I’m thrilled to once again have Flexibits’ fantastic calendar app as a MacSparky sponsor. 2023 was a busy year for the Fantastical team and that meant users got a ton of great improvements. I use Fantastical every day at MacSparky HQ and I keep being blown away by how much it can do for me.

This is one subscription that gives me great value, and I’m happy to keep renewing. Flexibits published a nice video recap in December so you can see for yourself all the hard work they put in. For me, some features really landed and continue to make managing my calendar events and Zoom calls a breeze:

Openings and Proposals links got a lot better and I can now add contact details in the URL link.

Live Activities — for those of us with a Dynamic Island-equipped iPhone, seeing your upcoming Fantastical event in this prime spot is so handy, and you can get right to it with a tap.

In June, the Quarter view was added to the Mini Window on Mac. This is my favorite view in Fantastical and one that I’m convinced they added just for me.

With iOS 17 came interactive widgets, and SmartStack and StandBy widgets, too. Fantastical was ready, and took advantage of these new features in September. I use widgets all the time. They also made the Apple Watch app so much nicer and easier to use.

I could go on and on…but I think you’re getting it: Fantastical has never been better, and if you’re wondering whether it’s right for you, head over there now and give it a spin! Managing your events, tasks, and meetings has never felt as good.

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Today Flexibits announced the release of Cardhop 2.0. Cardhop has always had the Contacts app beat because of the Cardhop search bar, where you can access, create, modify, and act on contacts. (Flexibits also makes Fantastical, also known for its similar search/create bar feature.) The new version of Cardhop adds a lot of useful features, including:

• The ability to take a picture of a business card and have the app extract the relevant data for your contacts database.

• Diagram relationships between co-workers and family members.

• Add multiple images to contacts

• A full suite of auto-created and customizable widgets.

• The ability to set up group invites in Fantastical with your Cardhop groups. It’s an impressive update. I did several videos for Flexibits showing off the new features. The overview video is below. In addition to the Cardhop update, Flexibits announced that Fantastical subscriptions are now converted to Flexibits Premium accounts. This means that if you’ve subscribed to Fantastical, you’re now also getting Cardhop for no additional cost.

The new Cardhop is available now for free for Mac, iPad, and iPhone. The free version has limited features. A paid Flexibits Premium subscription enables all features for Cardhop and Fantastical on all devices and is available with monthly and discounted annual options.

Subscribers of Fantastical Premium are automatically converted to a Flexibits Premium subscription and will instantly receive all of Cardhop’s premium features at no additional charge. You can learn more at Flexibits.

Finally, I want to pass my congratulations to the Flexibits team for their ten-year anniversary. The company was built on productivity apps that make capture and data management easy for users. I remember meeting one of the company founders in the aisle at Macworld when Fantastical was a brand-new menu bar app built on the quick entry bar. In the ever-changing app market, they found a way not only to make it work but to flourish.

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