Best Calendar App For Mac

The best calendar app for Mac is one that gets out of the way, is focused on your tasks at hand and not a lot of other features. It’s also one that lets you do things quickly and efficiently, without wasting time.

Best Calendar App For Mac

While time seems to have melted into one giant glob during 2020, believe it or not, we still have schedules to keep — gasp. That’s why having a digital calendar on your Mac with macOS Monterey can be a lifesaver because you can keep track of all of your Zoom or Google Meet meetings, telemedicine appointments, virtual hangouts with friends and family, and other things. Maybe one day we can get back to having physical appointments and meetings, but either way, life gets hectic, and keeping track of everything can be tedious. Here are some of the best calendar apps for Mac that we love.

Best calendar apps for Mac:

• Fantastical
• BusyCal
• Calendars
• Informant
• InstaCal – Menu Bar Calendar
• Mini Calendar
• Calendar 366 II

Best calendar apps for Mac: Fantastical

Fantastical has been around for several years now, and even though it has switched to a subscription model, it remains the favorite calendar app for many of us here at iMore.

With Fantastical, you are getting a fully functional desktop app that also has a menubar version for quick access. You can customize your views for daily, weekly, monthly, and even yearly, and your agenda of events appear in the sidebar as well. If you are running multiple calendars at once, things can get gnarly — Fantastical lets you customize sets of calendars to view at once, and they can even be location-based, so things don’t get too crazy when viewing. For example, you can have work calendars viewable while you’re at work, but personal ones when you’re at home.

The natural language input is also top-notch, as the app easily understands and fills out all of the appropriate fields while you type out something as simple as “Have lunch with Mom at In-N-Out on Tuesday at 2 p.m.”

While Fantastical does have a subscription model now, previous users of Fantastical 2 get most of the features unlocked, so it’s still very functional. If you’re new to Fantastical, there is a trial to test it out to see if you like it before deciding on a subscription.

Fantastical – Calendar & Tasks

Fantastical has a beautiful interface that’s easy to use with plenty of robust features.

• Free with IAP at App Store

Best calendar apps for Mac: BusyCal

Another great option is BusyCal. This app automatically syncs up with any accounts that you’re using with the Mail app on Mac, and everything will be up-to-date. The design of the app itself is simple and clean, but there are plenty of powerful features as well. One of those is the Smart Filter, which lets you create rules for what events are shown. For example, you can set a filter to only show birthdays or repeating events. BusyCal also lets you have multiple Smart Filters set up at once, making it easier to organize your hectic calendar.

Other features of BusyCal include a menubar app, travel time, natural language input, and a ton of customization options including font face, size, colors, time format, and much more. If you don’t like Fantastical’s subscription model, BusyCal and its one-time cost is an excellent alternative to consider.

BusyCal

BusyCal packs in a ton of useful features and is highly customizable. It also has a single, one-time cost.

• Free with IAP at App Store

Best calendar apps for Mac: Calendars

If you are satisfied with the default Calendar app on Mac, but just want a companion app to go with it in the menubar, then Calendars is worth a look. This free app lives in your menubar, acting as a viewer for the calendars that you’ve set up in Calendar. It serves as a quick way to see your schedule and agenda in a single glance, so you aren’t able to add new events from this app. There is an optional subscription that gives you more features, like adding Google Calendar accounts and backgrounds.

Calendars by Qbix, Inc.

Calendars lives in your menubar and serve as a companion to the default Calendar app.

• Free with IAP at App Store

Best calendar apps for Mac: Informant

Need your calendar app to be more than just a calendar? Then Informant is the one you’re looking for. This powerful app rolls your calendar, task manager, and notes into one, giving you everything you need in a single glance. The task manager element of Informant is also very flexible, working with you, whether it’s GTD, Franklin Covey, or a simple and basic task list. Informant also has support for multiple filters, so you can easily switch and access the important stuff whenever you need to.

Informant

Informant rolls your Calendar, task manager, and Notes app into one.

• $50 at App Store

Best calendar apps for Mac: InstaCal – Menu Bar Calendar

If you want your calendar to live in your menubar, but need a bit more functionality than Calendars, then InstaCal is worth considering. This app also lives in your menubar, so it’s not a full-blown app like the others. However, it keeps your calendar a click away, so you can view your events, your agenda, and even tasks, as well as have the functionality of adding new events and tasks directly. InstaCal works with any of the calendars that you already have set up in Calendar, or you can manually add unlimited accounts from Google, Office 365, and Outlook. It also has Dark Mode support, customization options, and more.

InstaCal – Menu Bar Calendar

InstaCal lives in your menubar but still gives you plenty of functionality, including the ability to add events and tasks.

