The [calendars] section

The [calendars] is mandatory and must contain at least one subsection. Every subsection must have a unique name (enclosed by two square brackets). Each subection needs exactly one path setting, everything else is optional. Here is a small example:

[calendars]

  [[home]]
    path = ~/.calendars/home/
    color = dark green

  [[work]]
    path = ~/.calendars/work/
    readonly = True
type

Set the type of this collection, the default is calendar. If set to birthdays khal will expect a VCARD collection and extract birthdays from those VCARDS. birthdays also implies readonly=True. If set to calendar only files with the .ics extension will be used, if set to birthdays only files with the .vcf extension will be used, if it is set to discover khal will use all subdirectories of paths‘s that contain only .ics files.

type:option, allowed values are calendar, birthdays and discover
default:calendar
color

khal will use this color for coloring this calendar’s event. The following color names are supported: black, white, brown, yellow, dark gray, dark green, dark blue, light gray, light green, light blue, dark magenta, dark cyan, dark red, light magenta, light cyan, light red. Depending on your terminal emulator’s settings, they might look different than what their name implies. In addition to the 16 named colors an index from the 256-color paltte or a 24-bit color code can be used, if your terminal supports this. The 256-color paltte index is simply a number between 0 and 255. The 24-bit color must be given as #RRGGBB, where RR, GG, BB is the hexadecimal value of the red, green and blue component, respectively. When using a 24-bit color, make sure to enclose the color value in ‘ or ”! If the color is set to auto (the default), khal tries to read the file color from this calendar’s vdir, if this fails the default_color (see below) is used. If color is set to ‘’, the default_color is always used.

type:color
default:auto
path

The path to an existing directory where this calendar is saved as a vdir. The directory is searched for events or birthdays (see type) but the search is not recursive.

type:string
default:None
readonly

setting this to True, will keep khal from making any changes to this calendar

type:boolean
default:False

The [sqlite] section

path

khal stores its internal caching database here, by default this will be in the $XDG_DATA_HOME/khal/khal.db (this will most likely be ~/.local/share/khal/khal.db).

type:string
default:None

The [locale] section

The most important options in the the [locale] section are probably (long-)time and dateformat.

longdateformat

khal will display and understand all dates in this format, it should contain a year (e.g. %Y) see timeformat for the format.

type:string
default:%d.%m.%Y
default_timezone

this timezone will be used for new events (when no timezone is specified) and when khal does not understand the timezone specified in the icalendar file. If no timezone is set, the timezone your computer is set to will be used.

type:timezone
default:None
local_timezone

khal will show all times in this timezone If no timezone is set, the timezone your computer is set to will be used.

type:timezone
default:None
encoding

set this to the encoding of your terminal emulator

type:string
default:utf-8
unicode_symbols

by default khal uses some unicode symbols (as in ‘non-ascii’) as indicators for things like repeating events, if your font, encoding etc. does not support those symbols, set this to False (this will enable ascii based replacements).

type:boolean
default:True
datetimeformat

khal will display and understand all datetimes in this format, see timeformat for the format.

type:string
default:%d.%m. %H:%M
weeknumbers

Enable weeknumbers in calendar and interactive (ikhal) mode. As those are iso weeknumbers, they only work properly if firstweekday is set to 0

type:weeknumbers
default:off
dateformat

khal will display and understand all dates in this format, see timeformat for the format

type:string
default:%d.%m.
longdatetimeformat

khal will display and understand all datetimes in this format, it should contain a year (e.g. %Y) see timeformat for the format.

type:string
default:%d.%m.%Y %H:%M
firstweekday

the day first day of the week, were Monday is 0 and Sunday is 6

type:integer, allowed values are between 0 and 6
default:0
timeformat

khal will display and understand all times in this format.

The formatting string is interpreted as defined by Python’s strftime, which is similar to the format specified in man strftime.

type:string
default:%H:%M

The [keybindings] section

keybindings for ikhal are set here. You can bind more than one key (combination) to a command by supplying a comma-separated list of keys. For binding key combinations just add concatenate them (with a space in between), e.g. ctrl n.

mark

go into highlight (visual) mode to choose a date range

type:list
default:v
duplicate

duplicate the currently selected event

type:list
default:p
new

create a new event on the selected date

type:list
default:n
export

export event as ICS

type:list
default:e
left

move the cursor left (in the calendar browser)

type:list
default:left, h, backspace
search

open a text field to start a search for events

type:list
default:/
today

focus the calendar browser on today

type:list
default:t
other

in highlight mode go to the other end of the highlighted date range

type:list
default:o
delete

delete the currently selected event

type:list
default:d
view

show details or edit (if details are already shown) the currently selected event

type:list
default:enter, tab
up

move the cursor up (in the calendar browser)

type:list
default:up, k
right

move the cursor right (in the calendar browser)

type:list
default:right, l, space
save

save the currently edited event and leave the event editor

type:list
default:meta enter
down

move the cursor down (in the calendar browser)

type:list
default:down, j

The [default] section

The default section begins with a [default] tag. Some default values and behaviours are set here.

show_all_days

By default, khal displays only dates with event in “agenda” view. Setting this to True will show all days in “agenda”, even when there is no event

type:boolean
default:False
highlight_event_days

If true, khal will highlight days with events. Options for highlighting are in [highlight_days] section.

type:boolean
default:False
days

By default, khal show events for today and tomorrow. Setting this to a different value will show events of that amount of days by defaut.

type:integer
default:2
default_calendar

The calendar to use if none is specified for some operation (e.g. if adding a new event). If this is not set, such operations requre an explicit value.

type:string
default:None
default_command

command to be executed if no command is given when executing khal

type:option, allowed values are calendar, agenda, interactive, printformats, printcalendars and **
default:calendar
print_new

After adding a new event, what should be printed to standard out? The whole event in text form, the path to where the event is now saved or nothing?

type:option, allowed values are event, path and False
default:False

The [view] section

The view section contains config options that effect the visual appearance when using ikhal

event_view_always_visible

Set to true to always show the event view window when looking at the event list

type:boolean
default:False
event_view_weighting

This is the weighting that is applied to the event view window

type:integer
default:1
frame

Whether to show a visible frame (with box drawing characters) around some (groups of) elements.

type:boolean
default:False
bold_for_light_color

Whether to use bold text for light colors or not. Non-bold light colors may not work on all terminals but allow using light background colors.

type:boolean
default:True
theme

Choose a color theme for khal.

This is very much work in progress. Help is really welcome! The two currently available color schemes (dark and light) are defined in khal/ui/themes.py, you can either help improve those or create a new one (see below). As ikhal uses urwid, have a look at urwid’s documentation for how to set colors and/or at the existing schemes. If you cannot change the color of an element (or have any other problems) please open an issue on github.

If you want to create your own color scheme, just copy the structure of the existing ones, give it a new and unique name and also add it as an option in khal/settings/khal.spec in the section [default] of the property theme.

type:option, allowed values are dark and light
default:dark

The [highlight_days] section

When highlight_event_days is enabled, this section specifies how is the highlighting rendered.

default_color

Default color for calendars without color - when se to ‘’ it actually disables highlighting for events that should use the default color.

type:color
default:
method

Highlighting method to use - foreground or background

type:option, allowed values are foreground, fg, background and bg
default:fg
multiple

How to color days with events from multiple calendars - either explicit color or use calendars’ colors when set to ‘’

type:color
default:
color

What color to use when highlighting - explicit color or use calendar color when set to ‘’

type:color
default: