Fantastical 2 is the best replacement for the iPhone’s Calendar app.
For the past couple of years, I’ve had appointments daily and have become a calendar app master. And even though I’ve become pretty darn good at quickly entering information into Calendar, I haven’t been happy with the app’s performance. It’s functional, but not always the most pleasant to work with and there are a lot of iOS developers that have created more versatile apps than Apple’s Calendar for iOS. One such app is Fantastical 2.
Fantastical 2 by Flexibits is completely designed to work with iOS 7. It’s won awards and has been a best-seller in the app store since its release in late 2013. One of the main reasons I wanted to try it out was because of its intuitive design and imaginative programming. Fantastical includes a parser that recognizes natural language to set-up reminders, events and alerts. For example, I could enter, “Lunch with Mom on Saturday from 12 – 1:30,” and Fantastical will translate that into an event and place it on the calendar. This one feature alone increase productivity exponentially. This feature works through traditional typing or with dictation.
Some of the other main features include:
- Reminders
- See events and dated reminders together in the main list
- Add reminders directly from the Reminders list or a new event screen
- Set dates, times and geofences
- Event details include maps for directions
- Birthday options to send greetings via text, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp or email
Some of the major issues I have with Calendar are the views. There are several different views available for Calendar, but switching between them is very cumbersome. I want to be able to look at a simple agenda view and while Calendar has that, it’s difficult to get to it. With Fantastical, it has an agenda view, a daily view, and a weekly view (in landscape mode).
In addition to the parser and the easily accessible views, Fantastical updates in the background. So, even if you don’t open Fantastical very often your events and reminders will still update. There is also an extended keyboard for 4” screens that provides instant access to numbers and symbols. Another feature that I really enjoy is the Snooze function. You have the ability to snooze an alert for a period of time – 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 1 day, 2 days or a custom time period. This is a great productivity tool in my opinion because sometimes you might be in a meeting and still want a reminder, but not right at that moment. So, the snooze is great because you can be re-reminded without having to change the appointment like you do with the Calendar app.
If you find that you are wanting more from a calendar app than what Apple’s Calendar can provide, I would strongly suggest Fantastical 2 for iPhone. It’s very easy to use and even easier to read, which is an issue I was having with Calendar. Fantasical 2 for iPhone retails for $9.99 in the App Store, but is currently 50% off for a limited time and selling for $4.99.
For more information, visit http://flexibits.com/fantastical-iphone. Fantastical is also available for iPad and Mac. Be sure to watch for our reviews on both of those version within the coming week.