• $5 at App Store

Best calendar apps for Mac: Mini Calendar

Do you want a calendar app that is simple and lightweight? Mini Calendar fits the bill perfectly. It gives you access to your calendars in three ways: on the desktop, from the Dock, and from the menubar. When it’s on the desktop, it is always on and sits above the wallpaper. From the Dock, you just need to click on the icon and it will bring up the calendar as a popup. Mini Calendar is configurable in terms of color, shortcut keys, and it can show you sunrise and sunset times too. It’s just a light and fast way to get to your calendar when you need to.

Mini Calendar

Mini Calendar is a lightweight calendar app that you can access from your desktop, Dock, or menubar.

• Free at App Store

Best calendar apps for Mac: Calendar 366 II

Rounding out the list is Calendar 366 II, which is another menubar calendar app. However, it’s one of the more fully-featured ones, which is quite impressive. With Calendar 366 II, you get full access to your calendar and reminders right from your menubar, and you can change the view to year, month, week, day, agenda, or even list. It has eight themes for light and dark modes, custom colors, calendar sets, custom font sizes, Spotlight integration, travel time, Alfred and LaunchBar support, and so much more. To pack all of the features of a full-on application into just the menubar is pretty amazing, and the cost of the app is not too much either, all things considered.

Calendar 366 II

Calendar 366 II is one of the most feature-packed menubar calendar apps there is.

• $15 at App Store

best calendar app for iphone

The 6 best calendar apps for iPhone

• Apple Calendar for a simple, free iPhone calendar
• Any.do for keeping your tasks and calendar together
• Fantastical for power users
• Google Calendar for Gmail and Google users
• Microsoft Outlook for keeping your work email and calendar together
• Timepage for a beautiful design and function

Best simple iPhone calendar

Apple Calendar

The pre-installed calendar app on your iPhone showcases all the simple views, ease of use, and design that Apple is known for. Tap the month or year in the top-left corner to zoom out from day to month to year. Tap Today in the bottom-left corner to return to today. It all makes sense.

It isn’t designed to be pretty—it’s designed to be seamless on iPhone, and it is. It’s the perfect base calendar app with all the no-nonsense features you need and nothing you don’t. Sync your other calendars to add and edit all your events, and create and share iCloud calendars with a few taps. Apple Calendar automatically syncs with Maps to offer you intelligent alerts that take travel time and current traffic into account and notify you when it’s time to leave.

Apple Calendar syncs with other calendars like Google and Outlook, so you can bring work and home life together. Sync as many calendars as you need, and the native calendar app will show all your events.  It’s as easy as going into your settings, selecting Calendar > Accounts, and logging in to your email. Choose from five widget options for a bird’s-eye view of your schedule on your home screen and Today view.

Plus, you can even delegate control of any of your calendars—to an assistant, for example—by tapping Calendars > Delegate Calendar and selecting the calendar you want to delegate.

Apple Calendar Price: Free

Best iOS calendar and to-do list combined

Any.do

If your iPhone calendar app is a crucial part of your productivity workflow, Any.do is a great option. The app combines task management and calendar features that work seamlessly together—so you can keep track of all the demands on your time in one central place.

Previously packaged as a separate app called Cal before being rolled into Any.do, the app offers thoughtful and functional calendar features like recurring events, location-based reminders, and natural language event creation. One of our favorite features is Moment, a guided rundown of the day’s events and tasks to help prioritize and schedule your day.

Any.do offers four different view options for your calendar—agenda, day, 3-day, and week—and you can toggle the full month view open and closed by tapping the caret beneath the month. Head to settings to choose your preferred home screen for the app, opening up to Tasks, Calendar, or whichever you viewed last. Choose from eight different widget options to add a bird’s-eye view of tasks, calendar events, or both to your home screen and Today view.

Like all the apps on our list, Any.do works with Siri. It’s also compatible with Amazon Alexa, allowing you to create events and tasks from a number of devices.

Plus, Any.do integrates with Zapier, so you can seamlessly connect Any.do tasks with your favorite project manager, for example, or create new tasks based on calendar triggers.

Any.do Price: Free; upgrade to Premium for $2.99–$5.99 per month to get advanced recurring reminders, location reminders, and unlimited use of the daily planner feature

Best all-around iPhone calendar app for power users

Fantastical

Fantastical is one of those apps that makes it onto almost every “best of” list—and it more than lives up to the hype. The Fantastical app marries attractive, intuitive design with the robust features power users need. It’s all the simplicity of your native Apple Calendar, but with more advanced features.

The default DayTicker view is clean and succinct. Colorful bars along the top help you visualize multi-day and overlapping events and judge how busy a given day is with a glance. Colors show which calendar an event belongs to—in the screenshot, purple events are on my personal calendar and blue ones are on a subscribed calendar for Seattle Kraken hockey games. Pull down from the top to view the entire month.

