I rely heavily on my digital calendar—as far as I’m concerned, if something isn’t there, it doesn’t exist. It’s annoying, then, when someone hands me a piece of paper or even an email stating when multiple meetings are going to happen. I need to either manually add everything to my calendar—which is time consuming—or try to keep track of everything separately from my calendar.
I’ve found a better way, though. As of this week, even the free version of Claude can create files for you, including iCal ones. These files are handy for quickly adding multiple appointments to the Apple, Google, and Microsoft calendar services.
How Claude can create custom iCal files for you
For example, say you wanted every Olympic men’s hockey game on your calendar (I’m Canadian—what else was I going to use as a demonstration?) All you need to do is take a screenshot of the schedule, upload that screenshot to Claude, and ask for it to create an iCal download using the information. I tried this and it worked perfectly.
The Olympics thing is just an example, though. Say you’re at a conference and the staff gives you a paper schedule—you could take a photo, ask Claude for the iCal file, and add everything to your calendar at once.
Note that you might need to inform Claude about time zones. In my example, the screenshot I had mentioned what time zone the events were happening in, and Claude worked it out. In other tests, I found I needed to mention any potential time zone complications before asking for the file.
What do you think so far?
How to import Claude’s iCal files to your calendar
Using these files on a Mac is easy: just open it and the Calendar app will ask you which calendar you want to add the appointments to. But it’s also not hard on Google Calendar or Outlook.
On Google Calendar, click the gear icon near the top-right corner, then click Settings and find the Import option in the left side bar. Click “Select file from your computer” and point it toward the file you downloaded from Claude.
Credit: Justin Pot
The steps for Microsoft Outlook are similar. In Outlook, click File, then Open & Export, then Import/Export, then select Import and iCalendar (.ics) or vCalendar (.vcs). Select which calendar you want to add the appointments to and you’re done—the appointments will all show up.
