Timeful is a personal assistant dressed up as a calendar

Timeful-startup-screen

In the midst of our hectic lives, most of us still manage to find time to use our cell phones. We may sneak in a quick glance at the news or play a little game here and there, but for many of us, our cell phones provide more entertainment than productivity.

Timeful is a calendar app that attempts to make managing a schedule and creating new to-dos and habits effortless. How does it perform at this daunting task? Read on for a full review…

Design

As with most calendar apps, Timeful prides itself on being simple, clean, and easy to use. It has taken on the iOS 7 style, which keeps the app feeling light and colorful. There is really no boldness with the design–something that may be acceptable for some users. However, with Timeful’s unique features (of which I will cover in a bit), the developers had quite the opportunity to couple that with an non-traditional design.

This isn’t to say that the app is ugly by any sense–if anything, it is quite appealing to the eyes. The setup is smooth and user-friendly, qualities that are essential in building a fantastic app. Unfortunately, on the design side, there seems to be nothing that truly sets this app apart from any recently designed calendars (or any productivity apps, for that matter). It also, at times, starkly resembles Apple’s own stock calendar app.

Timeful-calendar-view

Capabilities

Timeful aims to put a personal assistant in your pocket by means of creative calendar management. While other apps specialize in taking events and spreading them out in a well-designed way, Timeful cranks up the usability and attempts to aid in the organization and creation of events, habits, and to-dos.

For those who are calendar purists, this app covers all the basics. It will integrate well with Google Calendar, the stock calendar app, Outlook/Exchange, etc., and this makes it easy to import all past and future events. Creating items in Timeful is quick and to the point and lines up well with apps in similar categories.

The app, however, does significantly more than hold events–it manages and creates new content for you. What really sets this app apart is its ability to prompt the user for to-dos and habits and then try to insert these into a day.

For example, let’s say you were a college student that needed to find a way to fit in some exercise into your schedule, but the day seemed to be occupied. With Timeful, it will suggest a time that may be a possible fit. There’s no definitive action by the app–if something doesn’t work, you could simply push it to another day or time. Similarly, Timeful may try to offer times to develop habits, such as reading, blogging, or drinking water.

Sure, these features are fantastic on their own, but if Timeful didn’t keep track of the user’s tendencies, it wouldn’t be all that useful. Luckily, the app learns over the course of time when opportune moments may be. Whether it schedules habits or to-dos, it won’t make these permanent, and the ability to simply drag and drop these is available as well.

Tiemful also allows users to select their most productive time, work days and hours, and sleep hours, all of which aid the “smarts” of the app.

Timeful-todo-creation

The Good

This app is fantastic for developing new habits, creating events, and keeping up to date with all that a day might entail. It seamlessly merges calendars to create a quality experience and finds ways to make a day seem more abundant with time.

Timeful also is rare in that it is absolutely free. It contains no ads or in-app purchases, which is incredibly nice for people who aren’t willing to dive into a calendar app with a price tag. For what it’s worth, Timeful would almost be an introductory app for the genre, but it contains so many unique features that it sets itself high in the ranks.

The Bad

The app has no real differentiating design, and although it is pleasant to view, one could find a similarly-designed app fairly easily. In addition, Timeful is a recently released app, so it isn’t a fully matured app in regards to capable features. It is also iPhone-only at the time of writing, a sad fact when considering how it may feel on the iPad’s larger screen.

Value

As I mentioned earlier, Timeful is free all around. It almost begs the question on how the developers even earns a paycheck–but don’t think I’m complaining. What the user gets in this app is great and definitely worth some money. Between the integration with other services and the multitude of options, feel lucky that this app is free.

http://vimeo.com/timeful/intro

Conclusion

Timeful keeps the calendar genre interesting with its high-quality features and skill set. It is a great organizer and predictor and could see major improvements with time. The app isn’t perfect by any means, but the potential is here for something truly special. Download Timeful for iPhone in the App Store.

Related Apps

Of course, there are many calendar apps in the App Store, such as Fantastical 2, Calendars 5, and Sunrise Calendar. All of these apps offer similar event creation functionality, but Timeful can very well stand out from the pack. For more options, have a look at our selection of best calendar apps for iPhone and best calendar apps for iPad.