Fantastical Calendar

Category

Description of App

Fantastical is the multiple award-winning calendar and tasks app with features like natural language parsing, beautiful Day, Week, Month, and Year views, and much more!

TRY FANTASTICAL FOR FREE

• Beautiful, clean, and easy to use calendar app allowing you to manage basic events
• The DayTicker and calendar makes your schedule look the nicest it ever has
• 3 day weather forecast (powered by AccuWeather)
• 14 day free trial for Fantastical Premium

UPGRADE TO FANTASTICAL PREMIUM (requires subscription)

• Includes Fantastical on all platforms: Mac, iPhone, Apple Watch, and iPad
• Extended 10 day weather forecast with RealFeel and MinuteCast up-to-the-minute weather data (powered by AccuWeather)
• Browse and instantly subscribe to interesting calendars, including sports, TV shows, holidays, and much more (powered by SchedJoules)
• Full task support including Todoist and Google Tasks
• Calendar sets - quickly toggle multiple calendars on or off with a simple click or automatically when you leave or arrive, based on location
• Event and task templates
• Sync calendar sets and templates across devices
• Full screen day, week, month, and year views
• Apple Watch app with Up Next and Weather (and works over LTE)
• Parser autocomplete recommendations for invitees, locations, and calendars/task lists
• Propose multiple times to easily ask people when they can meet
• Combine duplicate events across multiple calendars
• Invitees and availability lookups
• Respond to event invitations
• Default alerts
• Time zone override
• Favorite time zones
• Push updates for Google and Exchange
• Manage Google Hangouts, Google Meet, and Zoom events
• Set event travel time and receive time to leave notifications
• Custom event colors
• Custom home screen icons
• Custom alert sounds
• Hide events without deleting them
• Add attachments to events on iCloud, Google, and Exchange
• Priority email support

ADDING NEW EVENTS OR TASKS IS FAST AND FUN

• The easiest and fastest way to add new events or tasks
• Type in your details or use dictation and watch your words magically turn into an actual event or task!
• Powerful parser features, including:
- Create tasks by starting your sentence with “task” ”reminder", "todo", or "remind me to"
- Powerful and expressive repeating events such as third Thursday of every month, every weekend, last weekday of the month, and more
- Create alerts with phrases like "remind me tomorrow at 3PM", "alert 1 hour before", or "alarm 3PM"

THE BEST TASKS APP TOO

• See your events and dated tasks together in the main list
• Add tasks directly from the Tasks list or new event screen - just flip the switch to toggle between events and tasks
• Set dates, times, and geofences (when I arrive/when I leave)
• Support for iCloud Reminders, Todoist, and Google Tasks

WORKS THE WAY YOU DO

• Connects to your favorite calendar services including iCloud, Google, Exchange, Office 365, Todoist, Yahoo, and more
• Automatically add alarms to your new events
• Fantastical is fully localized in English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, and Spanish
• Start typing your event or task in any of these languages and Fantastical will automagically understand!

EVEN MORE FANTASTICAL

• Background app updating enables events, tasks, and alerts to be pushed to Fantastical even if you don't launch the app often
• Birthdays - see your contact’s details or send a quick birthday greeting
• Handoff support between Fantastical for Mac, iPhone, and iPad
• Time zone support including floating time zone support
• Dark and light themes
• Stickers
• Accessibility support
• And much, much more!

Version

3.0

Free or Paid

Free With In-App Purchase

Apple Watch Support

Yes

Device(s) App Was Tested On

iPhone
iPad

iOS Version

13.3.1

Accessibility Comments

Works very well with VoiceOver.

VoiceOver Performance

VoiceOver reads all page elements.

Button Labeling

All buttons are clearly labeled.

Usability

The app is fully accessible with VoiceOver and is easy to navigate and use.

Developer's Twitter Username

@flexibits

Recommendations

2 people have recommended this app

Most recently recommended by Kelly Sapergia 7 years 10 months ago

Options

Comments

By Nicholas Parsons on Thursday, November 21, 2013 - 20:41

I recently installed and tested the Mac version, but I will be uninstalling it. It is accessible to a point, but not as accessible as Apple's Calendar. Some people prefer creating events in Fantastical, and so it is perhaps useful for this feature alone. But I would not recommend the Mac version for a full calendar for VoiceOver users. I'm trying Fantastical 2 for iOS at the moment as well. Seems promising, though the interface is a little cluttered. I do like some of the features though so I'll persevere and hopefully I'll get more familiar with it.

