How to see Apple Reminders and Calendar from your MacBook notch

Your MacBook's notch can show your actual Apple Calendar and Reminders: not a copy, not a second to-do list to maintain, but the same events and reminders already in Apple's apps, a hover away, without opening anything. Here's how to set that up with Cupola and use it day to day.

What this looks like

Cupola adds a small panel under the notch with five tabs: Calendar, Reminders, Notes, Clipboard and Focus. Hover the notch, click the Calendar or Reminders tab, and you get a date strip plus that day's events or open reminders, read and write, synced to the real Apple Calendar and Reminders app, not a separate store. Anything you add in Cupola shows up in Apple's own apps (and on your iPhone, if you use iCloud), and anything you add there shows up in Cupola.

Setting it up

1. Install Cupola. Open Terminal and run curl -fsSL https://trycupola.com/app/install.sh | bash, or see the full walkthrough at installing Cupola.
2. Grant the permissions it asks for. Cupola needs access to Calendar and Reminders to read and write your events and tasks; macOS will prompt you the first time each is needed. If you skip a prompt or need to revisit permissions later, see permissions.
3. Hover the notch. The panel drops down with the tab bar. Click the Calendar icon or the Reminders icon to switch tabs.

Adding events and reminders by typing

Each tab has a one-line quick-add field at the top, under a horizontally scrolling date strip. Type what you mean in plain language and press Return:

• In Calendar: coffee with Maya friday 9:30am creates a 9:30am event on Friday.
• In Reminders: call mom tonight or pay rent friday creates a reminder due at the time or day you typed; if you don't give a time, it becomes an all-day reminder for that date.
• In Reminders, typing # shows your reminder lists so you can route a new reminder straight to one, instead of the default list.

While you type, a chip shows a live preview of when the item will actually land, so you can see the parse before you commit to it.

Reading your day

Below the quick-add field, the day's events (Calendar) or open reminders due that day (Reminders) are listed under the selected date on the strip. Only today's items count down to their start time; only today opens straight to the current or next event. Tap any row to open it for editing, or tap a reminder's checkbox to complete it right there in the notch.

Quick-add on the keyboard, not just the notch

The same natural-language field exists in the full Cupola window: ⌘K opens a command palette that creates an event, reminder or note from one typed line, and the same field shows up in the main app's event and reminder editors, where a live preview shows under the title field as you type before you save.

If something's off

• Events or reminders not appearing: double-check Calendar/Reminders permissions in System Settings, or see permissions.
• Notch panel behaving oddly on an external display or closed-lid setup: see no external display / closed-lid notch.
• Anything else: start at troubleshooting.

The bottom line

Cupola doesn't replace Calendar and Reminders: it's a faster way into the ones you already have, with your actual data and a one-line way to add to either with plain English. Install the free trial and try the quick-add field with your own day.