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A few weeks ago, I wrote an article looking at what was the best calendar app for iPhone. While considering all the various options, I started coming across a lot of macOS alternatives. For whatever reason, the built-in calendar for Mac hasn’t been working great for me recently, so I thought I’d look at what’s the best calendar app for the Mac.
I know that everyone uses their calendar in different ways. Some people like to manage all of their tasks from it. Others only have their official meetings. Others plan out every hour of the day. Like I always say when I write articles like this, this is purely based on opinion for me. I have my way of managing my calendar, and that will undoubtedly skew my opinions. I keep all my tasks in a separate app, so I only use it for appointments. So let’s get down to it: what’s the best calendar app for the Mac?
Of all the calendar apps on macOS, Apple’s built-in calendar is probably the most widely used. It’s built into every Mac, and it syncs with iCloud, Google Calendar, Yahoo, Exchange, and general CalDAV servers. On the surface, it does everything you’d want it to do. It works reliably with multiple calendars, it’s relatively easy to enter new appointments, and it’s easy to rearrange events.
My issue with Apple Calendar is that it does nothing to stand out outside of being the default app. In a lot of ways, it’s felt stagnant for years. The last new feature update was a few years ago when it got time travel alerts. We’ve gone two full years without a single new feature (except for Dark Mode).
I know that Calendar apps are mature, but there is no reason Apple cannot continue to tweak or rethink aspects of the app. The app feels “heavy” to me, and I’d love to see a slimmed down (menu bar?) version of it. There are a lot of features of the other third-party apps that Apple could easily copy.
As I mentioned in my iPhone calendar round-up, Fantastical on the iPhone is fantastic. The Mac counterpart is no different. It’s a “fantastic calendar.” It includes all the features the Apple Calendar includes (Time travel, support for iCloud, Google, Exchange, Office 365, and more, and a dark mode).
On top of those, Fantastical has features that help set it apart from Apple Calendar. I love the natural language input it includes. You can easily add appointments by simply typing out what you need to add (dinner with dad tomorrow at 7 pm), and it will parse out what you mean. My favorite feature of Fantastical is the menu bar version. In Fantastical 1.0, this was the only way to use the app. In version 2, they added a full-featured view. The menu bar version is my absolute favorite way to use it, though. I don’t have a ton of appointments, but this quick view allows me to see my upcoming day quickly, and make adjustments as necessary.
Another great feature of version 2.0 is Calendar sets.
Fantastical 2 lets you quickly toggle multiple calendars on or off with a single click, so you can focus on what’s more important at that moment. The days of going back and forth, clicking multiple times, to hide and show your calendars are over. But we didn’t stop there. You can even automatically switch Calendar Sets based on your location (i.e., Work and Home). How cool is that?
This feature is useful if you have multiple work calendars you don’t want to see at home and vice-versa. It’s also super handy if you have numerous sports calendars that you only want to check into once a week or so.
Overall, it’s just a great calendar app. Flexibits has left no stone unturned in taking the base that Apple built with its calendar app and taking it to the next level. Although it’s not part of what I am looking at for the best calendar, I do love the built-in Apple Reminders integration. It allows you to combine two apps into one, and it has pretty robust support.
There is a free trial (download) of the app available, and if you decide to purchase it, it’s $39.99. It’s available on the Mac App Store or as a direct purchase. Would I consider it to be the best calendar app for the Mac? Keep reading to see the other apps I tested.
BusyCal has been around on the Mac for years. I think the original version launched on OS X Leopard. Before that, BusySync hooked into iCal to share it over a local LAN. Needless to say, the development team has been around the Mac calendar scene for quite a while. It had been many years since I had used it, so I wasn’t sure what to expect when I started testing it.
Like Apple Calendar and Fantastical, it pulled in all of my calendars (Google and iCloud), but it supports Exchange, Outlook, Yahoo, and more. At first glance, it looks very similar to Apple Calendar. It has your sidebar with calendar listings, main window (with multiple view options), and it also includes Apple Reminders support as well. It does add one unique feature that I have fallen in love with: it includes a ten-day weather forecast. This feature is one of those things that you’ll wonder how you ever lived without.
BusyCal does support natural language input through its quick entry box. Apple Calendar works in much the same way here. The menu bar application supports it as well. Elsewhere, BusyCal offers many of the same features as Fantastical: time travel support and calendar sets.
Overall, it’s a fantastic app. Is it the best calendar app for the Mac? Let’s keep looking around to make sure.
BusyCal offers a 30-day free trial, and it is available for purchase for $49.99.