By David Goodwin on Thursday, November 21, 2013 - 20:41

Just a heads-up to let people know that the developer has promised more VoiceOver improvements in the next update. This should apparently be released in the next month. They mentioned that improving the accessibility of the Mac version of the app is also on their To Do list, but can’t give a commitment yet as to when this will happen.

By David Goodwin on Friday, March 21, 2014 - 20:41

I’ve yet to spot what they are, but the latest update includes more improvements to accessibility:  What's New in Version 2.0.5
  • New Fantastical notification sounds for events and reminders
  • Added support for opening links in 1Password and Mercury web browsers
  • Added an option to send text messages in WhatsApp
  • Added support for creating events with floating time zones 
  • Added an option for the app icon badge to show the current calendar week
  • Added swipe to delete for unwanted locations from the reminder geofence location list
  • Added support to tap on URLs and phone numbers in the title of events
  • Reminders with both a geofence and due date no longer trigger a notification until the day of the reminder is due
  • Visual update to week view to make events and event invitations easier to read
  • Improvements to conference call code detection
  • Improvements to accessibility
  • Improvements to search speed
  • Fixed a problem where duplicate not

By Michael Hansen on Wednesday, May 21, 2014 - 20:41

Member of the AppleVis Editorial Team

Fantastical 2 version 2.0.7 is now available:

"What's New in Version 2.0.7

- Improved week view layout when showing many overlapping events
- Fixed a problem where alerts for reminders didn't update when using Move or Duplicate
- Fixed a problem where posting to Facebook from a birthday wouldn't work
- Fixed a problem where events in the week view could temporarily appear with the wrong color
- Various fixes and improvements

By the way, App Store reviews are very helpful to us. If you think Fantastical is worthy, would you mind taking a moment to write a nice review? We'd greatly appreciate it. Thanks for using Fantastical! :)"

By KE7ZUM on Sunday, September 21, 2014 - 20:41

Someoen on another lit wants to trythis app but they don't know if it is accessible. They asked me to find out for them as they I believe don't want to yet spend the $10 on the app.

So, is the app accessible totally and what advantages does it have over the calandar app for ios? I read the discription but I myself don't know as all I know is the ios calandar and tha'ts all I've used for 4 years.I don't like the other calandar apps I've used. they are too busy.

By Jessica Brown on Wednesday, January 21, 2015 - 20:41

If I make an event in this app, will it also show up in the stock iOS calendar app?

By Jesus R on Thursday, April 21, 2016 - 20:41

Hi. A question. I've been using Fantastical on my iPhone for a while now, and saw there was an app spisific for iPads, for $10 more. Normally I find that iPad apps are better for the iPad screen , but I heard somewhere that I should just use Fantastical for iPhone, even on iPad. Is this the case, is there any real reason why I might want to get Fantastical for iPad?
Thanks.

By Melissa Wagner on Thursday, July 21, 2016 - 20:41

I can not get this to work properly, and i have had this app since sometime in iOS 8. It used to work fine. Now when I try to enter events it just puts them on random dates that I didn't pick and if I use the "go to" function to try to pick a date it just picks its own date and takes me there instead of where I chose to go. It will also randomly scroll to different places when I am trying to see my events by day when I swipe left or right. Is there some setting i have to change to make this app work better, or did something break in one of the updates? Just checking to see if others have had any similar problems.

By Jesus R on Thursday, July 21, 2016 - 20:41

Hello,
I think you switched to the calender view perhaps by doing something eith the date picker. Do a three finger flick down on the day ticker I believe, or just when in calender. Let me know if that works, if not, I'll try and look at the app in the mean time.

By Kelly Sapergia on Monday, November 21, 2016 - 20:41

For my calendar, I currently use the built-in one in conjunction with Siri. Lately, though, I've been hearing about Fantastical 2. The description does sound promising, but I'm wondering if there's any point in getting it compared to using the built-in app?

By gailisaiah on Monday, November 21, 2016 - 20:41

Kelly, That is my question too. We already have a calendar and reminders that are free. What is the advantage of buying this app?

By alex wallis on Monday, November 21, 2016 - 20:41

I certainly don't find fantasticals calender as easy to use as the built in one, however one advantage there is in using fantastical is you can set several times up to be reminded of events whereas with ios built iin reminders calender etc you can only set one time up. so what I generally do is create the thing I want to be reminded about in the regular ios calender or reminders then use fantastical to set several different reminder times. the nice thing is you can set several different reminder times for the same day or even different days, so for example say its someone's birthday you could set reminders on different days to buy them a present.

