Working with the Today View

Introduction: In this video, we’re going to take a look at the Today view. With the Today view, we can get a glimpse of what is going on today with various apps. If we have any events in our calendar for today, we’ll be able to see those events. If you’re watching stock with the Stocks app, you can see how your stock is doing. Let’s take a look at the Today view on the Mac. 

Accessing the Today View: To access the Today view, what you do is you go to the upper right-hand corner where we have these three horizontal lines. If you recall, this is also how we access our Notification Center. When I click on it, on the right side of the display, we’re going to get a little slide out.

Now, the slide-out can be one of two things. It can be our notifications, or it can be our Today view. To view your Today view, what you do is you click on Today. It does remember what you had open the last time. If I go back over to Notifications here and then click on these three lines again, it’s going to open up to My Notifications. Now, I have to click on today again, and now I can look at what’s going on today. To close this slider, just like with the Notifications, what we do is we click outside. I’m going to click on the desktop here, and it disappears. 

Accessing the Today View with the Trackpad: Another way of accessing the Today view is to go to the right edge of your trackpad if you have a trackpad. This is how I usually do it. Go to the very right edge of your trackpad, and then swipe to the left with two fingers. I’m at the edge of my trackpad, I swipe to the left with two fingers, and I get my Today view again. It will also open up the Notifications if that was what you last looked at. This is our Today view. We can see the date, and we can also see the weather. Below that, we’re going to have various widgets. I have my Calendar widget, so I can see what is going on today. I’m going to meet my brother for pizza later on tonight. I can see that in my Calendar widget. Below that, I have my Stocks widget, so I can see all of the stocks that I’m watching. Below that, I also have weather for various cities, and then I can also see what’s going on tomorrow. 

Adding Widgets to the Today View: We can add other widgets, including widgets from third-party apps. To add other widgets, what we do is we go down to the bottom, and you’re going to see Edit. Now, if you’ve downloaded an app that supports the Today view, instead of Edit, what you might see here is One new or Two new, depending on how many apps you’ve installed. I do not have any new apps that I’ve installed, so it just says Edit.

Either way, when you click on this icon here, this button, what it does, is it brings my Today view over to the left a little bit further and then we can see all of my installed widgets to the left, and all of my available widgets to the right. Again, this does support third-party apps. You can see, I can add an OmniFocus widget. That’s how I keep myself organized. To add a widget, we go over to the right and click on the green plus. I’m going to add OmniFocus here. Watch what happens. It added it to my Today view. Now, when I close this, I’m going to go and click outside, and then I go back to my Today view. I’m going to click on the three horizontal lines; you’re going to see I have OmniFocus.

Removing Widgets from the Today View: To remove a widget, let’s say I wanted to remove OmniFocus, what I do is go back down to Edit, and then you’re going to see a red circle to the left. I click on the red circle; it moves it back over to the right. We can also rearrange these or reorder these. Let’s say I wanted to have my stocks above my Calendar. I go over to the right here, click on these three lines, and drag it up, and I can reorder them. I’m going to bring it back down, and now it’s below my calendar. If you want to find more apps that support the Today’s view, click on the App Store. Over to the right, we have the little gear here. If you recall, this is how we get to our Notification Settings or Preferences.

If I were to click on this, what it would do is it would open up my system preferences and then go to my notifications preferences. It has nothing to do with the Today view. When you are finished, you can click outside here, or what you can do is you can click on Done. If you click on Done, what it does is it just closes all of the options. Now you’re looking at the Today view again. Depending on which widget you have, you may have more options. If I click on pizza with my brother here, what it’s going to do is to open up the Calendar app. Let’s go ahead and click on it. Now we can see it opened up to pizza with my brother. 

That’s the Today view on the Mac.