The ULTIMATE Guide To Surviving In A Fantastical Fantasy Land. Mac OS
Download Fantastical - Calendar & Tasks for macOS 10.13.2 or later and enjoy it on your Mac. Fantastical is the multiple award-winning calendar app with powerful features including an intuitive natural language parsing, a full calendar window with day, week, month, and year views, an ultra-quick access mini window, tasks, time zone support. See Lists of video games for related lists. This is a comprehensive index of turn-based strategy video games, sorted chronologically.Information regarding date of release, developer, platform, setting and notability is provided when available. National Geographic has been publishing the best wall maps, travel maps, recreation maps, and atlases for more than a century. Explore more than 800 map titles below and get the maps you need. It is a fantasy of the political future, and like any such fantasy, serves its author as a magnifying device for an examination of the present.” Though the year 1984 now exists in the past, Orwell’s novel remains an urgent call for the individual willing to speak truth to power.
Looking to learn how to use Fantastical? Check out our complete Fantastical help.
I’ve upgraded from Fantastical 2. What happens to the features I paid for?
All of your features from Fantastical 2 are automatically available and do not require a Fantastical 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 Fantastical 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
Why aren't my calendars from the Mac Calendar app appearing in Fantastical?
If you enable Fantastical's local Calendar option (under 'Apps' in Preferences > Accounts) then you will be able to view Calendar's built-in Birthdays, Holidays and Siri calendars. You will not be able to view any local calendars you have created in the Calendars app yourself. Instead, please add your calendar service (iCloud, Google, Exchange etc.) directly to Fantastical's Preferences > Accounts.
I'm having trouble opening Fantastical. How do I reset Fantastical and start over?
Are you having trouble with Fantastical crashing on startup, accounts missing, or just want to quickly remove your accounts and start over again? Here's how to do that:
- Go to the Finder and press command-shift-G
- Copy and paste the following into the window that appears: ~/Library/Containers
- Move the folder named com.flexibits.fantastical2.mac to the Trash
- Go to the Finder and press command-shift-G
- Copy and paste the following into the window that appears: ~/Library/Group Containers
- Move the folder named 85C27NK92C.com.flexibits.fantastical2.mac to the Trash
- Restart your Mac
- Open Fantastical and set up your accounts again
It is important that you restart your Mac after deleting the folder, otherwise Fantastical will not be able to save your settings!
How do I use my Fantastical 2 license code in Fantastical 3?
If you previously purchased Fantastical 2 you can still use Fantastical 3 with all of your features from Fantastical 2 unlocked.
If you originally purchased Fantastical 2 from the Mac App Store then please be sure to download the latest version of Fantastical from the Mac App Store. If you originally purchased Fantastical 2 from the Flexibits Store and have a license code, download the latest version of Fantastical from our website. If you download Fantastical from the Mac App Store you will not be able to enter your license code.
Once you have Fantastical installed by downloading it from our website, enter your license code:
- Open Fantastical
- Click the Fantastical menu
- Select Enter Fantastical 2 License
- Enter your name and license code to unlock Fantastical
My iCloud Reminders lists are not syncing, and I see a yellow exclamation mark in Preferences > Calendars, what's happening?
This yellow exclamation mark means that you upgraded your Reminders database to the new format Apple is using for iOS 13. This makes iCloud reminders disappear entirely on Mac because it takes them off the iCloud CalDAV server and moves them to the new iCloud reminders format.
You must upgrade to iOS 13 and macOS Catalina to view upgraded Reminders. Also update to the latest version of Fantastical to view upgraded reminders.
Once you update to macOS Catalina you can enable reminders by doing the following:
- Open Fantastical Preferences
- Select the Accounts tab
- Select Reminders
- Make sure Show Reminders is checked
- Select the Calendars tab
- Make sure your lists are enabled in the Tasks section
Why does Fantastical not accept my iCloud password?
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 are using your Apple ID's primary email address. You can check which email address is your primary address at appleid.apple.com.
Why do I only see one Join Call button for conference calls when I have multiple calls scheduled?
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.
Why aren't my events or accounts appearing when I can see them in the macOS Calendar app?
If you use a service such as iCloud, Exchange, Google, or Yahoo, you probably need to add that account directly to Fantastical. Open the Preferences and click the Accounts tab to ensure your accounts have been added. If you have On My Mac calendars that you want to use with Fantastical, Fantastical needs access your Calendars and Reminders. Go to System Preferences > Security & Privacy > Privacy and ensure Fantastical as allowed to access your Calendars and Reminders. Fantastical will not work if you disallow access to either of these. You also must allow access to Contacts in order for event invitations to work.
Why isn't Fantastical syncing with my iPhone or iPad?
If you're having trouble getting your calendars to sync between devices, take a look at our troubleshooting steps for syncing.
Why can't I add new reminders to Fantastical?
