Fantastical gains WhatsApp and 1Password integration, new alert sound and more

Fantastical 2

Fantastical by Flexibits is arguably the most advanced calendar and to-do application on the iPhone – my daily productivity is now dependent on it running on my iOS devices and Macs.

If you’re not familiar with the app, it features natural language processing so you can just type in something like ‘lunch with Dad in two weeks at Mom’s place at 1pm’ and it’ll automatically create a reminder or an event for you. And yes, it integrates with your iOS Calendar and Reminders database.

Fantastical is even better on the Mac and developers should be praised for keeping their user base loyal by expanding on the feature set with regular refinements and new capabilities. In today’s update, now live in the App Store, Fantastical brings out a whole bunch of tweaks and improvements along with a few new features.

Notable highlights include an option to send text messages in WhatsApp, support for opening links in 1Password and the Mercury web browser, a new custom sound they’ve made for event and reminder notifications and lots more.

The full changelog is right below the fold…

If you have lots of events and reminders in Fantastical, you’ll appreciate faster searching. Oh, and events and event invitations are now easier to read in the week view thanks to design refinements.

More importantly, you can now set events with floating time zones, tell the app to show the current calendar week on its Home screen icon badge, remove unwanted locations from the reminders location list by swiping, enable tappable phone numbers and URLs in event titles and more.

Here’s everything that’s new in Fantastical 2.0.5:

  • New Fantastical notification sounds for events and reminders
  • Added support for opening links in 1Password and Mercury web browsers
  • Added an option to send text messages in WhatsApp
  • Added support for creating events with floating time zones
  • Added an option for the app icon badge to show the current calendar week
  • Added swipe to delete for unwanted locations from the reminder geofence location list
  • Added support to tap on URLs and phone numbers in the title of events
  • Reminders with both a geofence and due date no longer trigger a notification until the dat of the reminder is due
  • Visual update to week view to make events and event invitations easier to read
  • Improvements to conference call code detection
  • Improvements to accessibility
  • Improvements to search speed
  • Fixed a problem where duplication notifications would sometimes appear
  • Various fixes and improvements

Fantastical 2.0.5 is a free update to existing users.

A word of advice: if you can’t hear the new alert sound or are not getting notifications at all after this update, ensure that alerts for Fantastical are enabled in both iOS Settings and under Advanced section of Fantastical’s in-app settings.

Me, I just want strikethroughs for declined events.

At least we know they’re working on an iPad app.

Buy Fantastical 2 for $3.99 from the App Store, currently on sale for a limited time.

The app runs natively on the iPhone and iPod touch running iOS 7.0 or later.

The Mac edition of Fantastical is a $19.99 value from the Mac App Store.