Fantastical Keyboard Shortcuts
Fantastical's defining feature is natural-language parsing — typing 'Lunch with Sam Friday 1pm at Cafe Luna' and having it correctly extract the title, date, time, and location — and its keyboard shortcuts are built almost entirely around getting into and out of that quick-entry text field as fast as possible rather than a dense grid of feature-specific bindings. Beyond quick entry, the remaining shortcuts mostly handle switching between the day/week/month/year calendar views, since browsing and event creation are the two things users do constantly in a calendar app and nearly everything else is comparatively rare. Because there is no Windows version at all, there's no Ctrl-based table to keep in sync — every binding you see here is simply the Mac keystroke, full stop. This page is aimed at people who've already decided the natural-language quick-entry workflow is worth paying for over Apple's free built-in Calendar app, since that single feature is really the core of what distinguishes Fantastical's daily experience — the view-switching and event-action shortcuts are useful but secondary, closer in spirit to what any calendar app offers, while Quick Entry is the one habit worth practicing until it's fully automatic. A smaller but genuinely useful detail is how the menu bar Mini Window and the travel-time feature both lean on the same underlying natural-language and location-aware engine that powers Quick Entry, rather than being bolted-on separate features — which is part of why Fantastical's shortcut list stays short even as the app has grown more capable over several major versions.
Quick Entry
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open Quick Entry (global) | — | Cmd+Ctrl+Space (system-wide, configurable) | Opens Fantastical's floating natural-language entry bar from anywhere on the system, letting you type an event description in plain English and have it parsed automatically, without switching to the Fantastical app window first. |
| New event (in-app) | — | Cmd+N | Opens the new event entry field within the main Fantastical window itself, functionally similar to Quick Entry but scoped to when the app is already the active window. |
| Save parsed event | — | Cmd+Return (or Return with parsing field focused) | Confirms and saves the event currently being parsed in the entry field, committing the natural-language interpretation shown in the preview to the calendar. |
| Create new reminder via quick entry | — | Type 'remind me to...' in Quick Entry | Fantastical's parser recognizes reminder-style phrasing distinctly from event phrasing, routing the parsed item into the connected Reminders app rather than creating a calendar event, all from the same single entry field without switching context. |
| Add travel time to an event | — | Type a location during Quick Entry, travel time appended automatically | When an event includes a recognizable location, Fantastical can estimate and block travel time before the event automatically based on Maps data, a feature that only activates through natural-language entry rather than through any manual keyboard toggle. |
View Navigation
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Switch to Day view | — | Cmd+1 | Switches the main calendar display to a single-day view, showing that day's events in a detailed timeline. |
| Switch to Week view | — | Cmd+2 | Switches to a full-week timeline view, the default view many users keep as their primary working view for a balance of detail and overview. |
| Switch to Month view | — | Cmd+3 | Switches to a traditional month-grid view, better for a broad overview of upcoming commitments than for reading detailed event times. |
| Switch to Year view | — | Cmd+4 | Switches to a full-year overview showing every month at once as small grids, useful for spotting long-range patterns or planning around a distant date without navigating month by month to get there. |
| Jump to Today | — | Cmd+T | Snaps the view straight back to the present day no matter how many weeks or months you've scrolled away, and if you're in Fantastical's Day view specifically it also re-centers the visible time window around the current hour. |
| Go to next day/week/month | — | Cmd+Right Arrow | Steps the visible range forward by whatever chunk the active view represents, so pressing it repeatedly in Month view flips month by month while the same key in Day view walks forward one day at a time. |
| Go to previous day/week/month | — | Cmd+Left Arrow | Walks the visible range backward by one unit of whichever view is active, mirroring the forward-navigation shortcut exactly, useful for checking what was scheduled the prior week or month without touching the mouse. |
| Open Mini Window from menu bar | — | Click menu bar icon (no default keystroke; assignable in System Settings) | Drops down a compact calendar and agenda view anchored to the menu bar, meant for a quick glance at the day without pulling focus away from whatever app you're actually working in — the closer equivalent to a widget than to opening the full Fantastical window. |
| Toggle calendar sidebar list | — | Cmd+Option+S (varies by version) | Shows or hides the sidebar listing all subscribed calendars and their visibility toggles, useful for temporarily reclaiming screen space on a smaller display without permanently unsubscribing from any calendar. |
| Open Fantastical settings | — | Cmd+, | Opens the preferences window covering calendar accounts, default alert times, and the natural-language parsing behavior itself, including toggles for which time zone assumptions the parser should default to. |
Event Actions
| Action | Windows | Mac | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delete selected event | — | Delete/Backspace (event selected) | Removes the selected event outright for a one-off item; for a recurring meeting Fantastical interrupts with a choice between deleting only this single occurrence or the whole recurring series going forward. |
| Search events | — | Cmd+F | Opens search across all calendars and events, letting you find a specific event by title or details rather than scrolling or navigating date by date. |
| Duplicate selected event | — | Cmd+D (event selected) | Creates a copy of the selected event on the same day, useful for quickly building a similar event at a different time without re-entering all the same details, location, and invitees from scratch. |
| Edit selected event | — | Return (with event selected, not in quick entry) | Opens the detail editing panel for whichever event is currently selected in the calendar grid, distinct from the Quick Entry parsing flow since it's editing an already-created event's specific fields directly rather than reinterpreting typed text. |
Frequently Asked Questions
Why does the same event sometimes parse differently depending on phrasing?
Fantastical's natural-language parser relies on recognizing patterns and keywords (day names, time formats, prepositions like 'at' and 'with'), so subtle phrasing differences can change how it interprets a sentence — 'Meet Sam Friday' versus 'Sam Friday Meeting' may parse the word 'Sam' differently as a title component versus an attendee depending on context clues the parser picks up. Reviewing the live preview shown while typing before hitting save catches most misparses before they're committed.
Does the global Quick Entry shortcut require Fantastical to already be running?
Yes — the system-wide hotkey is registered by the Fantastical app process, so it needs to be running in the background (even if its main window is closed) for the global shortcut to respond; if the app has fully quit rather than just having its window closed, the global shortcut won't trigger anything until it's relaunched.
What happens if I delete just one occurrence of a recurring event?
Fantastical prompts you to choose between deleting only that single occurrence or the entire recurring series when you delete an event that's part of a repeat pattern. Choosing just the single occurrence leaves the rest of the series untouched on their original recurring schedule, while deleting the series removes every past and future occurrence generated by that recurrence rule.
How does Fantastical know whether I'm creating an event or a reminder from the same entry field?
The parser looks for reminder-specific language patterns, most reliably phrasing that starts with something like 'remind me to,' and routes recognized reminder phrasing to the connected Reminders app rather than the calendar, while everything else defaults to being parsed as a calendar event — it's a keyword-driven distinction rather than a separate mode you have to manually switch between first.
Does duplicating an event also duplicate its invitees and attached notes?
Yes — Duplicate Event copies the full event record including its notes, attached URL, location, and invitee list onto a new event, which is then yours to adjust the date, time, or any other field on independently; it's meant as a starting-point copy of everything rather than just the bare title and time.
Does Fantastical's travel time feature work without an internet connection?
No — estimating travel time depends on live mapping data pulled from Apple Maps in the background when an event with a recognizable address is created through Quick Entry, so it requires an active connection at the moment the event is parsed; offline, the event still saves normally but without an automatically calculated travel time block.