Fantastical Updated With Home Screen Widgets, Scribble Support on iPad, and More

Popular calendar app Fantastical today received an update with support for new iOS 14 and iPadOS 14 features, including Home Screen widgets and Scribble.

fantastical home screen widgets
A dozen customizable widgets are available, providing users with the date, a monthly calendar, scheduled events and tasks, and even the weather at a glance. All of the widgets are free to use, while widgets that incorporate Fantastical Premium features like conference call detection require a subscription for $4.99 per month or $39.99 per year.

Scribble support allows iPad users to handwrite in any field with the Apple Pencil and have it automatically converted to text.


The full release notes for version 3.2:

- Widgets for iOS 14! 12 new and customizable widgets to view the date, weather, calendar, upcoming events, and tasks right on your home screen.
- Support for Scribble on iPadOS 14
- Support for new date and time pickers on iOS 14
- Recurring events are now shown more prominently when viewing hidden items
- Short back-to-back events are now less likely to overlap in Day and Week views
- Fixed an issue where sync to Google could get stuck in some situations
- Fixed an issue where sync errors on Zoom accounts sometimes wouldn't be shown
- Fixed an issue where notifications for recurring events could disappear suddenly
- Fixed an issue where deleting an event in the Apple Watch app wouldn't sync to the phone
- Various fixes and improvements

Fantastical is available on the App Store.

Popular Stories

iOS 26

6 New Things Your iPhone Can Do in iOS 26.1

Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:22 am PDT by
Apple is about to drop iOS 26.1, the first major point release since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least six notable changes and improvements to look forward to. We've rounded them up below. Apple has already provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 26.1, which means Apple will likely roll out the update to all compatible...
ios 26 1 slide to stop

iOS 26.1 Brings Back 2007 Feature in New Way

Friday October 31, 2025 1:40 pm PDT by
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a small but helpful change for iPhones, and it could prevent you from running late to something important. Specifically, when an alarm goes off in the Clock app, there is a new "slide to stop" control on the screen for turning off the alarm. On previous iOS 26 versions, there is simply a large "stop" button, which could be accidentally tapped. The new ...
iOS 26

iOS 26.1 Coming Soon: New Features for Your iPhone and Release Date

Monday October 27, 2025 7:55 am PDT by
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more. Below, we outline key details about iOS 26.1. Release Date Given that Apple has yet to seed an iOS 26.1 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, the...
M5 MacBook Pro

Waiting for New Macs? Apple Just Shared Bad News

Friday October 31, 2025 7:32 am PDT by
Apple has just given a strong indication that it will not be releasing any additional new Macs for the remainder of the year. Apple's CFO Kevan Parekh dropped the hint during the company's earnings call on Thursday:On Mac, keep in mind, we expect to face a very difficult compare against the M4 MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and iMac launches in the year-ago quarter.Parekh essentially gave a heads up ...
iPhone 17 Pro Cosmic Orange

8 Reasons to Wait for Next Year's iPhone 18 Pro

Thursday October 30, 2025 4:42 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max. One thing worth...
maxresdefault

Apple TV 4K Could Still Launch Before 2025 Ends: All the Rumored Features

Monday October 27, 2025 4:51 pm PDT by
Apple is designing an updated version of the Apple TV 4K, and rumors suggest that it could come out sometime in the next couple of months. We're not expecting a major overhaul with design changes, but even a simple chip upgrade will bring major improvements to Apple's set-top box. Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos. We've rounded up all the latest Apple TV rumors. ...
ipad mini 7 feature blue

OLED iPad Mini: Release Date, Pricing, and What to Expect

Wednesday October 29, 2025 7:13 am PDT by
Rumors are stoking excitement for the next-generation iPad mini that Apple is reportedly close to launching. So what should we expect from the successor to the iPad mini 7 that Apple released over a year ago? Read on to find out. Processor and Performance Apple is working on a next-generation version of the iPad mini (codename J510/J511) that features the A19 Pro chip, according to...
Coffee Burgundy and Purple iPhone 18 Pro Mock 1

Leaker Outlines Potential New Colors for iPhone 18 Pro

Friday October 31, 2025 8:28 am PDT by
Apple's iPhone 18 Pro models could be available in new rich and warm color option, according to a known leaker. The Weibo user known as "Instant Digital" today suggested that next-year's iPhone 18 Pro models will be available in at least one of the following color options: Coffee, purple, and burgundy. The iPhone XR, iPhone 11, iPhone 12, iPhone 14, and iPhone 14 Pro were all available in ...
apple tv hd

Apple Launched Its Big New Vision for TV 10 Years Ago Today

Thursday October 30, 2025 8:58 am PDT by
Apple launched the Apple TV HD, the Siri Remote, tvOS, and their accompanying App Store a decade ago today, marking a major overhaul of the device. The new vision for the Apple TV was unveiled on September 9, 2015 during Apple's "Hey Siri" event in San Francisco, where CEO Tim Cook introduced the device with the statement, "The future of TV is apps." The announcement represented a major...

