Too many ideas, too little time.

Or knowledge.

Wasted a lot of time this morning looking for something akin to a URL for calendar events, like there is for email. I think it's possible, but it's a lot more involved than I want to get into.

So I figured a simple contextual menu kind of thing where you select some text that looks like a date, do a keyboard shortcut and you go to that date in Calendar.

Well, there's almost something like that built into MacOS. When you select some text that looks like a date, 3/11/24, say...

Well, I just learned something else new! I moved the mouse over that text and got the data-detector dotted rectangle. The example date I chosen had no events and I wanted to see what a date that had events looked like. I edited the date to a day I know has events, and now the data detector doesn't work. Weird.

But, what I was going to point out before I got dazzled and then disappointed by MacOS, is that the contextual menu invoked when you select that text has an entry to... OY!

I just went up to select that text just to make sure I wrote the menu item from the contextual menu correctly, and I got the data detector rectangle, this time just around 3/11, not 3/11/24! WTF, Apple??? Maybe it takes a few seconds? I don't know.

So when I edited the previous date, it appeared as though data detector would no longer "work." After writing some more text, going back to it "detected" 3/11 and gave me a look at that date and the option to create an event. When I wrote "3/11/24" in the paragraph above, I got the data detector rectangle around the whole date again. (And it works with the quotation marks around it.) And the "3/11" immediately following "detected" works too.

June 17 2024 13:30

Let's see what happens with the date above, which was the date I was "practicing" with before.

Yep, data detector works. Oddly, it doesn't work in TextEdit, which was where I was experimenting. Fortunately, I don't do much work in TextEdit. Just tried it in BBEdit and it doesn't work there either. Don't even get the "standard" contextual menu. Probably a setting in BBEdit prefs I have to enable, I haven't looked.

Anyway...

If you don't get a data detector indication, you can select a date and control-click or right-click, and get a contextual menu item to "Show This Date in Calendar..." Sometimes. Sometimes it doesn't work in TextEdit, don't know why. Doesn't work at all in BBEdit. Weird.

You can also go to System Preferences->Accessibility->Motor->Alternate Control Methods->Alternate Pointer Actions and set something like F12 equal to right-click, invoking the contextual menu without touching the mouse or trackpad.

The idea, one of too many, was to be able to be in the log on the phone with someone you need to schedule something with, and have a quick way to get to the calendar for that date to see if you're free.

I didn't know (or had forgotten) that data detectors had that functionality and were enabled by default in Tinderbox.

So, yay! Now you know, and I've saved you a couple of hours out of your life.

So even though it seems like it's hard to get a simple URL to a calendar event, MacOS will let you view your calendar for that day in Tinderbox, which is cooler than switching to Calendar. Solid win. If you do want to go to Calendar, just double click in the popover window. It will create a new entry when you go to Calendar though, so you'll have to delete that blank entry.