Reader Andy Gillman is frustrated by iOS’s Calendar app. He writes:
Why does it take so much work to create an event in the Calendar app? I’m tired of tapping the plus button and then entering day, time, details, and so on. There must be a better way!
As a matter of fact there are a couple of better ways. The first is to use Siri. Rather than launch Calendar, tap plus, and then go through the various machinations to create an event as simple as a Friday lunch meeting with your cousin Jo-Jo, just press and hold the Home button and say:
“Schedule lunch with Jo-Jo on Friday at 1 PM.”
Siri will confirm the details and schedule the event when you give it your okay.
But it’s possible that you want to do this in a place where it would be rude to talk to your device (yes, such places still exist). While it’s not as complete a solution, it cuts out a couple of steps.
On an iPhone launch the Calendar app, navigate to the day of your planned event, and tap and hold on the screen. A New Event block will appear. Drag it to the time of the event. (In Day view you can also drag it to the right or left side of the screen to move forward or back a day at a time respectively.) When you do, the Add Event screen appears with the date and time already filled in. If you rotate your phone into landscape mode so that it displays Week view, you can tap and hold on the screen and a New Event bubble appears. In this view you can drag it to any day within the week (or place it in the All Day area to create that sort of event).
The iPad works similarly. The difference is that you can choose Day, Week, Month, and Year views by tapping the appropriate buttons at the top of the screen. Day and Week view are the most efficient in that they allow you to not only create an event on a particular day, but drag it to the time you’d like the event to start.