Top Rated Comments

jb-net Avatar
67 months ago
Fantastical's subscription model is the best showcase how not to do it. A subscription to use widgets :rolleyes: They lost most of their year-long-loyal paying customers, including me (who spent over 100 USD on different versions), when the switched to the new subscription model. Be aware: Fantastical doesn't care about loyal paying customers!
Score: 27 Votes (Like | Disagree)
posguy99 Avatar
67 months ago

Fantastical's subscription model is the best showcase how not to do it. A subscription to use widgets :rolleyes: They lost most of their year-long-loyal paying customers, including me (who spent over 100 USD on different versions), when the switched to the new subscription model. Be aware: Fantastical doesn't care about loyal paying customers!
Fantastical's switch to subscription could be used in case studies of how to piss off users of your application. They turned it into nagware, didn't matter whether you had purchased the previous version and were quite happy with it or not.
Score: 22 Votes (Like | Disagree)
CarlJ Avatar
67 months ago

waiting for the onslaught of "a subscription for a calendar app? a CALENDAR app?" replies. old and tired.

if Fantastical is "just a calendar app," then it's not for you. if you see it mission control to schedule your entire life, then it's money well spent.
The thing is, Fantastical decided that they only cared about customers who LOVE their app, and their other customers who merely liked the app (even if they had paid handsomely for numerous versions in the past) could go screw themselves.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
LogicalApex Avatar
67 months ago

weird, because i had many pleasant exchanges with them over email when v3 relaunched..to where they gave me a free month or two and got me in the testflight beta. it is an essential piece of software to me.

and if it takes a small monthly sub fee to ensure ongoing, constant updates, i'll take the tradeoff compared to the YEARS where they let V2 just languish in both design and features.

also did you miss the part "All of the widgets are free to use."
We agree that ongoing development should be supported where possible. But I disagree that the subscription model is the only way to accomplish it.

But I've aired my grievances on this many times and Fantastical has no interest in shifting gears so I'm not going to waste time re-iterating it. They calculated that focusing on the customers who see the app as absolutely essential is their only focus for the future. They caught so much flack as they forced the painful choice down the throats of the rest of us at the same time...

They could have easily done Fantastical 3 on the App Store w/ a subscription model and put a one time notice in Fantastical 2 for us to download it and check it out and swap over if we want to. They could then have removed Fantastical 2 from the App Store so only those who already own the app could re-download it from purchase history. Even if they wanted to offer a nicer "base tier" to customers who owned Fantastical 2 in Fantastical 3 they could have done that by having a link in Fantastical 2 that launches 3 to let them know you owned it and all that jazz. Would have gotten them to the same place with zero damage to their image.

But here we are.
Score: 14 Votes (Like | Disagree)
dlopan Avatar
67 months ago
The minute I saw it's 40 a year, pass. Maybe for 1password or my vpn. Not much else
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)
CarlJ Avatar
67 months ago

sigh. this keeps getting rehashed every time Flexibits is in the news.

When they released V3, they didn't remove ANY of the features from V2. Everything worked exactly the same as before. But if you wanted the new features, you had to jump aboard the subscription train. they didn't screw anyone.
Sigh yourself. Please tell me then why my app is littered with buttons that are advertisements for the paid version.

They also changed the app to have less information on the screen - information density was one of the defining features that made me prefer their previous version to all other calendar apps (and I paid them a bunch of money for a bunch of versions). The other was natural language input. Which was really nice, but now Siri can do the basics of that faster, without opening any app. To justify the expense, they excitedly explained how they added weather, which I don’t want in my calendar (I built my own weather station software and hardware, I don’t want their less accurate generic weather), and tracking of conference calls, which I don’t want (that all lives in my work calendar on my work machine - wouldn’t use my iPhone for work videoconferencing). I used to highly recommend Fantastical to people, but not any more.
Score: 12 Votes (Like | Disagree)