A Notification Center widget, faster and more reliable sync, full time zone support, and 'calendar sets' round out the highlights. Taken together, they make Fantastical 2 far more than a menu bar companion to OS X's built in Calendar app — they make it a full-on calendar app in its own right.
Fantastical for Mac is a utility app that works with other calendar applications like Calendar, iCal, BusyCal (cloud calendars only), Entourage or Outlook. It allows users to set up events, reminders and sync between all devices running Fantastical. Some of the top features of Fantastical for Mac include.
The good
Fantastical for Mac is a compact tool to help you manage your Calendar and Reminders, all from one convenient interface with just a few clicks. Once you've linked all of your accounts to this app, you can instantly access appointments, make new entries, and prioritize tasks right from the app's drop-down main screen. Fantastical is the Mac calendar you’ll actually enjoy using. Creating an event with Fantastical is quick, easy, and fun. Dec 30, 2017 Fantastical is a full-time zone support, including floating time zones. Now set the time and geofence alerts for your reminder. Fantastical 2 for Mac Free Download. You can create combined duplicate events across multiple calendars. Beautiful all new design exclusively for Mac OS. The original fantastical app was only a menu bar app. Discover alternatives, similar products and apps like fantastical 2-for-mac that everyone is talking about.
Simple and clean design that fits well with OS X Yosemite
Calendar sets make sorting and viewing calendars a breeze
Best natural language support of any Mac calendar app
Lots of ways to view and interact with your calendar in full screen mode
Light and dark themes for both full screen and menu bar versions
The bad
Currently no alerts for event invites
Reminders lists can't be sorted by category
Designing for Yosemite and bringing Fantastical full screen
'Yosemite helped us do what we tend to do best,' Fantastical developer Michael Simmons of Flexibits told me in a recent interview. 'Which is to create apps that are simple and clean.'
If you're already using Fantastical 2 on your iPhone or iPad, you'll immediately feel at home with Fantastical for Mac. Off to the left is a mini month preview similar to what Fantastical 2 for iOS offers. Underneath that is a running list of all the events, reminders, and tasks you have coming up. Everything is color coded so you can easily see which calendars or reminders list they belong to.
Just like the iPhone and iPad version, there are two themes — light and dark — and you can switch between them in preferences. The menu bar version and full screen version will both switch to reflect whichever one you choose. reflect any theme change you make. Basic interface elements such as font size in the list view can be customized in the Preferences panel too.
The original version of Fantastical was fine if all you wanted to do was quickly add entries or view upcoming events. The menu bar made it easy. That functionality hasn't changed with Fantastical 2. You can still use it the same way you've always been using it. It just looks better now. The interface has been flattened. It's sharper and cleaner.
Also still there is the great natural language support. It's what's always made Fantastical incredibly fast for entering appointments. If you have a meeting at noon tomorrow and you would like it added to your work calendar, just type in the event entry field something like 'Meeting tomorrow at noon' and Fantastical will automatically add it to your calendar.
Natural language support covers all kinds of things such as adding alarms, designating an event as repeating, and much more. You can also quickly switch between calendars by typing a '/' and then the first few letters of the calendar name at the end of your entry. If you want to toggle between reminders, just type reminder at the beginning. Think of it as a personal assistant like Siri, only one that you type to instead of talk to.
What has changed in Fantastical 2 is the addition of a new full calendar mode. It offers the same views as the built-in OS X Calendar app but makes better use of the space off the the left with the list view, which always remains static no matter what view you choose. If you're in day view you also get a side panel to the right that will show detailed info on a selected event, very similar to what the stock Calendar app shows. It means, if you're already using Fantastical, there's no reason to switch back to the built-in Calendar app anymore. You can get both views right in Fantastical.
Fantastical 2 For Mac And Iphone
That's the great thing about Fantastical 2 for Mac — you can use it based on what you need to get done. If you're just entering an event, the menu bar version of Fantastical does what it's always done best. Assign a universal keyboard shortcut — the default is ctrl + option + space — and you can access the menu bar window from anywhere. Once you're done entering events or viewing your calendar, just hit escape and continue what you were doing.
'I built Fantastical for myself,' Simmons said. 'It was a way to fix the frustrations I had with iCal. We started with a better and faster way not only to enter events, but to view them. That was the original purpose of Fantastical — it was meant to fix iCal. Fantastical 2 is meant to fix Fantastical.'
Adding accounts to Fantastical remains simple. It can pull your data right from the internet accounts section of OS X and filter in local calendars. Fantastical 2 for Mac supports 2-step verification for Google accounts but if you have it enabled for iCloud, you'll need to generate an app specific password.
You can set defaults for calendars, reminder lists, and notifications. Every aspect of how you receive notifications and when you get them is customizable. You can also change what the list view in Fantastical 2 shows. For example, it can be a running list with no end, or you can set it to only show the current day if you'd prefer. If you use priority options regularly, Fantastical 2 can take that into account too and show those reminders first.
It's worth noting that to receive notifications for Fantastical, you'll have to leave it running in the background. If you quit the app, you will stop receiving calendar and reminder notifications. This is a restriction of OS X, not Fantastical itself.
Calendar sets: You won't be able to live without them
'Calendar Sets is the feature we are most proud of,' Simmons told me, and it's easy to see why. Anyone who has lots of calendars and reminders lists to manage will quickly wonder how they ever lived without them.
The idea behind calendar sets is that you can view select groups of calendars and reminders lists quickly. For example, I can have one set that only shows my personal calendars and reminders lists. I can add a second set that only shows my work calendars, and so on. You can quickly create and manage calendar sets in the Preferences panel under Calendars.
