calcurse is a free, open-source, keyboard-driven calendar and task manager for the terminal. Learn its history, features, and how it compares to graphical…
calcurse was created in 2004 by Frederic Culot, who built the tool for his own use while finishing his PhD in astrophysics and needing a better way to manage an increasingly complex schedule of appointments and tasks. He later released it publicly under the permissive BSD license, allowing free use, modification, and redistribution.
The project transitioned to new maintainership in 2011 under Lukas Fleischer, who has continued to guide its development, and many core features added since 2017 were designed and implemented by contributor Lars Henriksen. This lineage of dedicated maintainers over roughly two decades is characteristic of durable Unix command-line tools that outlive their original creators' direct involvement.
calcurse's terminal interface is split into three simultaneously visible panels: a monthly calendar, a list of the selected day's appointments, and a to-do list. This layout gives users a full overview of their schedule and outstanding tasks without needing to switch between separate screens, and navigation uses configurable, largely vi-style keyboard shortcuts that terminal-focused users tend to find fast and natural.
Notes can be attached to any calendar entry and are opened in the user's preferred external text editor rather than a built-in note field, keeping calcurse consistent with the broader Unix philosophy of composing small, focused tools rather than reimplementing a text editor internally. A configurable notification system can also alert users to approaching deadlines even when they aren't actively looking at the calcurse interface.
Because calcurse users often need to coordinate with people and services using mainstream calendar tools, the application supports importing and exporting data in the standard iCalendar (.ics) format, and includes experimental CalDAV support for synchronizing with mobile devices and CalDAV-compatible servers. This keeps calcurse from being a data silo even though its primary interface is text-based.
calcurse also runs in a non-interactive, command-line mode, with options for filtering and formatting appointment and to-do data. This makes it usable inside shell scripts, terminal status bars, or automated notification pipelines, extending its usefulness beyond the interactive curses interface into broader terminal-based automation workflows.
calcurse is a free, open-source, text-based calendar and scheduling application that runs in the terminal on Unix-like systems such as Linux, macOS, and the BSDs.
calcurse was created in 2004 by Frederic Culot. Since 2011 it has been maintained by Lukas Fleischer, with significant contributions from Lars Henriksen since 2017.
Yes, calcurse is free and open-source software, released under the permissive BSD license.
calcurse supports importing and exporting the standard iCalendar (.ics) format and has experimental CalDAV support for syncing with mobile devices and compatible calendar servers.
Yes, calcurse is designed to run entirely inside a terminal and also supports a non-interactive command-line mode for scripting.
The name combines calendar with ncurses, the terminal user interface library that calcurse is built on.
Yes, calcurse supports both recurring appointments and all-day events alongside standard one-off appointments.
calcurse runs on most Linux distributions, macOS, OpenBSD, FreeBSD, and NetBSD, with packages available in most major package managers.