We’re back with a dive into another new feature in Fantastical 2.2! If you haven’t done so already, make sure that you’re up to date and running Fantastical 2.2.4. If you purchased Fantastical from the Mac App Store you can update via the Mac App Store’s Updates tab. If you downloaded Fantastical directly from our store, simply select Check for Updates from the Fantastical menu in the upper-left of the menu bar.

In this blog post we’re going to be taking a look at Fantastical’s powerful Availability view.

Availability is a convenient, time-saving tool that helps you schedule event times with invitees and works with most major calendar services (with the exception of iCloud). Availability will save a lot of hassle when trying to schedule events with multiple invitees, leaving you free to focus on preparing for your event.

Quickly viewing invitee availability

As soon as you start adding invitees, you’ll notice a small icon next to their name. This icon denotes the invitee’s availability via a tick, cross or question mark, and allows you to quickly glance at your list of invitees to see who’s free at the planned time of your event.

Checking invitee availability in detail

By clicking Check Availability you can dive a bit deeper into your invitees’ calendars and view a timeline of their schedules around the time of your planned event. If there looks like there’s an available slot close to the original time of your event, simply drag and drop your event into the available slot and Fantastical will automatically update the event time and the invitee availability icons accordingly. You can also set Availability to display an all-day view or just working hours, and switch between days by using the arrow buttons at the top of the Availability view.

Expanding the Availability window

If you have a larger list of invitees, it might be a little cumbersome to try and view everyone’s schedules in the event creation window. In this case, click the pop-out window icon in the upper right of the Availability section, and Availability will become its own window that can be resized or maximized as you like.

Auto-scheduling an event time

It can often be a nightmare to try and coordinate everyone’s schedules, especially if you’re trying to manage a large invitee list! Thankfully, Availability has a Next Available Time button that can be selected to have Fantastical automatically find the next free slot that you and your invitees have in your schedules. Pretty convenient, right?

Cancelling events with a message

After successfully scheduling a time to meet, something may come up that requires the meeting to be cancelled. Due to this possibility, deleting an event will provide an option to send a message to your invitees, explaining your reason for canceling the event and hopefully reducing the amount of follow-up email you receive if an important meeting has to be postponed.

If you’d like to see Availability in action, please be sure to watch our video walkthrough.

We hope you enjoy getting to grips with Availability and that it saves you a significant amount of time when scheduling your events! We still have a few more 2.2 features to cover in this series of blog posts, and next time we’ll be discussing printing. Thanks for reading and we hope you’re enjoying Fantastical!

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

One of our most popular requests — if not the most popular! — Google Hangout links are 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!

First things first, Fantastical 2.2.1 is now available and is a recommended update. If you purchased Fantastical on 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.

With that out of the way, it’s time to start digging into Fantastical 2.2 for Mac’s new features! Fantastical’s new Exchange support allows it access to more of Exchange’s functionality. This post will detail some of these features and how they work in Fantastical 2.2.

In-app account management

In a change from older versions of Fantastical, you now need to sign into Exchange directly in Fantastical’s Preferences instead of via Apple’s Calendar app. This is a significantly more straightforward process, but just in case you’re not familiar with adding calendar accounts in this manner please take a look at our Help Book for full details.

Push updates

Having calendars refresh in the background at set intervals is a necessary but less-than-ideal solution for many services. As of 2.2, any changes you make to your Exchange calendars in Fantastical will be instantly sent to the Exchange service and vice versa — no refreshing necessary! Push updates are automatically enabled if you connect to Exchange 2010 or later, or Office 365.

Responding to invitations

Earlier versions of Fantastical were unable to respond to invitations in the same manner that iCloud, Google Calendar and other services were. Now, you can use Fantastical allows you to respond to Exchange invitations directly in the app.

Global Address List (GAL) lookup

GAL contains details of every group, user and contact within an organisation. Previously, contacts had to be added to OS X’s Contacts app for them to be found by Fantastical. Fantastical 2.2 will now automatically search your organization’s GAL. This allows you to quickly find your colleagues from the invitee field without having to manage them in your Contacts app!

Meeting room and resource scheduling lookup

Searching for meeting rooms is now possible directly from Fantastical 2.2. 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 see 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.

Support for shared and delegated calendars

Shared and delegated calendars are one of the most convenient ways to organize personal appointments with friends and family, and the corporate world practically requires them to function efficiently. With Fantastical 2.2 you can manage your shared and delegated directly in Fantastical. Open your Accounts preferences, select your Exchange account, then click Manage Delegates to add or remove delegated calendars.

Categories

Fantastical has always allowed you to change the color of your calendars, but Exchange categories were not supported. In version 2.2, Exchange categories can now be added directly to events created in Fantastical.