You don't have an account that supports reminders added to Fantastical. This usually happens when there's no iCloud account set up. Open Fantastical's preferences, click the Accounts tab, and add your iCloud account.
How do I show or hide Fantastical's mini-calendar and event list?
Click View > Show/Hide Sidebar to toggle the sidebar's visibility. Keep the sidebar enabled to quickly refer to a mini-calendar for the selected month and a list of your upcoming events and reminders. Hide the sidebar to give your main calendar view more space.
How do I select a specific calendar when entering an event or searching?
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.
Notifications are not working or are displaying duplicate alerts. How do I fix this?
You need to disable the Apple Calendar and Reminder notifications and enable Fantastical's notifications. Please perform the following steps:
Open Fantastical's Preferences > Alerts. Make sure the notification options you want are enabled.
Open System Preferences > Notifications. Disable all Calendar and Reminders notification options, including setting the 'alert style' to 'none'.
Whilst in System Preferences > Notifications, make sure that all Fantastical notification options are enabled.
Why are my new events being set as all-day events?
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.
How do I disable all alerts on a specific calendar or reminder list?
All notifications and alerts for a calendar or reminder list can be disabled by doing the following:
- Open Fantastical's Calendar preferences
- Right-click on the calendar or reminder list you don't want to receive alerts on and select Get Info
- Check the box to Ignore Alerts
Why do I keep being logged out of Zoom?
If you are getting frequent prompts to log back into your Zoom account, then this is caused by a device limitation imposed by Zoom: Zoom can only be signed in to one computer and one mobile device at a time. Zoom's authentication system doesn't yet support multiple devices of the same type being able to sign in to the same account simultaneously. Thus, signing in to Zoom through Fantastical one one device will automatically log you out on another device of the same type. We have reported this limitation to Zoom.
For more information on this topic please refer to Zoom's help center
Are my accounts and events safe in Fantastical? Does Flexibits collect any personal data?
Please see our privacy page for more information.
Do you offer education or military discounts?
Yes, we offer a 20% educational or military discount! This discount is valid for 24 months of your Fantastical Premium subscription or for your order of Cardhop or Chatology.
Looking for an education discount for Fantastical Premium? Please contact us here and reply with proof of status.
Looking for an education discount for Cardhop or Chatology? Request a discount from us at the Flexibits Store and include proof of your educational institution, student status, or military service (such as a copy of your ID). You can contact us if you have any questions or have trouble receiving the discount.
Do you offer team/enterprise options for Fantastical Premium?
Yes, we have a team/enterprise option to purchase multiple subscriptions for your team that are managed by a single account. This is something we have to set up on our end, but you can have a single Flexibits account that manages billing for all user subscriptions for your team. You then have the option to add and remove other users on your own. Once the account is activated, each user sets up their own Flexibits account and uses it to sign in to Fantastical on each of their devices, giving them full access to Fantastical Premium.
We can also set you up with a test account if you want to try it out before committing to purchase. Please contact us to discuss further.
Where can I download Fantastical for old versions of macOS?
Fantastical 2.5.16 is the last version available for macOS El Capitan, Sierra, and High Sierra. You can download it here.
Fantastical 2.2.5 is the last version available for macOS Yosemite. You can download it here.
What is your subscription cancellation and refund policy?
Fantastical 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.
Where can I get information about the open source code that Fantastical uses?
Please see our acknowledgements page.
Have a comment, suggestion, or problem? We're here to help.
At a Glance
Expert’s Rating
Cons
Our Verdict
Chances are, you use Mac OS X’s iCal calendaring program, the calendaring component of Microsoft’s Entourage or Outlook program, or an online calendar for your scheduling needs. But how often do you actually require the huge calendar view? If you’re at all like me, most of the times you open your calendar program, it’s to see what events are coming up in the next few days or to quickly create an appointment. And given the convoluted interfaces of these programs, “quickly” is often not that quick.
Over the past few years, I’ve covered a number of programs that aim to take the place of a full-blown calendar program for these types of tasks, including Today, FlexCal, MagiCal, and MenuCalendarClock. Each still works well, but the newest kid on the block, Fantastical ($15; Mac App Store link) aims to combine some of the best features of these applications, along with some impressive event-creation technology, in an attractive and easy-to-use package.
When running, Fantastical appears in your menu bar as a small calendar icon displaying, by default, the current date (providing a much-requested OS X feature on its own). Unfortunately, unlike MagiCal, you can’t force Fantastical’s icon to appear at the far-right-hand side of the menu bar. I hope the developer, Flexibits, includes this capability in a future update.
Click the Fantastical icon, and a beautiful calendar appears that shows the current month, with the current day circled. Dates with events—based on your chosen calendar program—display a small bullet, and upcoming events are listed below the calendar. Click an event to view its full details.
