How to Show a List of All Calendar Events on Mac

Feb 27, 2018 - 29 Comments

Show a list view of Calendar events on Mac

If you use the Calendar app on Mac and iOS, your calendar events will seamlessly sync between all Apple devices using the same Apple ID. While the iPhone and iPad have easy ways to display a Calendar in List View from iOS, the Mac doesn’t have the same simple toggle functionality to see a list of all events in the Calendar app. However, that doesn’t mean it’s impossible…

You can show a list of all scheduled Calendar events on the Mac with a little-known trick. While it’s certainly not obvious, it gets the job done and allows you to display a list of calendar events in Mac OS quickly.


This little trick to show calendar events as a list should work on all versions of the Mac Calendar app.

How to Display Calendar Events as a List on Mac

  1. Open the “Calendar” application on the Mac if you have not done so already
  2. Optionally, select the Calendar(s) you want to show a list for from the left side menu
  3. Click into the search box in the upper right corner of Calendar app then enter the following search parameter:
  4. .

  5. After typing the single period . hit the Return key to show a list of all Calendar events *
  6. Show a Calendar List View on Mac

By searching for a single period in Calendar on the Mac, you will show all Calendar events as a list view, appearing alongside the Calendar window in Mac OS.

Remember, if you use iCloud and have an iPhone, Mac, iPad, and/or other Apple devices, your calendar data will sync between all of your Apple devices sharing the same Apple ID.

* Note: You can also search for two concurrent quotations like “” if desired, but searching for a single period like . is probably easier for most Mac users. Try both and see what works best for you.

Why the default Calendar app on Mac does not have an obvious “List” calendar button like the List View Calendar button on iPhone and iPad is a bit of a mystery, but perhaps it’s a feature due in the future of Calendar app for Mac, or maybe not that many users want a list of calendar events that are schedule and thus the feature is deemed unnecessary. In any event, if you do want to see a list view of your calendar events in Mac OS, you will need to rely on this little known search trick.

So, you want to see a Calendar event list on the Mac? Then search for a period. Or search for a series of two quotation marks like “” That’s it! Simple, if not quite obvious.

Do you know of another way to see a list of all Calendar events on the Mac? Share your tips in the comments below!

.

Related articles:

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

29 Comments

» Comments RSS Feed

  1. Mr Kevin Black says:

    As others note ‘.’ only gets the default calendar, but ‘””‘ gets all calendars selected (you need to edit your content). But this is so stupid, why don’t Apple have an Agenda view. Google does, but it is so obtuse it’s not worth the effort. Again, outlook does it with it’s mail client rather well, it’s almost worth shifting from macmail to outlook. I’ll look at outlook calendar as well.

  2. Red says:

    With the number of folks reporting that searching for a period (full stop) doesn’t return all events, I would have thought that the editors of this page would gone back and checked their work and updated the information given. As it is, you only find out that the info is incorrect if you read the comments. Doesn’t make me confident about anything coming from this site.

  3. Ashish says:

    Hii,
    I have a question, what email account is configured under Home and Work?
    I would like to know how which accounts get configured under Home

  4. Papir says:

    Thank you! Great tip. Searching for “” gave me what I needed.

  5. Brian says:

    You are magnificent. Thank you.

  6. David Wilkes says:

    “” seems to select ALL of my events for the selected calendar(s) here in the UK … THANK YOU ! I owe you a Guinness ;-)

  7. Matthew Brooklyn says:

    This doesn’t work anymore. Now it only picks up events with periods.

    Maybe it changed with Mojave.

  8. Nick says:

    Search feature is great, but have found recently that search’s for specific events/words only goes back about one year instead of all previous years, as it used to do. Not sure why that is, and a bit frustrating

  9. Geoff says:

    Great tip. These are the things I love about osxdaily

  10. ROGER WASSON says:

    I have a MAC WITH 10.13.3 VERSION. I keep receiving the message, “This web page was reloaded because a problem occurred” when I open some web pages. I have not been able to find a way to correct this. Any suggestions?
    Thank you, Roger

    • Brett says:

      The Safari problem you encounter is not related to showing a Calendar list on a Mac. The Calendar app should not impact Safari or any web page at all.

      But, you can try this:

      – Backup your Mac and install any available software updates to Safari and the MacOS system.

      What you are encountering is a crashing webpage, but sometimes it’s the browsers fault (Safari).

      You also might want to disable all extensions and third party plugins, since those are often prone to cause problems in a web browser.

      You could also use Chrome or another browser.

      As for calendar, don’t worry it is not the source of your web page crash issues, it is Safari.

  11. Bayswater says:

    This doesn’t work. There are several items in my calendar that do not show in the search results, but appear in the calendar being searched.

  12. Dario says:

    The period doesn’t work with all events, unless you always insert at least a mail, a website (both have dots within) or some period in the notes or the title.
    Better to use “”, which provides the complete list!

  13. Robbo says:

    Amazing, I have been wanting this function forever and now I have it. Like I said, amazing.

  14. Serge says:

    Thanks for the tip.

  15. Steve says:

    When I tried your suggestion, searching for a period only returned results for some calendar events. However, searching for “” returned results for what appears to be all of my events.

    So am happy for this suggestion, but recommend folks not rely on a period as the search parameter.

  16. George says:

    Nope, latest OS, MacPro 2012, all I see is a big nothing, changing views to days, weeks, months, years made no difference.. I had Shared it to our MUG, took it down!

  17. Mike says:

    You said:

    You can also search for two concurrent parenthesis like “” if desired, but searching for a single period like . is probably easier for most Mac users.

    Are you confusing parentheses with quotes?

    Thank you

  18. WTS says:

    Apple’s programmers on their Calendar have really created and provided us a simple basic day to day calendar and no where near the commercial third party calender’s.

    I do not even use Apple’s Calendar.

  19. Paul says:

    Helpful – kinda. why do I want to see bak to 2015? How about a way of viewing a month – qtr, 1/2 yr?

  20. Peter Yudkin says:

    Fantastic. I’ve spent hours ticking and unticking calendars, and this is just what it needed.

  21. MSterling says:

    OMG. I’ve been looking for something like this. TY TY TY.

  22. lout says:

    It works BUT it fails to show MANY calendar meetings on several days ( including today) they are all on the same calendar so that is not the cause. Tried several times on iMac 2012 version running newest High Sierra OS.

  23. Yvonne Fried says:

    Thank you for the List view in Calendar. I am going to find it very helpful.

Leave a Reply

 

Shop on Amazon.com and help support OSXDaily!

Subscribe to OSXDaily

Subscribe to RSS Subscribe to Twitter Feed Follow on Facebook Subscribe to eMail Updates

Tips & Tricks

News

iPhone / iPad

Mac

Troubleshooting

Shop on Amazon to help support this site