Fantastical – a nice alternative calendar for the Mac

I recently came across a calendar application called Fantastical which quickly became my default calendar application. After I finished the 14 day trial, there was no doubt in my mind that this was an application that I needed to purchase so I gladly forked over the $20. It is put out by a company called Flexbits and it works with both Apple’s Calendar and Outlook (I sync my Calendar with Google so it also includes my Google calendars).

Fantastical sits quietly in the menubar until you need it and can be launched by a keystroke shortcut. What I like about the application, is that you enter your appointment info in one box using every day language. For instance, you could type:

Dinner with mom on Wednesday at 6:00 at the Olive Garden

As you type, the details fill in automatically, allowing you to change any of the information, if need be.

The calendar also displays your reminders and all of your appointments for the next several days. If you wish, you can customize Fantastical to show fewer or more events.

Another feature I like is that the search function looks through your entire calendar, making it quick to find specific entries. The calendar is also easy to navigate. Press the right or left arrow keys to navigate by month. To navigate by day, hold down the Shift key and press the right or left arrow keys. To navigate by week, hold down the Shift key and press the down arrow or the up arrow.

Other handy keyboard shortcuts include:

Command + F: Find
Command + N: New Event
Command + T: Go to Today
Command + E: Edit Item
Command + Delete: Delete item
Command + ,: Preferences
Control + Option + Spacebar – Launch Fantastical (customizable in preferences)

If you’re looking for an alternative to Apple’s Calendar application, you may want to take Fantastical for a test drive. It has already found an important place in my own workflow.

Check out Fantastical at the App store for the Mac, iPhone or iPad.