It’s time for another app update and another blog post! Fantastical 2.2.2 is now available and is a recommended update. If you purchased Fantastical from the Mac App Store you can update by opening the App Store app. If you downloaded Fantastical directly from our website you can update by selecting Check for Updates from the Fantastical menu in the app.

Our last blog post discussed Fantastical 2.2’s new Exchange features. But if you’re a Google Calendar devotee we have some nice surprises for you too! This post will highlight some enhancements that Google Calendar users will appreciate. Enjoy!

Push updates

Push updates are now implemented in Fantastical, which means that changes made on Google Calendar’s website or another Google-connected device will show up in Fantastical within a few seconds. Push is automatically enabled in 2.2, but if it’s not working you can check the setting by going to Preferences > Accounts > your Google Account and making sure that Refresh interval is set to ‘Push’.

Contact lookup

If you have a long list of work-related contacts, you may not want them to appear in your Mac’s Contacts app but still need them to be accessible in Fantastical. Fantastical 2.2 will now search Google Contacts directly when adding invitees to events.

Just enable the ‘Enable Contact Search’ button in Preferences > Accounts and you’ll see your Google Contacts appear when adding invitees.

Google Hangout links

Here’s one of our most popular requests — if not the most popular! Google Hangout links are now integrated directly into an event’s details. If you use Google Hangouts with your contacts, this is a convenient way to quickly join Hangout.

Resource scheduling for Google Apps

Our latest 2.2.2 update now allows looking up and scheduling meeting rooms on Google Apps. When creating an event, simply type the name of the room in the location field and a list of matching rooms will be shown. You’ll notice either a check or a cross next to the name of the room, indicating whether that room is available at the time of your event. Finish creating the event and the room will be booked for you.

Please note that resource scheduling requires API access to be enabled by your Google Apps administrator. API access is enabled by default, but if your rooms are not appearing you may need to ask your Google Apps administrator to enable the setting.

We hope that our Google users will enjoy these enhancements, and we thank you again for your continued support of Fantastical! We have more to talk about in Fantastical 2.2, so stay tuned for our next post about Fantastical’s powerful new Availability view. See you next time!