khal reads configuration files in the ini syntax, meaning in understands keys separated from values by a =, while section and subsection names are enclosed by single or double square brackets (like [sectionname] and [[subsectionname]].
Khal is looking for a configuration file named khal.conf in the following places: in $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/khal/ (on most systems this is ~/.config/khal/ by default), ~/.khal/ and in the current directory. Alternatively you can specifiy with configuration file to use with -c path/to/config at runtime.
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
khal will use this color for coloring this calendar’s event. Depending on your terminal emulator’s settings, they might look different than what their name implies.
type: option, allowed values are black, white, brown, yellow, dark grey, dark green, dark blue, light grey, light green, light blue, dark magenta, dark cyan, dark red, light magenta, light cyan, light red and ** default:
the path to a vdir where this calendar is saved
type: string default: None
setting this to True, will keep khal from making any changes to this calendar
type: boolean default: False
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.
type: option, allowed values are calendar and birthdays default: calendar
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 most important options in the the [locale] section are probably (long-)time and dateformat.
set this to the encoding of your terminal emulator
type: string default: utf-8
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
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
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
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
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
khal will display and understand all datetimes in this format, see timeformat for the format.
type: string default: %d.%m. %H:%M
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
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
khal will display and understand all dates in this format, see timeformat for the format
type: string default: %d.%m.
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
keybindings for ikhal are set here. You can bind more than one key (combination) to a command by supplying a comma-seperated list of keys.
move the cursor right (in the calendar browser)
type: list default: right, l
show detailed or edit (if details are already show) the currently selected event
type: list default: enter, tab
move the cursor up (in the calendar browser)
type: list default: up, k
move the cursor down (in the calendar browser)
type: list default: down, j
create a new event on the selected date
type: list default: n
move the cursor left (in the calendar browser)
type: list default: left, h
focus the calendar browser on today
type: list default: t
delete the currently selected event
type: list default: d
The default section begins with a [default] tag. Some default values and behaviours are set here.
the calendar to use if no one is specified but only one can be used (e.g. if adding a new event), this should be a valid calendar name.
type: string default: None
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
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
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
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
The view section contains config options that effect the visual appearance when using khal
This is the weighting that is applied to the event view window
type: integer default: 1
Set to true to always show the event view window when looking at the event list
type: boolean default: False
A minimal sample configuration could look like this:
[calendars]
[[home]]
path = ~/.calendars/home/
[[work]]
path = ~/.calendars/work/
[locale]
local_timezone= Europe/Berlin
default_timezone= Europe/Berlin
timeformat= %H:%M
dateformat= %d.%m.
longdateformat= %d.%m.%Y
datetimeformat= %d.%m. %H:%M
longdatetimeformat= %d.%m.%Y %H:%M
To get khal working with CalDAV you will first need to setup vdirsyncer. After each start khal will automatically check if anything has changed and automatically update its caching db (this may take some time after the initial sync, especially for large calendar collections). Therefore you might want to execute khal automatically after syncing with vdirsyncer (e.g. via cron).