Fantastical FAQ

All of your features from Fantastical 2 are automatically available and do not require a Flexibits Premium subscription. This only applies to existing Fantastical 2 customers.

Mac Users: In order for Fantastical to activate your prior purchase you need to download Fantastical from the same location you originally purchased it from (either directly from our website or the Mac App Store). Otherwise Fantastical will not unlock your Fantastical 2 features.

• If you purchased Fantastical 2 for Mac directly from our website (you have a Fantastical 2 license code) then you need to download Fantastical 3 directly from our website.

• If you are using the version from our website, you can enter your Fantastical 2 license by clicking 'Fantastical' in the Menu bar > Enter License. This will not work with the Mac App Store version.

• If you originally purchased Fantastical 2 for Mac on the Mac App Store then download Fantastical on the Mac App Store. Make sure you're signed in to the same Apple ID you used to make your previous purchase of Fantastical 2. Fantastical will automatically detect your previous purchase from the Mac App Store and make the existing features available.

Note: You will only receive the features that were available on the previous app you purchased. For example: Fantastical 2 for Mac had calendar sets, but Fantastical for iPhone did not.

There are also new features available for free to existing Fantastical 2 users:

• New: 3 day weather forecast (powered by AccuWeather)
• New: Full task support including Todoist and Google Tasks
• New: Parser autocomplete recommendations for invitees, locations, calendars, and task lists
• New for iOS: Apple Watch syncs over Wi-Fi and LTE, even if your phone isn't nearby (requires creating a free Flexibits account, but no Flexibits Premium subscription is needed)
• New for iOS and iPadOS: Improved invitee support. Add your calendar accounts directly to Fantastical and receive and respond to invitations as well as G Suite and Exchange invitee lookup
• New for macOS: Fantastical can now run in the background (receive notifications and sync even when Fantastical isn't running) and the mini window can now run over other full screen apps
• New for macOS: Support for attachments on Google Calendar events
• New for iPadOS: Full screen day, week, month, and year views
• New: Universal app on iOS and iPadOS - If you are an existing iPad user, please download the new Fantastical from the App Store and your existing features will be made available

The Holidays calendar is built directly into iOS and maintained by Apple, so there is no way to edit or adjust this calendar. However, it is possible to hide this calendar in Fantastical's Settings > Calendars.

You may want to subscribe to an alternative holiday calendar that you find more relevant. Once you've found an alternative holiday calendar online, open Fantastical's Settings > Calendars > + > Add Subscription. Paste the calendar feed URL here and the calendar will appear in Fantastical. If you are a Flexibits Premium subscriber you can also select Add Interesting Calendars to browse for a holiday calendar you find more relevant.

Apple requires app-specific passwords when using two-factor authentication with iCloud. Please see our documentation for more information on creating an app-specific password. You will not be able to connect to iCloud using Fantastical if you don't have two-factor authentication or two-step verification enabled.

Also, make sure you are using your Apple ID's primary email address. You can check which email address is your primary address at appleid.apple.com.

The Join Call button will only appear for your next, upcoming call. This has the advantage of reducing clutter in your calendar, and when future calls become due you can click the Join Call button to join these calls too.

First, please make sure your data appears as you'd expect in the Calendar and Reminders app. If it doesn't, make sure your accounts are configured correctly in the Passwords & Accounts section of the Settings app.

Once you've ensured your data is in the built-in apps, make sure you've allowed Fantastical to access your events and reminders. You can verify this in the Privacy section of the Settings app.

If your events or reminders still aren't showing up, try turning your phone off and back on. You can do this by holding down on the power button and sliding to turn off the phone.

Fantastical itself doesn't sync your data. Instead, your device connects to a service such as iCloud, Google Calendar, or Microsoft Exchange which stores your calendars. When Fantastical updates your calendar, your service will upload these changes and sync them to your other apps that are signed in to the service. These might include other versions of Fantastical, or any other app configured to use your calendar service.

If events or reminders aren't syncing between devices, take a look at our troubleshooting steps for syncing.

You probably need to enable your other calendars through Google's web interface. Go to https://www.google.com/calendar/iphoneselect and make sure that all of your calendars are enabled there. If you originally set up your Google account using Exchange and Google Sync, you can enable your calendars at https://support.google.com/a/answer/33322?hl=en#zippy=%2Cuse-outlook-to-manage-google-workspace-email-calendars-and-contacts.

Check to make sure your device is set to sync all of your events.

1. Open the Settings app
2. Tap the Calendar section
3. Make sure Sync is set to All Events

You can specify a calendar by using a slash (/) at the beginning or end of a sentence. Even easier, you only need the first character of a calendar. For example, /w or /h would create your event in the Work or Home calendars, respectively. You can be more specific if you have multiple calendars with similar names, such as /pe for Personal and /pr for Private.

New events will be set to all-day if you don't specify a time in your sentence. If you want a timed event, simply add the time to your sentence, such as "Meeting on Friday 3pm-5pm," and Fantastical will disable all-day mode and set the event times.

You can enable alerts for events and reminders in Fantastical's settings under the Advanced settings. If you enable this option, you'll also want to disable the alerts for the Calendar and Reminder app. You can do that in the Notification Center section of the Settings app.

You can show the current date in as a badge on Fantastical's app icon by going into Fantastical's settings and changing the App Badge Icon setting to Current Date. Apple does not allow developers to modify the icon directly, so this is the best workaround that is currently available.

Fantastical works with any calendar that you have set up on your device's Settings. If it appears in Calendar, it will also appear in Fantastical. If you haven't already added your calendars to your iOS device, you can do so by opening the Settings app, selecting Passwords & Accounts, and adding your accounts there. iOS supports syncing calendars over iCloud, Google, Yahoo, Exchange, and more.