Although I love Outlook on iOS, I am not a huge fan of the macOS version. When considering the calendar only, I think it makes sense to use it if you want to use Outlook for email, and you don’t need to sync iCloud Calendars. Outlook can only sync Exchange and Google Calendars.
Overall, it’s nothing I want to spend a lot of time with. If you live in the enterprise email world, you might love Outlook. If that is the case for you, Outlook Calendars might be the best fit.
For a lot of people, what they end up using on iOS will dictate their macOS choice and vice versa. Since I am just considering macOS only in this review, I am going to have to go with BusyCal as the best calendar app for the Mac. I love the design of the app, it’s fast, and I love the weather integration.
Fantastical is a beautiful app and would be an excellent choice for anyone. Overall, if I had to pick just one, BusyCal feels right at home on macOS while adding some much-needed features to the calendar experience.
Looking for the top app? Skip ahead.
It’s never been so easy to get distracted. Forget social media — even if you have the willpower to ignore your Facebook feed, can you resist the ping of a new email notification? The interesting headline of the latest Entrepreneur article? The pop up of a text on your iPhone?
If you work from an Apple device, there’s one solution you should try: a Mac time tracking app.
This software can be a lifesaver for freelancers and employers who primarily work on the OSX operating system. Time tracking apps serve as a reminder, disciplinary assistant, and motivation booster for both solo freelancers and home-based work teams.
Even better, some of the best Mac time management apps often come with financial management functions, such as generating invoices for your clients. Employers using Mac time tracking applications can have the assurance that they are getting value for money paid to their employees.
Whether you’re a freelancer, founder, or remote employee, time tracking software helps make you and your business more productive. In this post, you’ll find the best Mac time tracking software to make your decision easier.
When it comes to time management applications, Hubstaff does it all. Download the desktop app for Mac and you’ll be seamlessly tracking time in no time.
Hubstaff time tracker for Mac is great for companies and individuals who hire full-time employees, remote workers and freelancers. This software generates comprehensive daily, weekly and calendar view timesheets, which can then be used to pay team members and invoice clients.
Installing Hubstaff’s Mac app will lead to instant benefits for your entire team. They can use the one-click timer to track their time to the second, so if they tell you a task will take four hours, and it ends up taking five, you can pay them what they’re owed.
This accountability goes the other way, as well. As a manager, you can view each person’s time, activity level (based on their keyboard and mouse activity), and optionally, random screenshots of their work. These features can be customized to your settings or turned off altogether.
Timesheet approvals, time off tracking, billing and payments make Hubstaff a feature-packed option for Mac time tracking. All the while, still helping companies stay within budget.
The Hubstaff app is available for OS X (10.6 Snow Leopard and later), Windows (2000 and later), and Linux (distributions released in 2010 or later). Hubstaff also has an iOS app currently available on the app store.
On the Job lets you track time with an automatic idle time detection and sits quietly on your menu bar. Every time you start the timer, a new session will be automatically created. It can also generate invoices based on customizable hourly rates.
With On the Job, you can organize your clients’ information by their names, addresses, their hourly rates as well as the different currencies for different clients.
Klok features a visual display of your time and tasks and allows you to customize the organization of your clients and projects. It automatically begins a new timer when you start working on a different task, and you can always adjust the time later.
You can also connect Klok to other time-tracking apps, such as Harvest and Freshbooks (more on them later), for added functionality. Other Klok functions include timesheets that can be exported, generation of invoices and dashboard reporting.
If you’re looking for a free Mac time tracking application, Freshbooks is both a time and finance management tool. You can track team time sheets, set timers and time limits, or handle accounting tasks from the Freshbooks desktop widget.
Get the full-featured free trial for 14 days
You want to make the process of tracking your time as effortless as possible. While Tyme doesn’t run automatically, it does let you set up a custom keyboard shortcut so you can launch the app with a quick tap of a button. And once you’re in, almost every action has a corresponding hotkey. In theory, you’d never have to touch your mouse.
Tyme’s dashboard gives you an overview of your current clients and your most recent entries for each. Being able to get a bird’s-eye view of your work is definitely handy, and Tyme’s sleek, futuristic interface is fun. However, I’ve noticed that Tyme’s dashboard can start to get cluttered if you have more than two projects going at once.
For those of you who always forget to track your time, you’ll appreciate Tyme’s reminder feature. The app learns your habits and will you send you friendly messages to start or stop your timer if you’re doing something unusual.
In addition to time, Tyme will also keep track of your mileage and business expenses.
