In the age of the iPhone, the art of managing a calendar is so efficient that we barely have to spend any time thinking about it. Like a high-priced personal assistant, our calendars work even when we’re not staying on top of them, dutifully pulling dates from emails and messages, and making sure we never forget a friend’s birthday. The smart, sophisticated iOS interface has turned calendar-keeping from an active, urgent responsibility into a passive one, and pretty much everyone who owns an iPhone now partakes in some form of day planning.

The best iOS calendars in the field don’t just look great, they offer their own unique concepts, distinguishing themselves by how they handle and present our data. Whether it’s event input, intelligence, social integration, or notifications, calendar app makers have added a wealth of features and functionality to the stock iOS calendar, to the point where Apple has even begun to borrow popular features just to keep up.

Is There A Calendar Program For Mac That I Can Add Events To

“This started back when I still had an office job and was using a Windows PC to program on,” meaning iCal and iCloud weren’t even options at the time. To add events to the other person.

Nowhere is this more evident than in the impending shutdown of Sunrise (which was scheduled to fold on Aug. 31, but Microsoft stayed its execution). When it launched back in 2012, it offered a refreshing spin on the classic calendar. With a variety of app integrations, it combined events from places like Facebook, Eventbrite, LinkedIn, and Foursquare to create a complete picture of your work and play commitments. Smart, slick, and stylish, its color-coded events and minimal monthly view set a new standard for digital day planning, showcasing the enormous potential of multitouch and the untapped power of iOS. A steady stream of updates made it one of the best and most popular calendars in the App Store until Microsoft bought it in 2015 and subsequently announced that Sunrise would shutter this week. The company delayed the move to bring more features to Microsoft's Outlook email app.

But while bits of Sunrise can be found in Outlook, its influence can be felt on calendars all over the App Store. Its sleek design and unique concept paved the way for generations of digital day planners, and dejected devotees won’t have to look far to find a worthy replacement. Here’s our list of favorites.

Winner: Fantastical

There are calendar apps, and then there is Fantastical ($5 for iPhone, $10 for iPad). What started as a Mac utility for die-hard date keepers has turned into the measuring stick for all other mobile calendar apps. From its perfectly-calibrated views to its downright pleasurable input screen, Fantastical doesn’t just live up to its lofty name—you’d be hard-pressed to find a flattering adjective that doesn’t apply.

Stay informed about special deals, the latest products, events, and more from Microsoft Store. Sign up By clicking sign up, I agree that I would like information, tips, and offers about Microsoft Store and other Microsoft products and services. Along with databases, you can also use the Excel program to create a spreadsheet-style calendar. Once the base for the calendar is completed, you can fill in events. For a calendar with recurring events, you can take advantage of the spreadsheet style and create columns to represent each event.

Fantastical’s main screen has a definite Sunrise-style feel, with a chronological list of appointments displayed below a full or partial calendar month. Instead of a choose-your-own-account method, Fantastical piggybacks on Calendar, displaying only the accounts you’ve subscribed to in Settings. Serious Eventbrite and Facebook users won’t miss the in-app integration, however, as they likely have those events already plugged into their Google or iCloud calendars.

Its interface is simple enough to grasp in seconds, but that’s not to imply that Fantastical is merely a basic calendar. There are three views to choose from: The patented DayTicker, which boils your calendar down to only days that have events, a full dot-style monthly calendar, and a week view that offers an hourly overview of your upcoming schedule.

But while Fantastical can certainly function as a regular calendar, it’s not as much about days as it is about events. Where other calendars will show blank slots between appointments, Fantastical’s event list focuses solely on what you need to do. In fact, the only place you’ll see free time is in the weekly view, and that’s mainly for fixing scheduling snafus. It’s not unlike a to-do app in that regard, and it’s one of the many subtle ways that Fantastical sets itself apart from its competitors.

Event creation is an overlooked aspect of many calendar apps, but Flexibits spent considerable time on it. Foremost is its natural language engine. It might not be as novel as it once was (especially since more than a few of its peers have adopted the concept on their own way), but it’s still delightful to watch it parse a jumbled string of words into a sensible event.

Fantastical requires separate purchases for the iPhone and iPad, but the money is well spent. Whether you have a mini or a Pro, Fantastical makes the most of the extra pixels, adding support for Split View and Slide Over, as well as an expanded design that puts a greater emphasis on the calendar. And if you own an Apple Watch, you can get reminders and add events right from your wrist. But the iPhone app is the star here, offering excellent on-the-spot event creation and at-a-glance scheduling all in one of the most beautiful interfaces you’re likely to find. And if that’s not fantastic, I don’t know what is.

Runner-Up: Calendars 5

Readdle has been selling a calendar app for nearly as long as Apple has been making the iPad, and that experience can be felt all throughout Calendars 5($7). Powerful, versatile, and just a little bit fun, the deluxe day planner will dutifully track your day with power and panache that defies its mobile status.

A variety of views is common among most top-tier calendar apps, but Readdle leaves no stone unturned, offering calendars in all shapes and sizes: You can choose to see your day, week, or month, a list of your events, or filter down to just tasks. While you won’t find anything to rival Fantastical’s DayTicker among the fairly standard display options, its variety of views is a testament to just how well Calendars anticipates and responds to its users’ needs.

Like Fantastical, Calendars picks up all of your iCloud entries, but a separate sign-in gives Google users a bit more control over syncing. All of the usual features are present here—recurring events, reminders, alerts, etc.—but Calendars employs a natural intuition that makes the whole process quite enjoyable. For instance, you can tap on an event to open a floating window that will tell you more about it (or let you change something). Or double-tap a box when in full calendar mode to quickly shift to that day’s view. Or my favorite: If you want to reschedule an event, simply drag its tiny colored rectangle to a different date.

And drag-and-drop isn’t the only desktop-caliber feature. Very little about Calendars feels much like a mobile app, and its utilitarian yet still elegant interface would be right at home on OS X. Even on the iPhone, Calendars’ user experience belies its tiny screen, with smart gestures and slick navigation that make scheduling a breeze.

When it comes to event creation, Calendars excels there too. While its natural language engine isn’t quite as mesmerizing as Fantastical’s, it does well to understand what you type or say, whether it’s a simple lunch meeting or a weekly task. And if you want to do things the old-fashioned way, Calendars’ date selector is one of the best you’ll find, eschewing dials for a grid method that eliminates any fumbling and lets you create even custom recurring events in seconds.

And that, in a nutshell, is Calendars’ main appeal. Everything about it is designed for speed and simplicity, and after using it for a few days, Calendars just might be the sole calendar you’ll ever need.

Best for Android switchers: Google Calendar

When you’re in a strange land, a little familiarity is always welcome. The same is true with OSes. There might be a fair amount of overlap with Android and iOS, but switchers still have a lot of new stuff to learn. Thanks to Google, a calendar

Is There A Calendar Program For Mac That I Can Add Events To