Please see our privacy page for more information.

Fantastical on iOS and iPadOS can access your calendars in two ways: using the accounts you have added in iOS or iPadOS or directly via Fantastical, using accounts you need to add manually to the app.

Accessing your iOS or iPadOS calendars through Fantastical empowers you to start working right away. However, this convenience comes at a price: iOS restricts what third party apps can do, which results in a limited and slower experience. This is why we recommend you take a moment to add your calendar and task accounts directly to Fantastical.

To add your calendar and task accounts directly to Fantastical, proceed to Settings → Accounts → Add Account and select your account type.

The benefits of adding your accounts directly to Fantastical are as follows:

• Add invitees to events
• Hide events without deleting them
• Look up room and person availability on G Suite and Exchange
• Receive up-to-the-second push updates for Google, Exchange, and Microsoft 365 calendars
• Respond to incoming invitations
• Set custom event colors and Exchange categories
• Set Travel Time and Time to Leave notifications
• View shared calendar notifications on iCloud

Once you have added your accounts to Fantastical, we recommend you go to Settings → Accounts → Accounts from iOS and disable “Calendars from iOS” to avoid seeing duplicate events. We recommend you leave “Reminders from iOS” on, as calendar accounts do not sync the reminders you have set up in the Reminders app on your iPad or iPhone.

On the Mac, Fantastical does not access system calendars the way Fantastical does on iOS or iPadOS. It is therefore necessary on Mac to add calendar and task accounts manually in Preferences → Accounts before using the app.

Multi-device users, please note that, for privacy reasons, accounts must be added manually on each device. Fantastical will suggest accounts you have added on your other devices, but they still need to be added manually.

After adding your calendar accounts directly to Fantastical you can use the app to send invites. If you have already added your account but are still getting a message stating that you need to add your account before you can create an invite, you need to disable the 'Show Calendars from iOS' option.

Here's how to do that:

• Open Fantastical’s Settings
• Tap on Accounts
• Tap on Accounts from iOS
• Disable 'Show Calendars from iOS'

Yes, we do offer an educational or military discount!

Looking for an education or military discount for Flexibits Premium? Please contact us here and include proof of your educational institution, student status, or military service (such as a copy of your ID).

Yes, we have a team/enterprise plan that gives you a main Flexibits Account that is used to purchase and manage multiple subscriptions for your team. Once the account is activated, each user sets up their own Flexibits account and uses it to sign in to Fantastical and Cardhop on each of their devices, giving them full access to Flexibits Premium.

You can get started on our Teams information page. Once you create the main Flexibits Account that you will use to manage your team subscription, you can change the amount of seats at any time by going to your Billing page.

If you have any questions please contact us to discuss further.

Unfortunately, Apple does not allow third-party apps to change the order of reminders in the Reminders app or when using Reminders data. Due to this restriction, Fantastical sorts your reminders by due date. You can view all your reminders in a single list, or separately by each list. Fantastical also displays reminders in your schedule on the date they're due.

There are multiple ways to configure calendar alerts and Fantastical, iOS, and possibly your calendar service, all have their own alert settings. It could be that the unwanted alerts are being added by something outside of Fantastical. If you events have unwanted alerts, check the following:

1. Open iOS's Settings app > Mail, Contacts, Calendars > Default Alert Times. If default alert times are configured here, they may appear in addition to Fantastical's. Disable them if necessary.
2. If you're using Google Calendar with Fantastical, it's likely that Google Calendar has it's own default notifications configured. Go to www.google.com/calendar and click Settings > Calendars > Edit notifications (you'll have to do this separately for each calendar). Check whether you have any event or all-day notifications enabled. If you do, remove them to prevent the extra alerts from appearing in Fantastical.

Fantastical supports the following URL actions:

x-fantastical3://parse?sentence=[input] — Begin creating a new event with the given sentence. The notes parameter can also be added to specify a note with the event. For example: x-fantastical3://parse?sentence=sentence&notes=[your note]. The following parameters are also supported:

• add (set to 1 to automatically add an event - be careful!)
• reminder
• due (requires the format yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm)
• title
• location
• url
• notes
• start (requires the format yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm)
• end (requires the format yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm)
• allDay (can be 1 or 0)
• availability (options: free, busy, tentative, unavailable)
• private (can be 1 or 0, only applies to Exchange calendars).

Note that if you use the sentence parameter it will cause other parameters to be ignored.

x-fantastical3://show?date=yyyy-mm-dd — Jumps to the specified date. You can also use a natural language date such as "Tuesday" or "next month" and Fantastical will do its best to show the date.

Fantastical supports x-callback-url. x-callback-url can be used by using x-fantastical3://x-callback-url/parse?parameters or x-fantastical3://x-callback-url/show?parameters. The parameters x-source, x-success, x-cancel, and x-error are all supported. Refer to the x-callback-url site for more details.

Fantastical is also officially supported by Launch Center Pro.

Flexibits Premium offers a 14-day free trial period. During the 14-day free trial period, you have the option to cancel your subscription before it is billed.

• Subscriptions automatically renew unless you cancel them
• If you cancel, you can keep using the subscription until the next billing date

If you signed up for a free 14-day trial subscription and don't want to renew it, cancel it at least 24 hours before the trial ends.

If you are currently on a plan that has been billed, you are responsible for those charges. However, you can cancel future billing at any time. If you want to cancel, follow these instructions:

• If you activated your subscription directly from Flexibits, click or tap here for your Flexibits Account and select the Billing tab.
• If you activated your subscription from the App Store, click or tap here to manage your subscriptions.

Once a subscription charge has been billed, it is non-refundable.