Moving Exchange events to other calendar services

It has always been possible to move events across CalDAV accounts — such as from iCloud to Google Calendar — but Exchange events were locked to a single account. Now, events created in Exchange can be freely moved between services without issue, affording you a greater deal of flexibility when managing your events. Right-click an event and choose whichever calendar you’d like your Exchange event to be assigned to.

We hope our Exchange customers find that these new features greatly enhance Fantastical! As always, please feel free to send us a message and leave us your feedback. Oh, and if you’re a Google Apps user and are feeling a little envious of these new Exchange-based features, stay tuned. We have a few surprises for you in our next post!

One year ago we released Fantastical 2 for Mac. During the past year, Fantastical 2 won the coveted Apple Design Award and Apple called Fantastical 2 “…a meticulously designed, full-featured calendaring app…”

Today, we’re celebrating Fantastical 2’s birthday by shipping the biggest update in Flexibits history. Version 2.2 is here and it’s a massive (and free!) update that we think you’re going to love.

The headlining new feature in version 2.2 is native Exchange support. Previously, Fantastical’s Exchange implementation was dependent upon Apple’s built-in calendar support. While this allowed Exchange accounts to work with Fantastical, there were a number of features it couldn’t support. With our own Exchange implementation, these limitations are no more. Here are some of the Exchange features that Fantastical now supports:

– Responding to invitations
– Invitee availability lookup
– Meeting room and resource scheduling and lookup
– Categories
– Global Address List lookup
– Support for shared and delegated calendars
– Moving events from other calendar services to your Exchange calendars and vice versa
– Push updates (for Exchange Server 2013 and Office 365)

Also new in version 2.2 is our spiffy invitee availability view. When using a compatible service — such as Google or Exchange — you’ll be able to see your invitees’ availability and let Fantastical instantly schedule a meeting for when you’re all free, saving you the time of coordinating with multiple people. (iCloud does not support availability.)

Believe it or not, our next feature is actually one of our most requested: printing. Fantastical now offers the ability to print your calendars and reminder lists in a variety of different views and with multiple, detailed configuration options. We know a lot of you have been asking for this for quite a while now, but we wanted to make sure we got this right.

Finally, here’s the crazy long list of other additions and improvements in version 2.2:

– iCloud shared calendar notifications
– Invitee response notifications when someone accepts or declines your invitation
– Google Hangout links are now shown with Google Apps accounts
– Push for Google accounts shows changes immediately
– Receive suggestions from Google Contacts when adding invitees
– Location suggestions now appear as you type in sentences for new events
– Multiple selection (move and delete multiple items at once)
– Drag and drop the preview to reschedule events and reminders as you’re creating them
– Second time line with custom time zone for day and week views (Thanks, Hamid!)
– Added preference to start month view on the current week
– Selected date is now highlighted in week and month views
– Improved year view makes it easier to see very busy days
– Faster search when using calendars with large numbers of recurring events
– Importing events from .ics files will now add default alerts to the imported events
– Set the refresh rate of individual subscribed calendars
– Incorrect password errors are no longer persistent
– Use Apple Mail or Airmail to send event invitations and responses when using a CalDAV server that doesn’t support server-side invitations
– Mail events using Airmail when it is set as your default email reader
– General performance improvements and fixes throughout the app

A massive update, indeed.

In the coming weeks we’ll have additional posts that will go into greater detail about version 2.2’s new features — so stay tuned.

Even though we stopped selling Fantastical 1 for Mac when we launched Fantastical 2 for Mac back in March, support has continued for existing users. We have been tracking the top issues and today we’re happy to announce Fantastical 1.3.19 for Mac.

This will be the final update for Fantastical 1 and support for Fantastical 1 for Mac has now ended. After more than four years of free updates and support, it’s time to focus our efforts, energy, and resources on Fantastical 2.

Fantastical 1 will continue to work and will not expire. But we strongly recommend that you upgrade to Fantastical 2 for Mac. It has many new features and a brand new design that we think you’re going to love. And, as you’ve come to expect from us, we have a lot more planned for the future.

If you want to update to Fantastical 1.3.19 for Mac and bought directly from us, open Preferences > Update and click “Check for Update…”.

If you bought via the Mac App Store, quit Fantastical, move it to the Trash, then empty the Trash. Next, click this link to open the Purchases tab: macappstore://showPurchasesPage?scan=true. Click the Install button next to Fantastical in the Purchases tab and it will install Fantastical 1.3.19.