By Lysette Chaproniere on Monday, November 21, 2016 - 20:41

...is its natural language processing, where you can type in the details of your event in normal everyday language and have it set it up for you. That's so much easier than fiddling with all the controls to set the date and time. You could stick with the default calendar app and use Siri, but I find that typing in the details is a more reliable way of making sure everything gets entered. If you also have Drafts, you can make it even easier because there are actions that will send a list of events/reminders to Fantastical and add them to your calendar all at once. you can just write a list of events in Drafts, one on each line, then use one of the actions from the link below to send them to Fantastical. (Here's the page where you can download the Drafts actions for use with Fantastical). Tip: if you use one of the Drafts actions from that page that allows you to create multiple events at once, it'll give you an error message when it's finished even though it's created them successfully.

By Kelly Sapergia on Wednesday, December 21, 2016 - 20:41

Sorry for taking so long to respond to the answers to my question.
I bought Fantastical shortly after the comments were posted, and absolutely love it! The natural-language feature is amazing, and makes entering appointments a whole lot easier, particularly if an appointment repeats on the third Friday of the month, for example.
Sure, you can add those using the built-in calendar, but from what I've seen, it's a tricky, if not time-consuming, process.
I do wish you could change the alert sounds the app uses, but other than that minor issue, I highly recommend it.

By Rafal on Friday, February 21, 2020 - 20:41

A new update has been released changing interface of the app. It also introduced a subscription plan (monthly or annualy) that makes me angry given the app is a paid app. One advantage might be that Fantastical, with the same premium subscription can be used for Mac and iOS. I'd rather add functionalities or prepare a different ap

By Eileen on Friday, February 21, 2020 - 20:41

If you purchased the previous version of Fantastical, you will have access to some of the premium features without needing a subscription. What features depends upon which platform version you had.

Fantastical now offers some basic features free (whereas previously buying it for all Apple platforms would have cost $90 unless you caught it during a promo). Some might find that Fantastical's events timeline is more VoiceOver-friendly than the native calendar app, so people might want to check if out just for this.

By LaBoheme on Friday, February 21, 2020 - 20:41

quote: A new update has been released changing interface of the app. It also introduced a subscription plan (monthly or annualy) that makes me angry unquote

it may be too late for you, but if you had backed up the app, you could just roll back to the older version. it's not too late to start, for we are transforming from an ownership society to a subscribership society, protect yourself.

i don't mind when developers want to make some bucks, but the way they did it was sneaky and not clean.

first off, the new version is called fantastical 3, the older one is fantastical 2, they should be made separate versions, especially when the new version is not going to add any value for the user unless the user pays more, much much more.

furthermore, not all old functions are available. honestly, i didn't try it out long enough to know that, but from discussions online, that is indeed the case. one need to sign up for an account in order to use the new app, even one does not want to use any new functions; and i got prompted all the time to subscribe, what a freaking hassle. i felt it wasn't even worth trying, so i just rolled back to fantastical 2, piece of cake.

By KE7ZUM on Friday, February 21, 2020 - 20:41

I don't mind the subscriptions. It si a way to build a stabl eand steady income. I don't want to do trhe $39 a year plan, but I'm on several other subscrfiptions where i"m paying hundreds a year to get stuff I need. It is what it is, deal with it, or get left behind with free apps that might fail to work after a while due to, well, lack of funding, death of the devs, frustrations etc.

By LaBoheme on Friday, February 21, 2020 - 20:41

you just said it yourself. you don't like the $39 year plan, that's what they charge. $39 a year for a calendar app is ridiculous.

money is secondary, my problem is with how they do it.

fantastical 2 and 3 are essentially two different apps, they force it on unsuspecting users in a sneaky way. take a look at how prizmo did it. they wanted to change their business model, so they call the original app "prizmo classic", no longer update, that's fine and fair.

also fantastical promises if you bought the app, all functions will still be available to you, that's not true. and you get constant popups telling you to subscribe, it's like pay up or we'll make your life hell.

i pay $120 for the costco goldstar executive every year, it is arguably the most successful subscription business of all time. it provides me value and good services, and they don't trick me into buying it, so i'll never quibble. fantastical 3 is a different story.