I use iCal to keep track of all those little reminders that make your day to day life easier. Like “pick up sweetie at airport” 
Since it is only a reminder I usually set it for 0 minutes in length and an alarm that goes off right at the reminder time. Unfortunately iCal doesn’t have an easy way to do this by default, or at least I didn’t think there was, so I would create an event, edit it and change length to 0 each time I wanted to create a new reminder. This was a pain to say the least. So I went searching for a way to do this automatically and I finally found it.
There is no interface setting to change the default length of a new event but luckily there is a Terminal command that is very easy. Now don’t panic if you aren’t use to using Terminal it is straightforward and you can even copy and paste the following to make it easier.
0. Close iCal
1. Click on the Terminal icon (Applications / Utilities)
2. Type in or paste the following, make sure and change the time to whatever you prefer.
defaults write com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event' 0
3. Hit Enter / Send and the new setting will go into place.
4. Start iCal and double click to create a new event
Your event should have been created with the time length of 0 or whatever you changed it to. You can redo this setting as often as you like or remove it by doing the following :
0. Close iCal
1. Click on the Terminal icon (Applications / Utilities)
2. Type in or paste the following
defaults delete com.apple.iCal 'Default duration in minutes for new event'
3. Hit Enter / Send and the new setting will go into place.
4. Start iCal and double click to create a new event
Once you remove the setting the event length will go back to 60 minutes.
Have a tip ? I would love to hear it!
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