Fantastical works with any calendar you’ve set up in iCal, Entourage, or Outlook, including MobileMe, Google Calendar, and Yahoo Calendar accounts. If you’re using iCal, iCal doesn’t even need to be running—Fantastical can communicate directly with CalDAV servers, which is a feature unique among similar utilities. Fantastical can also read from and write to calendars stored on your Mac; however, when using Outlook or Entourage, you’ll need to have that calendar program open, as Fantastical communicates with Outlook and Entourage using AppleScript. (Fantastical will automatically launch Outlook or Entourage if needed.)
Fantastical works with the excellent BusyCal, although with a couple limitations. The first is that new CalDAV events created in Fantastical won’t appear in BusyCal until BusyCal’s next scheduled sync, and vice versa—so there’s often a delay between the time you create or edit an event in one program and when that change appears in the other. Second, in order for Fantastical to “see” a new calendar, it must be added to, or created in, iCal—if you add a new calendar only to BusyCal, Fantastical won’t know it exists. The developers of Fantastical and BusyCal are working together to address these limitations.
(I tested Fantastical with MobileMe and Google calendars and with iCal and BusyCal.)
You can choose whether Fantastical’s upcoming-events list displays events for today; today and tomorrow; or the next 7, 14, or 31 days. Alternatively, you can choose to show the next five, 10, or 20 events, regardless of the time frame. If you have multiple calendars configured in your main calendar program, you can also choose which of those calendar’s events appear in Fantastical; events are color-coded to match their calendars.
You can, of course, browse to any date and click it to view that date’s events (along with however many subsequent events, or days’ worth of events, you’ve chosen). Alternatively, if you hover the cursor over a date, that day’s events are displayed in a tooltip. Fantastical’s search field lets you quickly find events that match your search string, displaying results in the events list, with the the closest upcoming event selected. I wish you could quickly jump to a specific month and year, but you’ll need to use the next- and previous-month buttons to browse instead.
Just as useful as Fantastical’s event display is that you can create new events without having to open your main calendar program. You can double-click a date to create a new event on that date, manually filling in the event’s details, but Fantastical’s standout feature is its natural-language event creation.
Click Fantastical’s icon, or press the new-event keyboard shortcut, and type (in English) a conversational description of the event; Fantastical parses your description to fill in the details accordingly. Press Return, and the new event is created, Fantastical closes, and you can get right back to work.
For example, if I type Macworld Staff Meeting Friday 10a SF office, Fantastical creates a new event with Macworld Staff Meeting as the subject, the upcoming Friday as the date, SF office as the location, and 10am to 11am as the time. (Events without an end time are assumed to last one hour; those without a time specified are assumed to be all-day events.) Vacation July 5-12 Maui creates an all-day event called Vacation, with the location as Maui, from July 5 through July 12. Fantastical deftly parses your descriptions, getting the details right the vast majority of the time. It even knows that “lunch” means noon.
A subtle but useful touch is Fantastical’s animation: As you type your event description, your letters and numbers float smoothly from the text-entry field to the appropriate fields in the event-details form. This makes for cute visuals, but it also lets you see exactly where Fantastical is getting each bit of information which, over time, helps you tailor your descriptions to Fantastical’s text-parsing logic.
If you include in your event description the name of an Address Book contact, Fantastical will let you add that person to the event’s invite list and, when the event is created, send them an invitation. (If a contact has multiple e-mail addresses, you’ll need to choose the address to which you want the invitation sent.) If you’re using Outlook, one limitation here is that you’ll need to manually confirm, from within Outlook, the sending of the invitations.
The Ultimate Guide To Surviving In A Fantastical Fantasy Land. Mac Os Download
New events are created in your default calendar, although you can choose a different calendar for any event. You can even include the calendar name in your event description, letting Fantastical set the calendar for you, by preceding the calendar name with /—for example, Vacation July 5-12 Maui /personal.
Unfortunately, you can’t edit or delete an event from within Fantastical; you’ll need to open the event in your calendar program, which you can do by double-clicking the event in Fantastical. (Flexibits says event editing is coming in a future update.)
One other feature I’d like to see is the capability to “tear off” Fantastical’s window and leave it on your screen—Second Gear’s Today can remain on the screen to display your schedule and tasks, which is a useful option. You can can lock Fantastical so it stays open in its current location, but this usually leaves Fantastical blocking other windows.
Fantastical doesn’t include every feature of every other calendaring add-on, but it’s a great package that handles—with an attractive interface and some impressive options—most of the things you use your “big” calendar program to do. And it makes it much easier and more convenient to quickly create new events. I’ve been using Fantastical for a while now (I started during the program’s beta period) and the only time I actually open iCal or BusyCal—my calendar programs of choice—is when I’m trying to find a time for an event and I need to see a detailed view of my schedule.
Note: Fantastical’s $15 introductory price is good until June 1; the standard price has yet to be determined.
Updated 5/20/2011, 8:30am, to clarify price and BusyCal-compatibility improvements.
The Ultimate Guide To Surviving In A Fantastical Fantasy Land. Mac Os 7
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