Display iCal Events and a To Do list on your desktop
Recently, I tried different ways to display the current day events and to-dos in iCal on my desktop. I wanted a way to quickly check what I have to do that day without having to open iCal, Dashboard or any application, and finally I found a method I was happy. The screenshot below shows how I made mine, but it is quite easy to customize to their own needs. Here are the steps to take if you want to do it yourself.
1. Get iCalBuddy and GeekTool
For this you need to download two (free) applications. The first GeekTool is a preference pane that lets you view image files and shell scripts on the desktop. The second is iCalBuddy, a command line utility that allows you to access events and pending tasks, without having to open iCal.
GeekTool download and install it by double-clicking on the preferences. Now you can access by going to System Preferences and look for the bottom line.
Download iCalBuddy from here and double-click it to unzip the folder. The installation is a little bit complicated. Open up Terminal (located in Applications/Utilities) and type cd followed by a space. Now drag the iCalBuddy folder onto the Terminal window and hit Enter. Finally, type sudo ./install.sh and hit enter. To test if everything is installed properly, try typing in icalbuddy eventsToday, which should bring up a list of today’s events.
