Enable iCal Debug Menu to Access 24 Additional Options & Tweaks

Feb 13, 2012 - 8 Comments

iCal Debug Menu

iCal has a hidden debug menu with 24 additional options and features that can be accessed with the help of a defaults write command.

  • Quit out of iCal and then launch the Terminal
  • Enter the following command:
  • defaults write com.apple.iCal IncludeDebugMenu 1

  • Open iCal again to find the “Debug” menu

Many of the options are only useful for developers, hence the Debug label, but there are a fair amount of tweaks that are potentially useful to the average user as well, particularly these three:

  • Open multiple iCal Calendar windows with Command+L – probably the most useful option, making it easier to compare dates and schedules on any level
  • Change the number of weeks that appear before and after the start date in Day View
  • Show more than 7 days in a week (7, 14, 21, and 28 days)

Multiple iCal windows

You can hide the debug menu again by relaunching Terminal and entering the following command:

defaults write com.apple.iCal IncludeDebugMenu 0

Quitting and reopening iCal will again cause those changes to take effect.

Overall the iCal menu is probably not quite as useful as the Safari debug menu but it’s still interesting to take a peak at. Great little trick from MacGasm, who used it to alter the amount of days shown in a week.

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Posted by: Paul Horowitz in Mac OS, Tips & Tricks

8 Comments

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  1. aygie says:

    Hmmm doesn’t seem to work on 10.8, anyone got a fix? :)

  2. […] OSXDaily Trött på din gamla dator? Köp en ny Mac – från 9295 kr inkl […]

  3. Pop says:

    After exiting ical…where is “terminal” to enter the command?

  4. […] Enable iCal Debug Menu to Access 24 Additional Options & Tweaks [OS X Daily]

  5. Ron says:

    You might want to point out that what you describe is for Lion.

    In Snow Leopard, there aren’t near as many items available in the menu.

  6. Flo says:

    Does anybody know how to enable this for the adress book? I tried »defaults write com.apple.AdressBook IncludeDebugMenu 1« in ther Terminal which didn’t lead to an error message but also didn’t bring out any results …

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