Create iCal To-do: Applescript for Quicksilver

While waiting for a plane here at the airport I got bored and decided to make a little Applescript for Quicksilver. For those of you who don’t already use Quicksilver and use a Macintosh computer, I recommend it as a way of significantly increasing your productivity. It is hard to explain what it is but it acts like a launcher and provides easy ways to give shortcut commands for all sorts of tasks.

My simple goal was this: I want to be able to add a “To-Do” item to iCal very quickly. I don’t want to have to switch to iCal, press Command-K, then type in my summary (sometimes this is slow in iCal and the focus doesn’t always jump to the new item correctly, I find), and then choose “High Priority”

Instead I: a) Use my keyboard shortcut to activate Quicksilver b) Type “.” and the text for the To-do item, c) press “Tab” and start typing “todo” (the name of the script) d) press enter.

The number of steps may seem the same but it is all through the keyboard and iCal adds the to-do item in the background so I have found it to be very handy. The script adds the to-do item to the “Home” calendar to keep it simple. I may one day expand the script so you can first time a number, corresponding to the number of days until the to-do’s “due date” but I can’t be bothered.

You can download the script I wrote here. Full text of the script below:

UPDATE: There is a much more powerful script which can do much more for those who want a more advanced but more comprehensive solution. See this Hawk Wings entry for an explanation of Benjamin Harley’s new iCal action.

using terms from application “Quicksilver”
on process text theString
tell application “iCal”
set newtodo to (make new todo at end of todos of calendar “Home”)
tell newtodo
set priority to high priority
set summary to theString
end tell
end tell
end process text
end using terms from