iOS 5 feature: Tap and hold to add, move, adjust, or delete Calendar event

By Rene Ritchie
last updated

Reader Jorge wrote in to let us know something he found in the iOS 5 beta -- you can now tap and hold to add, move, adjust, or delete a Calendar event. The way it works is fairly simple. From the day view, or the new landscape week view:

  • Tap and hold an empty space on your Calendar and a new event will pop up. Let go and you're immediately taken to the Add Event screen.
  • Tap and hold an existing event and tiny circular handles will appear on the top and bottom. Drag one to increase or decrease the time span of an event.
  • Tap and hold and drag an event to move it up or down the time scale, or drag it sideways to move it to another day.
  • Tap and hold and then drag up to "throw away" (delete) an event.

Nothing in list or month view that we've heard so far, but very nice additions to the day and new week view. All around it can save some time for minor edits, and is much more fun than the old, menu-heavy method.

[Thanks Jorge!]

Rene Ritchie
Rene Ritchie
Contributor

Rene Ritchie is one of the most respected Apple analysts in the business, reaching a combined audience of over 40 million readers a month. His YouTube channel, Vector, has over 90 thousand subscribers and 14 million views and his podcasts, including Debug, have been downloaded over 20 million times. He also regularly co-hosts MacBreak Weekly for the TWiT network and co-hosted CES Live! and Talk Mobile. Based in Montreal, Rene is a former director of product marketing, web developer, and graphic designer. He's authored several books and appeared on numerous television and radio segments to discuss Apple and the technology industry. When not working, he likes to cook, grapple, and spend time with his friends and family.

23 Comments
  • Calender has been pretty much the main app reliant on iCal or the Windows calender client to make changes. I'm glad they're giving us more freedom to make changes directly on our devices.
  • i like this, haha
  • FINALLY..
  • I would rather have more control over alerts, if I've got a full day event I'd like to choose an alerts that's not x time before midnight
  • You can also add an event now by pressing and holding the day you want your event in month view.
  • Awesome!
  • Those seem like useful additions and should make things easier!
    Really wish that Apple would add a way to forward a calendar entry! I frequently need to send corporate calendar meetings to co-workers on my team. Seems odd that ability still hasn't found its way into iOS.
  • week calendar is still better than Apple's native iCal. speaking of which, Apple pulled week calendar's iPad app without warning and refuses to speak with them. sad because it's seriously an awesome app.
  • I'm outraged by the removal of weekcal hd - it was the best iPad calendar by far, with features (auto colouring, customising starting date of week views) that apple didn't have.
    Luckily I got it before it was removed - but I seriously hope Apple bring it back. I don't see how it can hurt customers to have choice.
  • The whole thing is jacked up. The fact that Apple won't even respond to them is just tasteless and lacks class.
  • I only just discovered it's been removed. That really does suck. Week Cal is exactly how the iPad calendar should work. At least the iPhone version remains.
  • Finally, a decent way of updating the time of an event instead of opening, edit and closing. Makes sense Apple!
  • I guess I will be the first to say it:
    This is basically how webOS does it. No wonder Jobs gave Palm anod last year or so. It's kinda hard to criticize someone and "bite" at the same time.
    That said, I'm not mad at Apple for these things (yes, there's more). Palm had a long time to leverage its innovations and dropped the ball, again and again.
  • You read my mind! so many things webos had 2 years ago, that ios and android are just now getting, hp/palm really blew it, now everyone else has caught up. Oh well, webos notifications are still years ahead of any other platform.
  • About $£%*+!? time!.... PIM applications wihtin Mac as a whole have been seriously neglected over recent years.
  • Any chance if you can tell me if the Location line on the meeting detail from is clickable or not? Very often we have teleconferences where there is a phone number in the location field and that is one place that the phone number is not clickable to automatically dial it - kind of a pain. Just wondering if that has been corrected...
  • Smells like Android yet again.... way to go Apple.
  • This is a real nice feature.
  • I'd like to be able to move ahead or back in the calendar (day and month view) by simply swiping left or right across the screen, instead of trying to hit those little arrows. Any chance we'll see that in iOS 5?
  • You mean exactly like webos does it? Don't worry, I'm sure apple will copy that too, sorry, had to say it.
  • I cant get it to remove, the other options work but not the one to get rid of the event....anyone ??
  • I wish it was that easy with Exchange but it doesn't :-( As a technical manager, I often need to forward meetings to engineers on my team.
  • Will this be synced with google calendar?