The calendar lays your ready posts out on your publishing rhythm. Planning is local: nothing is scheduled in Substack until you confirm each post, and that step comes in a later phase.
Four views#
Choose a view with the View buttons at the top.
- Month. Six weeks in a grid, so the days on each edge are whole.
- Week. One week, with taller days.
- Agenda. A list of what is planned, day by day, with the closed days between.
- Quarter. About three months at a glance.
Earlier, Later and Today move through time. Every view says which days are closed and why, in words.
One time zone#
Pressmark uses one time zone for the whole app. Set it in Settings, General. The calendar shows it under the buttons ("Times are in ..."), and planning, moves and the day edges all use it. Changing it moves nothing you placed by hand; it changes the day a time falls on.
Limits the plan keeps to#
Choose Constraints to open the panel. The plan keeps to what is set there.
- Weekly cadence. How many posts a week you aim for, from 1 to 21. The plan never puts more posts than this in one week.
- Allowed days and times. A slot is a weekday and a time, for example Tuesday at 07:00. Posts go only into slots. You can add, change, switch off and remove slots. If you have none yet, Pressmark makes some from your cadence.
- Blackout dates. A day or a range of days with an optional note, for example a holiday of your own. Nothing is planned on them. A range ends on or after its start.
- Public holidays. Pick a country and nothing is planned on its public holidays.
Closed days (blackouts and holidays) are shaded and named. Free slots appear as quiet dashed outlines on their days.
Plan the calendar#
Choose Plan the calendar. Pressmark looks at the posts marked ready and places them into the next free slots for twelve weeks, starting from today in your time zone. It then tells you what happened, in a sentence, and the same sentence appears when you plan from the command bar (⌘K).
- Goals as weights. Your goals change the order. Authority favours longer posts, readers favours posts that are ready to share, paid favours paid posts, conversation favours posts with Notes or LinkedIn text ready.
- Series in order. Posts in a series keep their own order, and a post that continues the series just planned gets a small lift, so a series runs together.
- A post's own date. A post with a future publish date in its metadata goes on that date. If that date is a closed day or shares a time with another post, it still goes there, and its reason says which rule it breaks.
- Posts you placed by hand stay. A post you moved yourself is marked with a lock. A new plan works around it.
- Posts that are no longer ready leave the calendar.
Each post keeps the reason it was placed. Select a post to read it in the panel on the right.
When Plan places nothing#
Plan always says why. The reasons are:
- No posts are ready. Add your content folder on Sources, or mark posts ready in it.
- The folder's mapping is not confirmed. Your content folder is added but you have not confirmed what Pressmark found. Confirm it on Sources.
- Every ready post is already scheduled or published. There is nothing left to place.
- No free slots in this period. Add slots, raise the cadence, or remove blackout dates.
When some posts are placed and others are not, the message says how many wait for a free slot. If your cadence is higher than the number of slots you have set, it says so and suggests adding days and times.
Moving a post#
Drag a post to another day. It keeps its time of day. Drop it on a dashed slot outline to take that slot's time. A post you move is locked, so planning does not move it back.
With the keyboard: focus a post, press space to pick it up, press the arrow keys to choose a day, then press space to drop it. Escape cancels.
You can also select a post and set its date and time in the panel on the right, then press Move. Take off the calendar clears its date. A time needs its time zone, which the app adds for you.
What it does not do yet#
The calendar does not create drafts or schedule anything in Substack. It plans on your Mac only. Confirmation of each post, with its title, slot, time zone and email setting, arrives in a later phase.