Quickly view the monthly/yearly calendar

Solution 1:

Open Terminal and type command cal. What you get is calendar of current month, e.g.

   November 2020      
Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa  
 1  2  3  4  5  6  7  
 8  9 10 11 12 13 14  
15 16 17 18 19 20 21  
22 23 24 25 26 27 28  
29 30

You can choose to display whole year, for example cal 2021. For more options open calendar manual by typing command man cal.

This solution is available on all versions of MacOS (and Linux). Another advantage is you can copy and paste calendar as text to other apps.

Solution 2:

I feel your pain - I used the calendar in the dashboard a lot - and there's no sensible way of doing it with the in built functionality. I looked up Fantastical 2 - but I'm not prepared to pay 80 bucks for something that used to be free... So I found Quick View Calendar in the app store. It is free and tt adds this little icon to your menu bar - it does the trick!

Solution 3:

I just update my mac and Im now in the same case but I found a free widget (unlike mini calendar of previous answer) to put in notification center with a updated design (unlike quick calendar)

https://apps.apple.com/fr/app/mini-calendar/id1088779979?l=en&mt=12

now I just put 3 finger (slide right to the left) on my trackpad to see my calendar

desktop notif center

Solution 4:

As Apple removed the Dashboard for Catalina, the quick-view, F12, is gone, too.

To quickly view the Calendar you can add it to the Notification Center. I've found that this method is just as quick as using the dashboard.

If you need to see more detailed info, there's several other widgets you can add to the Notification Center, also.

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If you know how to use Shortcuts, you could create a keyboard combo that bring this up, too.

Personally, I use Fantastical 2 on my Mac. It allows me to put small calendar in the menu bar. You can see it in the upper right corner of this screenshot: