Calculate appointment travel times with Calendar on Apple Mac

It is easy to schedule appointments and meetings without realising that there isn't enough time between them to travel there. Use Calendar on the Mac to get travel times to your meetings.

Calendar on the Apple Mac is a useful tool for organising meetings, appointments, and so on. Just double click a day in Calendar to create a new event and then fill in the name and time. The location is optional and you might not think that you need it, but if you do enter an address, Calendar can tell you how long it will take you to get there by car, walking or public transport.

It is a very useful feature and it prevents you scheduling appointments too close together. Calendar can also remind you when it is time to set off and everything is synced to your iPhone too.

Create a calendar event

Create a new event in Calendar by double clicking a day, such as a meeting or appointment with someone and enter a title for it. Click just below the title where it says Add Location, even if you know where the event is taking place.

Set the event location

Enter the address at which the meeting or appointment is to take place. As you begin typing, a list of suggestions appears below. It can be the full address or a partial one, such as the city and post code (zip code). Click the place if you see it listed.

Do you want to know the travel time?

Notice that under the time in the event we are creating is Alert when I need to leave. Well this depends on where you are leaving from and the time it takes to travel there. The event looks like this and there is an Add Alert, Repeat or Travel Time option. Make sure the start and end time of the appointment or meeting is correct and then click below to get the travel time.

See walking, car and public transport times

Click in the travel time box and wait for the spinning gear to stop. It then tells you how long it will take to get there by walking, driving and public transport. There are also options to manually enter the travel time too, but it is the automatic calculation that’s of most interest.

An obvious question when calculating travel time is what is your starting location? Where is it working out the travel time from? Calendar tries to be clever here and it uses a variety of sources of information. It looks up your home and work addresses in Contacts and if the event is taking place during work hours then the starting location and travel time is assumed to be from your place of work. If the event is out of work hours then the starting location and travel time is assumed to be from home.

Make sure Contacts has both your home and work addresses and go to Calendar, Preferences, General and set the start and end of the day to indicate your working hours.

Travel from one meeting to another

There is an obvious problem here and if you are out of the office and have several appointments throughout the day, you won’t be starting the journey from the office. Instead you will travel from one appointment to the next. This is where it gets even better.

If you double click an event, click the time and click travel time, Calendar looks to see if there is a previous appointment. If there isn’t one then the travel time is from work (or home if it is out of hours). If there is a previous appointment within a few hours of the selected one, it assumes that is the starting point. It then shows the travel time between the two appointments.

This is a really clever and useful feature and you can easily see how long it will take you to travel between appointments throughout the day. You can also set reminders when you need to leave for the next appointment, so you will not forget and arrive late.