Natural language event creation is where Fantastical really sets itself apart: as you type, the app shows how your words “fall” into the event details below, so you don’t have to double-check the details after the fact like you do with other apps that have natural language capabilities. (Here’s what that looks like on my phone.)

On top of that, Fantastical offers a whopping 14 different widgets for your home screen and Today view.

Fantastical Price: Free; upgrade to Premium for $4.99/month or $39.99/year to get additional productivity, scheduling, and collaboration features

Best iPhone calendar app for Gmail and Google users

Google Calendar

If you use the Google Calendar web app, you’ll feel right at home in the iPhone app. It goes without saying that the calendar integrates seamlessly with the entire suite of Google products. Automatically add events—like flight reservations or out-of-office settings—from Gmail into your calendar. And when you start typing a location, the app will offer suggestions from Google Maps.

Tap the multicolored + in the bottom-right, and you can choose to create a new out of office, goal, reminder, or (the default) event. Invite guests, add web conferencing details, or attach files from Google Drive right from the event creation screen.

One of my favorite features in Google Calendar on iPhone is event illustrations. Google uses info from the event details to come up with a visual for the event—like an image of food for events that include “dinner.” If you look at the far right screenshot above, you’ll see how the app featured an image of the location for the hockey game on my schedule. It’s a fun (and helpful) way to see what’s coming up on your schedule.

Google Calendar offers five different view options (Schedule, Day, 3 Day, Week, and Month), and switching between them is as simple as tapping the top-left menu and selecting the view you want to see. I’m partial to the Schedule view (middle screenshot above), which is the right combo of detail and bird’s-eye view. You can also enable and choose from three widgets to view upcoming events on your home screen and Today view.

Google Calendar also integrates with Zapier, which means you can automatically do things like adding new Google Calendar events to your to-do list app or syncing your time tracking app with your calendar.

Google Calendar Price: Free

Best iPhone calendar for keeping your work email and calendar in one place

Microsoft Outlook Calendar

Microsoft Outlook is geared toward Windows users, but its calendar app is more than capable of being your go-to iPhone calendar. Once an app you’d only use if your company told you to, Microsoft has upped their design game—today’s Outlook app is as simple and easy to use as the best iPhone calendar apps.

The design offers several view options (Agenda, Day, 3 Day, and month): at the top of your screen, tap the icon on the right to switch views. On Agenda and Day views, the default shows you a one-week block—pull down on that week to see and scroll through months.

If your company already uses Outlook email, it’s the best calendar option to bring email, schedule, and contacts together in one place—making it a no-brainer download. On top of that, you can sync other calendars you may use with Outlook, so it’s easy to centralize your work and personal schedule in one app. Your Outlook calendar is automatically shared with those across your company, too.

Outlook comes with your choice of six widgets for your home screen and Today view. Plus, thanks to Microsoft Bing, you can even subscribe to your pick of public calendars to add your favorite professional sports teams or TV schedules to your calendar.

Connect Outlook with Zapier to automate tasks like adding new events into your to-do list or project management app and syncing time blocks from your scheduling tool.

Microsoft Outlook Calendar Price: Free to use with existing email and calendar accounts

Best iPhone calendar app for beautiful design and function

Timepage

Moleskine’s Timepage app is easily customizable when it comes to looks: you have your choice of 25 color themes (including black and white). The app only offers three main view options. It opens in Agenda view; swipe right to view the month and a roundup of today’s events. Tap to expand the day’s schedule or tap and hold individual events to preview. Swipe left again to return to your agenda.

But Timepage is more than a pretty face. Unique features like a smart heatmap (shown in the top-left screenshot above) make scheduling a breeze, showing you which days are jam-packed or wide open. The more opaque the circle around a date is, the more events you have scheduled for that day. You can even hold and drag the colored circles at the bottom of the screen to filter the heatmap for each calendar.

Swipe right to fine-tune your settings or turn on Smart Alerts from the menu to get notified when it starts to rain, when it’s time to leave, or to receive a daily briefing of your upcoming schedule. You’ll also find your RSVP list here, which shows any pending event invitations you need to respond to.

The app is fully compatible with Siri, and offers a whopping 17 widgets to choose from, so you can manage and view your calendar without even opening the app. It’s these unique features and customizability that convinced me to switch to Timepage for my own personal use.

The app also makes quick work of adding events by using natural language processing. It’s not as seamless as Fantastical, but this is a relatively new feature for Timepage, so we can expect to see it get even better.

Timepage Price: $1.99/month or $11.99/year; or choose the Moleskine Studio bundle (which also includes Moleskine’s to-do list and notebook apps) for $19.99/year

Conclusion

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