Fantastical 3 has been released, and I have really enjoyed using it during the beta period. For years, Fantastical has been a really solid iPhone calendar app, built around fast natural language processing. Generally, entering a calendar event involves tapping a lot of buttons and hoping for the best, but with Fantastical, you didn’t have to leave the keyboard.
Over the years, Fantastical spread, making its way to the Mac and iPad. The latter in particular left a bit to be desired, but this new version takes much better advantage of the iPad’s larger screen.
The app is now free, with a premium subscription that costs $4.99/month or $39.99/year. If you live and die by your calendar as I do, I think the cost is well worth it. This support page on the Flexibits website breaks the features down, and while the free version is totally usable, a bunch of the cool stuff like the ability to combine duplicate events, use the app as a full Todoist client and a feature to propose multiple times when scheduling are all part of the premium level.
As Fantastical was a paid app before, there’s a way forward for previous customers, as explained by Chris Bowler on The Sweet Setup:
If you are a current Fantastical 2 user but not a fan of the switch to subscription-based pricing, Fantastical 3 actually installs over Fantastical 2 and gives you access to every feature you previously had. That means that you can still do things like access the different views using the new UI and can add invitees to calendar events. But if you want access to new features like templates and meeting proposals, you’ll need to upgrade to Fantastical Premium.
To power a bunch of this, Fantastical 3 now syncs directly with a bunch of cloud providers including Google, iCloud, Microsoft Exchange, Office 365 and more. You can use it as a client to see your local calendars already on your device, but in my testing, the direct sync seems faster and more solid. Plus, you can use Sign in with Apple, which is neat.
All in all, I’m impressed with this release, and Fantastical 3 has been on the home screen of my iPhone and iPad for a while, as well as the Dock on my Macs. Go check it out.
For bonus points, check out some other coverage of the release:
- Federico’s review on MacStories
- Jason’s review on Six Colors
- David Sparks’ free video Field Guide covering the app in depth.