We’ve all been patiently waiting since June, and today the wait is over! iOS 18 has been released to the public and it’s time to experience all the fun new features Apple has added this year.

Customization plays a big part in iOS 18, and we’ve focused on bringing those options to everyone’s favorite calendar and contacts apps.

As always, we work hard here at Flexibits to have new features available on day 1, so let’s explore the iOS 18 upgrades in our latest releases Fantastical 3.9 and Cardhop 2.3!

Apple Watch Update (The Sequel)

Last year with the release of watchOS 10 we completely refreshed the Fantastical Apple Watch app and added three Smart Stack widgets for you to choose from.

With watchOS 11 we are keeping the party going by adding support for Live Activities and showing those in your Smart Stack. Live Activities on the Watch will be mirrored from the iPhone, and tapping on the Live Activity will launch the Fantastical Watch app taking you straight to the event details.

We’ve also introduced a new complication that shows your schedule for the day. The Today’s Schedule complication combines 3 options in 1 to show you the title of your next upcoming event, along with the number of remaining events and tasks for the current day.

Each item in the complication is tappable and will immediately take you to the corresponding view in the watch app. This complication can be used on your Watch face, or in your Smart Stack, giving you a quick and easy way to keep track of your day!

You might notice that we also made one small layout change this year. The ellipsis toolbar button that allows you to adjust your views in the app has been moved to the lower right corner, and in its previous location in the upper left corner we’ve added a dedicated button for creating new items.

We rounded out the Fantastical Apple Watch update with a few small tweaks including:

  • Event details now display individual attendees and their responses.
  • The Up Next view and the Timeline complication now display checkmarks for tasks instead of the previous simple dot.
  • Tapping on the Remaining Items complication will take you directly to the appropriate view in the Fantastical Apple Watch app.

Your Home Screen, your rules

Ready to start really customizing the home screen look and layout on your iPhone and iPad?

All of Fantastical and Cardhop’s icons take advantage of the new options to make things larger and customize the tint. Whether you are looking for light mode, dark mode, or bright purple tinted icons, we’ve got you covered!

And we didn’t stop with just the icons, our widgets for both apps are also compatible with the tint you prefer, as well.

More control for your . . . Controls

You now have the ability to add both Fantastical and Cardhop app controls to your Control Center and Lock Screen on the iPhone and iPad, and we decided to give you several items to choose from for each app.

There’s 3 available options for Fantastical:

  • Today’s Schedule
  • Create Event
  • Search in Fantastical

And there’s 3 available options for Cardhop:

  • Add Contact
  • Scan Card
  • Search

All the above options are available for the Action Button on your iPhone, too!

Bonus Feature 😁

By now you should know we don’t just stop with the new features Apple has added when it comes to our updates. We always like to throw in a little something extra, and this time it’s the ability to quickly hop through occurrences of a repeating event in Fantastical on iOS.

Now you can quickly find one specific event in a series by opening the event and tapping the option for Repeats every month. This will open a pop up that lets you scroll through the occurrences to find the exact one you need.

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That’s all of the big features that are available for you to try in this release, but there are plenty of small fixes and additions that weren’t mentioned. If you have any questions about the new features listed above, or something that wasn’t covered here, just reach out to our team for more info. See you soon!