Okay Geek Farm
Fantastical could be the best Calendar App for the Mac - Review
Brandon Davenport
I have had so much trouble trying to keep a schedule for myself on my Google Clandar and iCal and I have never found out why. I figured I was just lazy, or maybe I didn’t need a calendar at all, but after months of having no calendar I couldn’t keep myself on track, and I was late (or missed out) on everything! It was such a horrible feeling, but I had no clue how to make it all work — then it hit me…
The problem wasn’t the me or the calendar or the apps I was using, the problem was the actual action of adding events and times — it was too complicated! It took a solid 5 minutes just to add an appointment, or a meeting, and that’s what was slowing me down — I just didn’t have the patience to add the events to begin with. To make a long story short, I came across a company called Flexibits and their new app Fantastical — here’s why it could be the most important app on your Mac.
Just type to add events, no menus or numerous steps
With other calendar apps, you’re required to go through numerous steps to simply add something, and that alone can grind away at productivity — but not only that, it discourages you every time you need to add something to your calendar.
With Fantastical, I’ve been able to simply type a sentence (eg. “Team meeting at 12:00pm on Friday”) and Fantastical automatically translates that to the particular formatting required for a calendar app.
The title “Team meeting” is used as the name for the event. When I type “at 12:00pm” it knows to add it for 12:00pm, and when I add the phrase “on Friday” it knows to add it to Friday’s schedule.
Alternatively, I could say “at noon” and it would add it to 12:00pm as well — you can even specify a location by saying “at Okay Geek offices”, and it will set that as the location.
Something else that really helps is the ability to add alarms (it automatically sets the settings for you, but you can change all that if need be) and being able to invite people to the event. You can also assign it to different calendars you have on your Mac or elsewhere (we’ll get into that later) and you can mark the event for “all day” if time isn’t relevent, or the event is litterally all day long.
Design, features and overall appeal
When you look at Fantastical for the first time, you realize that it’s just a tiny icon in your top taskbar, there’s no app icon in your dock required.
When you click the tiny icon, down pops a compact Fantastical that displays a few text boxes, a calendar (one much like a paper calendar on your desk at work) and a compact list view of all your events. At the bottom, there’s an “anchor” icon that prevents Fantastical from fading away when you click somewhere else on the screen, and a “gear” icon that gives you access to preferences, help, licence info and quick options (show week, month, day and jump to today).
The first text box is the one you use to add entries, and the second is a search box that you can use to quicly find a certain event or date.
The calendar up top allows you quick access to different dates within the month with grey dots indicating which dates have events scheguled. You cal click on different dates and the assigned events for that day show in the lower section of the app.
The lower section houses a compact list of events for the next week (customizeable in the preferences) and it features a very clean scrollbar (much like iOS) and simple color scheme. You’ll be able to quickly identify different events assigned to different calendars due to the color coding system, much like other calendar apps.
We really like the look of the app, and the fact that it’s accessable wherever you are on your Mac is awesome. It takes up very little space, and it’s pretty lightweight overall.
Fantastical isn’t designed to be a stand-alone app
When you look at Fantastical as an app, it’s really just a small bubble that slides out of a tiny icon up in the taskbar on your Mac. It isn’t designed to manage your calendar — it’s designed to make it super easy to add events to every calendar you currently use.
It works with Outlook, Exchange, iCal, Yahoo and Google Calendar so there’s no need to “re-build” anything. You choose which calendars to sync with, and once you do that Fantastical automatically populates itself with all of your events, and it stays synced — It’s really nice to never have to open a clunky app just to add an event.
The bottom line, is it worth $20?
Fantastical is… well… fantastic! It’s the first calendar app that has allowed me to add events to my calendars in literally seconds, and now I (hope I) will never miss another event, ever again. The tiny icon in your taskbar stays in the background, and the app is quick to launch, and the entire app is really snappy. It looks wonderful and we’ve never had any issues with stability or reliability — so is it worth $20? We say yes, but on one condition — you should only buy this app if you really rely on your calendar (we mean like you use it multiple times every day), and if you don’t, Fantastical has a trial version that you can check out.
Pro’s- Fantastic design, fast performance and small footprint
- Unique text recognition to add events and locations
- Syncing with other calendars is nice (don’t get stuck in Fantastical)
- Solid support
Con’s
- Limited in advanced features
- No free version on the app store
Grab a copy of Fantastical
Download — From Fantastical (or the trial version)
Download — From the Mac App Store
