Natural-language quick add on Mac: type "lunch tomorrow 1pm"

Typing "lunch with Sam tomorrow at 1pm" and having it land as an actual 1pm Calendar event, title and all, is faster than clicking through a form: new event, title field, date picker, time picker, save. Cupola's quick-add fields do exactly that: type a sentence, press Return, get the real thing. Here's how the parsing works and what to expect from it.

Where it shows up

Every entry point that creates an event or reminder in Cupola uses the same one-line, natural-language field: the notch panel's Calendar and Reminders tabs, the event and reminder editor sheets' title field (with a live preview as you type), and the ⌘K command palette, which creates an event, reminder or note straight from one typed line.

The rule: date or time decides event vs. reminder

The field is one box, but Cupola decides what kind of item to make from what you typed:

• Found a date or time phrase → it can become an event. coffee with Maya friday 9:30am becomes a Friday 9:30am event titled "coffee with Maya."
• No date or time found → it's always a reminder with no due date. buy oat milk becomes a reminder titled "buy oat milk," due whenever you decide, because nothing in the text gave it a time.
• In the Reminders tab specifically, a date/time phrase still creates a reminder, due that day, or at that exact time if you included one. It just doesn't need one.
• A phrase with no time attached to a date becomes an all-day item. dentist next tuesday sets the date without a specific hour; add 4pm and it gets an exact time instead.

In the Reminders tab's quick-add field, typing # also surfaces your reminder lists so you can route the new reminder to a specific one instead of the default, type # and a list name, or just press Return to use the first match.

Examples

(These phrases match the examples shown on trycupola.com, try any of them live there.)

What it picks up on

The parser looks for relative days ("tomorrow," "friday," "next tuesday"), clock times with or without am/pm, and a few other date phrasings, stripping the matched date/time words out of what becomes the item's title so you're not left with "coffee with Maya friday 9:30am" as the literal event name, just "coffee with Maya." If a date would fall in the past as typed (say, a weekday that already happened this week), it rolls forward to the next occurrence of that day rather than backdating the item.

Checking before you commit

You don't have to guess whether the parse is right before you hit Return: a live preview chip shows exactly when the item will land as you type, in both the notch quick-add fields and the full editor sheets' title field. If the preview looks wrong, keep typing or adjust the date/time manually in the fields below; manually touching a date, time or other field afterward locks that field in place, so a later "Apply" from the preview won't silently overwrite something you already fixed by hand.

Tips

• Leave the time off on purpose when you want an all-day item: pay rent friday is cleaner than guessing a time that doesn't matter.
• In Reminders, use #listname to skip the default list without leaving the quick-add field.
• If a phrase doesn't parse the way you expect, the live preview chip tells you immediately; adjust the wording rather than guessing blind.

The bottom line

One line of plain English, in the notch or the full app, becomes a real Calendar event or Reminder, no date picker required unless you want one. See seeing Reminders and Calendar in your notch for the full tab walkthrough, or install Cupola to try it on your own day.