Something else important: Fantastical 2 for Mac is currently 20% off as a way to give Fantastical 1 users a discount. Because the Mac App Store does not allow upgrades, this was our way of offering a discount to Fantastical 1 users. We’ve extended the launch sale a few times, but all good things must come to an end. The Fantastical 2 for Mac launch sale will end on January 10 and the price will increase to US$49.99.

As always, thank you for your support of Flexibits. We hope you continue to enjoy our apps as much as we enjoy making them!

Remember that blog post we wrote 2 weeks ago? Well, you can ignore it because all of the updates are now available! 🙂

Fantastical 2.5 for iPad and Fantastical 2.5 for iPhone (and Apple Watch) are both here and include many new features plus full support for iOS 9 and watchOS 2.

And don’t forget about our other update, Fantastical 2.1 for Mac, which adds new features and provides full support for OS X El Capitan.

We hope you enjoy the updates!

Let’s get right to it. We just shipped our first major update for Fantastical 2 for Mac, version 2.1. This significant update provides full support for OS X El Capitan and also adds your most requested features and fixes. We’re really proud of this update and hope you will enjoy it.

Moving onto iOS 9 and watchOS 2. We’ve been hearing from a lot of you and we can tell you’re excited about what’s coming for iOS 9 and watchOS 2. We are too! We’re still working on the updates, but we want to give some sort of status update so you won’t go too mad while waiting!

Fantastical 2.5 for iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch are receiving their final changes and bug fixes. We’re almost there and we hope to have everything sent to Apple within the next week. Of course we’re talking about software, so this could slip based on what we’re able to accomplish in the next few days. But rest assured that they’re coming very soon.

We’re most excited about our 2.5 update for iPad update which brings support for iOS 9’s iPad multitasking, including Slide Over and Split View. It was a lot of work to implement, but we’re excited about the future of iPad productivity and 2.5 will make it even easier for you to be productive.

…and last but not least, for those of you who have been asking: Yes! Fantastical 2.5 for iPhone will include Complications for Apple Watch!

So, that’s it for now. Thanks so much for supporting Flexibits: your support enables us to make what we love, so we hope you love what we make. 🙂

Five years ago, we started working on Fantastical for Mac. It was an ambitious goal: to make calendaring fast and enjoyable. At that time, the calendar app for OS X was iCal and we found it really difficult to add new events and find existing ones. Fantastical for Mac was our solution to that problem. It provided a fast and easy way to add your events with a friendly and very accurate natural language parsing engine. Simply typing a sentence and getting an event added to your calendar made calendaring a breeze, as well as a lot more fun.

Over the past five years we’ve continued on our mission to improve calendaring. We added Reminders support into Fantastical, letting you seamlessly manage your events and reminders together. We also released Fantastical for iPhone back in 2012. In 2013, iOS 7 came along, we redesigned our iPhone app, and Fantastical 2 for iPhone was born. With its perfect 5-star review on the US App Store (as of the writing of this blog post anyway!), it’s clear that our users are enjoying our vision of improving calendaring.

In 2014, we released Fantastical 2 for iPad. Designed specifically for iPad, it introduced the Fantastical Dashboard, which made it easier than ever to keep track of a busy schedule on an iPad.

We’ve taken the lessons we’ve learned over the past few years and made what we think is the best version of Fantastical yet. Today, we’re introducing the next generation of Fantastical as we replace the app that started it all. Introducing Fantastical 2 for Mac. While we could write so much about it, we think it’s better if you go to the Fantastical 2 for Mac webpage, watch the video, and read about all of the new features.

We hope you’ll enjoy our next generation of Fantastical and more importantly, we hope it makes you even more productive than the original Fantastical did.

We also want to give prior users (hopefully that’s you!) a discount to say “thanks”, so we’re launching with a limited-time sale that will provide you with a 20% discount.

Finally, a huge thanks to everyone for your support throughout the years. We’re just two guys who make our living making apps, and your purchase allows us to continue making apps like Fantastical 2 for Mac. In other words, we couldn’t have done it without you. Thank you! 🙂

– Michael and Kent

We’ve been waiting a long time to announce this: Fantastical 2 for Mac will be available next week on March 25th!

If you’re thinking about purchasing Fantastical 1 and you use OS X Yosemite, please wait until next week. Fantastical 2 will be a completely separate app from Fantastical 1, so please don’t buy Fantastical 1.

In the meantime, we hope you enjoy our teaser and we hope you’re as excited for next week as we are.

Fantastical 2.2 for iPhone and Fantastical 2.2 for iPad are now out! Both apps feature a Today widget, Fantastical app extension, and interactive notifications. Best of all, both apps are a free update for existing users and can be updated via the App Store.

If you haven’t yet purchased either app, they’re both on sale for a limited-time. We hope you enjoy the new features and as always, thanks very much for your support! 🙂