Accessing and toggling between calendar sets couldn't be any easier. You can either click on the calendar toggle in the bottom of the list view or you can use keyboard shortcuts to switch between views even faster. The menu bar version of Fantastical also lets you toggle between calendar sets.
And it gets even better. Location aware calendar sets can automagically switch to a group of calendars depending on your physical location. For example, if you want Fantastical to show your personal calendars by default when you're at home, just turn on location options and use your home location. If you want your work set to be the default when you're at the office, enable the location option for your work set under your work address. Fantastical will automatically show relevant calendars.
Calendar sets are one of those features I never knew I needed, until I had it.
The bottom line
I've never been able to find a calendar replacement for Mac that strikes a happy balance between features and usability. Fantastical 2 takes everything great about Apple's Calendar app, strips out everything that's not, and adds features that are truly useful. Fantastical 2 for Mac is the calendar app I've been waiting for.
Note: Fantastical 2 is a new app on the Mac App Store, as it contains significant new features. Since Apple still doesn't provide a way for developers to offer upgrade pricing, Flexibits is giving everyone 25% Fantastical 2 for a limited time.
$49.99 - $39.99 on sale - Download Now
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Fantastical 2 For Mac Free Download
If you’re a serious calendar user on a Mac or iOS, chances are you’re using already using Fantastical in some form or the other. Flexibits completely changed the way we schedule events or use our calendar and their apps on iPhone, iPad and Mac have been incredibly well received by the audience. Today, the Flexibits duo of Michael Simmons and Kent Sutherland release Fantastical 2 for Mac — what we believe to be the best app on a Mac today.
Swanky new User Interface
Fantastical 2 for Mac sports a beautifully designed User Interface and has been ingeniously crafted specially for OS X Yosemite. Having used the app over the last few weeks, I can firmly say Fantastical 2 feels better than anything I’ve used on my Mac. The app feels spiffy, the animations are slick and everything about the app has been lovingly crafted to perfection. Just like its predecessor, Fantastical 2 sports a menubar mini window with an overhauled design that feels right at home on OS X. You can still detach this window and have it float over other apps. Fantastical 2 also sports a full calendar window that takes full advantage of the screen real estate by offering Day, Week, Month, and Year views that you can jump between with a single click. On the left is the sidebar that displays the current month as well as your upcoming appoinments. You can switch between a Light or Dark theme for the sidebar. The whole window works as a great way to not only get a quick overview of your schedule, but also helps you find exactly what you are looking for. Yes, there’s a search feature available at the top right that lets you search anything in your schedule.
Built for OS X Yosemite
Fantastical 2 doesn’t just go hand-in-hand with OS X Yosemite’s design, it’s also takes advantage of the APIs offered by the OS. You can enable the Fantastical Today Widget for your Notification Center tray and get a quick glimpse of all your events scheduled for today. It also has Share and Action extensions to create events from any native apps that support extensions. Getting stuff from Safari directly into Fantastical is now possible and super easy too. Fantastical 2 also supports Handoff, so if you have the iPhone or iPad version of Fantastical on your iOS devices, you can continue exactly where you left off.
Natural Language Parsing
Fantastical’s biggest feature in its iOS and Mac apps has been its Natural Language Parser (NLP) that lets you create new entries using common language. This has been greatly improved in this release, letting you enter strings like, “Remind me to Pay the Credit Card Bill on the 4th saturday of every month” and Fantastical 2 will know exactly what you want to be scheduled. There’s better support for iCloud reminders as well in this release, as Fantastical 2 lets you view your events and reminders together in a single list.
Calendar Sets
One of the highlights of this release is the support for Calendar Sets. If you have multiple calendars setup and configured on your system, this might just be the best thing to happen to your app. Fantastical 2 supports the accounts you have already configured on your system, so you need not set them up again in the app. Fantastical 2 not just offers native support for any iCloud, Google, Yahoo or Fruux accounts, but you can also add any CalDAV account (such as FastMail). Then you can create groups of these calendars depending on your usage. For example, I have a ‘Personal’ calendar set that includes my FastMail, Facebook and Gmail account while there’s a ‘Work’ calendar set that includes calendars from my Google Apps accounts.
What makes this feature even better is the support for Location based Calendar Sets. You can configure your calendar sets to automatically activate when you arrive at or leave any location. So Fantastical 2 will automatically switch to your Work set when you reach office and back to your Personal set when you get back home.
Fantastical For Macbook
Time-zone Support
As someone who works from India, I have to deal with different time zones all the time. I’ve mastered the conversions for Eastern and Pacific time zones, but anything else and I have to depend upon a Google Search, head over to Every Time Zone or fire up Miranda on my iPhone. Thankfully, Fantastical 2 has one of the best implementations of time zones I’ve seen in any app. Not only can you create events for specific time zones using the Natural Language Parser, you can also view/change time zones when viewing the details for each event. If you travel a lot, floating time zones are your best friend.
Localization
Localization is largely an overlooked feature in most apps, but really helps if English isn’t your primary language. Fantastical 2 for Mac is fully localized in English, French, German, Italian, Spanish and Japanese. Not only is the user interface available in your preferred language, you can also enter your events and reminders in your language and Fantastical 2 will follow you as you type.
Back in 2011, Fantastical for Mac revolutionalized how you use calendars on your Mac and today, Fantastical 2 takes a giant leap ahead, as you no longer have to depend on the default OS X Calendar app.
Fantastical 2 for Mac is available at a launch time sale price of $39.99, with the standard price being $49.99. You can grab it from the Mac App Store or directly from the Flexibits website. You can also download a free trial if you’re still unsure.