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
color

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:
path

the path to a vdir where this calendar is saved

type:string
default:None
readonly

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

type:boolean
default:False
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.

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

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.

encoding

set this to the encoding of your terminal emulator

type:string
default:utf-8
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
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
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
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
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
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
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
dateformat

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

type:string
default:%d.%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

The [keybindings] section

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.

right

move the cursor right (in the calendar browser)

type:list
default:right, l
view

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

type:list
default:enter, tab
up

move the cursor up (in the calendar browser)

type:list
default:up, k
down

move the cursor down (in the calendar browser)

type:list
default:down, j
new

create a new event on the selected date

type:list
default:n
left

move the cursor left (in the calendar browser)

type:list
default:left, h
today

focus the calendar browser on today

type:list
default:t
delete

delete the currently selected event

type:list
default:d

The [default] section

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

default_calendar

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
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
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
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

The [view] section

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

event_view_weighting

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

type:integer
default:1
event_view_always_visible

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

type:boolean
default:False

Table Of Contents