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Hands-on: Fantastical 2.1 for iPhone & iPad adds snooze, invitation/birthday notifications, keyboard shortcuts, more

We’ve already taken a close look at Fantastical 2 for iPhone and Fantastical 2 for iPad, and today Flexibits is releasing Fantastical 2.1 for both platforms with a list of new features and discounting Fantastical for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Among the list of changes include new snooze functionality, event invitation notifications and badges, notifications for upcoming birthdays, external keyboard shortcut support, and more. Below we’ll take a look at each new feature added to Fantastical for iPhone and iPad…

The first big feature added to Fantastical for iPhone and iPad in version 2.1 is snooze functionality. As you can see in the images above, opening an event with an alert now offers the ability to snooze the event for a later time right in Fantastical. Preset intervals of times for snoozing the event are available as well as the ability to set a custom duration for the next alert. The preset intervals include 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 1 day, or 2 days, and setting a custom date and time allows you pick a number (1, 2, 3 and so forth) with a duration (minute, hour, day) allowing you to create custom snooze times.

The next feature improves how locations are added to new events. In Fantastical 2.1 for iPhone and iPad, tapping the location arrow in the details view when creating an event now allows you to search contacts and locations for adding an address to an appointment rather than adding your current location. The option to add your current location is still easily accessible. You can see an example of the new behavior below.

Fantastical 2.1

Fantastical 2.1 for iPhone and iPad also improves event invitation support. As you can see in the images below, Fantastical now includes options for turning on notifications for event invitations and the app icon badge can now be used to show new event invites.

In addition to event invitation notifications, Fantastical can now notify you of birthdays as well. As with the rest of Fantastical, this is very customizable, which I appreciate. Birthday alerts can be set for the day of the event, 1 or 2 or 3 days before the event, 1 or 2 weeks before the event, or 1 month before the event. You can also determine which time of the day the birthday alert will notify you each time one occurs.

For Fantastical users with external keyboards, version 2.1 introduces a list of supported keyboard shortcuts for performing popular tasks:

– Left/Right/Down/Up: Navigate week view and DayTicker
– Command-T: Go to today
– Command-F: Search
– Command-R: Show Reminders
– Command-N: New item
– Command-S: Save item
– Command-Delete: Delete current item
– Command-K: Toggle between event and reminder when creating a new item
– Command-I: View details (edit when viewing an event, show details when adding a new item)
– Command-,: Settings
– Command-Shift-F: Toggle fullscreen week view

This list can be found in the tips and tricks section of the app settings.

In addition to the changes described above, Fantastical 2.1 also includes other requested features and improvements. Fantastical 2.1 for iPhone and Fantastical 2.1 for iPad are both out today on the App Store as free updates for existing customers.

New customers to both Fantastical 2 for iPhone, Fantastical 2 for iPad, and Fantastical for Mac can pick up the smart calendar at a discounted price today; check out 9to5Toys for the latest price drops.

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Comments

  1. Ashish Maheshwari - 10 years ago

    does the Birthday reminder feature pull birthdays automatically from Facebook or do they need to be stored in contacts?
    because IMO, that functionality is very much needed and i switched from Fantastical to Cal [https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/cal-calendar-for-icloud-google/id648287824?mt=8] just for this reason.

  2. Stephen Ellerington - 10 years ago

    Looks like contacts birthdays only. Sunrise automatically pulls in all birthdays from Facebook. Do you need to be reminded of birthdays of people who aren’t in your contacts?

Author

Avatar for Zac Hall Zac Hall

Zac covers Apple news, hosts the 9to5Mac Happy Hour podcast, and created SpaceExplored.com.