To get more insight into how you spend your time, give Timing a try. Unlike most of the other options on this list, this app doesn’t have a “turn on/turn off” button: It runs around the clock.
If you open it up, you can see everything you’ve been doing, with as much or as little detail as you’d like. Timing automatically groups your activity into categories, like “Web browsing” or “Games.” Open up a category to learn how much time you spent into a specific application, then go one step deeper and check out which files or URLs you opened.
You can assign time to projects, but you’ll have to do it manually by creating a new file and then dragging and dropping your relevant time entries into it.
If you’re looking for simple, no-frills time-tracking software, check out OfficeTime. Its interface is nothing to write home about, but it makes up for its appearance with several handy features.
Like its Quick Access option. Simply click on your Mac’s top navigation bar, choose the project you’re working on, and start the timer. There’s no need to open the app itself, so you don’t need to waste a single second.
When you need a break, want to switch projects, or would like to stop timing, just open the menu again and select the relevant option.
OfficeTime also syncs with iCal, which makes it easy to bill clients for meetings or blocks of work you’ve scheduled.
Fanurio is a budget-friendly option for freelancers and small teams. It’s fairly flexible when it comes to logging work: you can bill tasks in units or hours, add expenses and trips, and record products (like a set of icons, a blog post, design mock-ups, etc.).
Fanurio also gives you a couple different ways to track your time. Of course, you can open up the app to control the timer, but you can also start and stop it using the drop-down menu in your menu bar or the icon in your dock icon menu. Handily, the Fanurio badge in your dock icon menu will display how much time has elapsed.
To help you stay on top of things, Fanurio reminds you to start, pause, or stop your timer based on your regular work patterns.
Most time tracking apps are focused on the present: You start and you stop the timer depending on what you’re doing in that very moment.
But Timely is all about the future. First you schedule your work, then you log your time. So, let’s say you’re planning on Skyping with a client for an hour on Wednesday. Timely integrates with most calendar tools, so your meeting will automatically show up in the app. When you begin your Skype session, click the Timely entry to start tracking your time. When the meeting is over, click it again to end tracking. You’ll get a side-by-side comparison of how much time you scheduled versus how long it actually took.
Timely’s calendar view is really elegant and easy to navigate. Each project is color-coded, so you can get a visual overview of what you’re working on each day, week, or month.
Every time you work on a new project, you’re probably switching apps several times. First, you use an estimate tool, then you switch to a time tracker, then you switch to an invoice generator, and finally, you log into your payment app.
Well, with Billings Pro, you can do it all within a single platform. This tool lets you prepare estimates, create detailed time logs, send invoices, and track who’s paid you.
That’s not the only way Billings Pro provides convenience. It’s available on your Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, so you’ll never be far away from a digital timer.
Tick is designed to keep you and your teammates on budget. After you create a time budget for an entire project or an individual task, Tick will show you how much time you’ve logged versus how much you’ve got left. This feature is definitely useful for freelancers trying not to exceed how much time they’ve budgeted for a specific client, but it’s even more useful for managers who want to compare how much time each team member has logged.
Tick’s reporting features are also useful for team leaders. You can look at the data for each employee, or toggle your view to see how much time you’ve billed each client. Since Tick integrates with Quickbooks and Freshbooks, turning these reports into invoices is fairly painless.
This app integrates with Basecamp as well so you can see how much time is left in the budget, export Basecamp to-do items as tasks (or import Tick tasks as Basecamp to-dos), and see how much time your workers have logged.
App | Description | Pricing |
---|---|---|
Track time, measure productivity, invoice clients, view reports, send payments and more | $5/employee/month | |
See how much time and money is being spent on team projects | $19-149/month | |
Track time and expenses and bill clients with professional invoices | $39.95 for license | |
Manage time logged by team from local team application | $99.99 for team console and $19.99 for desktop app | |
Track your billable and personal time for you and your team | $15/month for up to five clients | |
Track your time spent on various tasks for various projects and clients | 29.99 euro for license | |
Timing tracks your time so you don’t have to | $38.99 for license | |
Track time for jobs you work on and view reports | $47 for license | |
Track time, use multiple currencies, and create invoices with your own layout | $59 for license | |
Have your team track time and easily manage projects | $14/employee/month | |
Track time, create invoices, and get paid | $5-10/user/month |
Can’t get enough of mac time-tracking apps? Here are another five to keep you productive:
Free for 14 days – Mac app available!
This post was originally published January 24, 2017, and updated August 27, 2018.