yCal Help

How to: manage holidays

yCal can distinguish between normal events and holidays (not to be confused with vacations) and will show holidays in the same way as weekends both in the year view and in the week view (see Thursday, 4th of July in the example below).

Holiday calendar

yCal distinguishes plain simple normal events from holiday events by calendar source. To this end, you'll want to (and need to) specify a dedicated calendar for this purpose. The configuration assistant (automatically firing up upon your very first use of yCal, and later on being available in the yCal menu) helps you define a holiday calendar.

You can configure an appropriate calendar manually as well. Select a calendar from the left pane, Alt-double-click it (or right-click and select Edit... from the context menu), and set "Interpret entries in this calendar as:" to holidays. Note that a little star icon will show up right to the calendar name on the left pane.

Please note, however, that other events you may have had in this calendar will not show up anymore (don't worry — they won't be deleted). It is thus a wise decision to have one calendar specifically configured for holiday storage only. You can add local calendars (stored on your local machine) from within yCal (e.g., by clicking New Calendar... from the File menu), however, to add a calendar hosted on a remote server, please use Apple's iCal or Calendar app instead (read here on why you can't do this from within yCal).

Holiday management

Holidays are managed (i.e., added, edited, and removed) via a dedicated configuration panel. This panel is opened by double-clicking on a holiday calendar (or right-clicking and choosing Manage holidays... from the context menu). Note that this panel (and the respective entry in the context menu) is only available on calendars that have been configured to serve as holiday storage.

Using this configuration panel, you'll have to once set up all the holidays for a year. If you had holidays configured for the previous year, you'll see them re-appear (with two dashes in the year, only listing day and month) in light grey, so you have a reference on which holidays you had configured last year. Light grey entries are not valid for the current year, they're just placeholders from the previous year. Double click such an entry, adjust day and month, and you'll see the entry showing up in dark black — meaning the respective day is configured for this year.

If you haven't had holidays set up for the previous year, you'll start from an empty list. Use the + button to add a new entry. Enter the date and the title of the holiday and press the Enter key. The holidays are always configured for the current year (as shown in the upper left) — so when entering the date, you don't have to specify a year (you may, but it will be reset to the year shown in the upper left, anyway).

To edit holidays of a different year, use the and buttons in the upper left of this configuration panel to switch to the respective year.

To remove a holiday, select the entry and press the - button.