must choose one or the other. You could keep Calendar local on the Mac and use iCloud on your iPhone and iPad as a workaround.