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Many years ago I ran across the greatest calendar app ever. Fantastical. It is absolutely fantastic. As its name implies, I think it's the calendar Apple should have developed, but now I just default to Fantastical. Recently when I was reading on Mastodon that the company had just released an app for Windows, I thought wow, that's really cool. Until I found out that it wasn't quite accessible yet. I know the company to be very responsive. Flexibits has been awesome and they have been responsive to any of us in the community that have written in about voiceover suggestions and ways to make it even more accessible than it already was right out of the gate. So several years ago I did install Fantastical and what I love about it is that I can have it coordinate with all my other calendars so it draws in any other calendars that you would like it to connect with. So I'm going to go ahead and show you this app here. Menu button and there is the menu button and so we'll double tap menu.
Menu pop up menu dismiss menu list List heading Tasks button Date Ticker button selected Calendar button and that is the.
Part of the app that I'm in right now is the calendar and that's what I'm drawing information. I don't really have any tasks and I don't like the day ticker especially.
Full screen heading and I don't have that on day button Week button Month.
Button and what I do show on the screen is a month at a.
Time Quarter button Year button Settings button List end Here are the settings Done.
Button So let's see what we can do in Settings.
Settings Heading flexibits Account Christine Calendars and Lists six Calendars button okay, so when.
It says six calendars that sounds a little scary, but it does like to include us Holidays for instance, and birthdays and anniversaries. That's another calendar. If I have a calendar within Gmail and there could be, you know, other calendars as well. So we'll just kind of see what those are.
Calendar Sets All Calendars selected New Calendar set More info Contacts selected Birthdays More info But anniversaries Read only More info outlook from iOS heading Birthdays, more info Calendar, more info United States holidays, more info outlook reminders from iOS tasks, more info button.
And you get the idea. So you can pull in a lot of different things. One challenge with having an app for about 10 years is that the features change over time as well as you were charged originally and perhaps a new subscription model. So we're now on version four flavor of the fantastical app, where I think I probably started with version one or two way over 10 years ago. And so the free account allows you to add a single account, I believe it is, and you have, you can add events, reminders, tasks, show event locations. And then with the premium you have added, you know, extra tax support, priority tax support, you can have a 10 day weather forecast, whereas in the free version it just includes a three day forecast. And there is one calendar set included in the free and there are unlimited calendar sets included in the premium. Now, I'm not sure what exactly is a calendar set. Maybe it's from one account, say maybe my Gmail account, that would be considered a set. And then if I had another, an account through another, you know, email connectivity or you know, family kind of sharing, that kind of thing, that would be another calendar set. But for the free version it looks like a lot of us got grandfathered in with some of the other things we can do. But for the premium version, it is four doll per month billed annually for an individual. And it gives you things like the premium tech support and also unlimited calendar sets, etc. And if you want to read a good outline of what is available between the free and the paid tiers, you could look it up on the App Store webpage itself. Or you could also go to the Microsoft Store, the developer's website. Flexibits.com is a good site, but it does list these things in a table, which may be more difficult for some people to navigate. But onward with the demonstration of the app. So let's say that we're done with.
This set calendar sets done button and we'll be done. Okay, menu button.
So there's the menu button, calendar sets.
New notifications button, search button, go to today button.
So it is today, obviously, and I am on today, but I'm going to just touch the screen so that you can hear. So what it shows you is six weeks at a time and underneath that you have a list of all of your appointments. I am in the month view of October and what I want you to hear is the fact that I can scroll around on the screen.
Thursday, October 31st, selected Friday November 1st, 2024 to events button.
Okay, so the reason why it's focused on tomorrow's date, which is November 1st, is because I actually have something going on. And so if I touch the screen below the six week view of the.
Calendar MGG live stream and recording from 6 to 8am Macgeek Gab.
Okay, so I will be listening to Mac Geek gab tomorrow at 6am for the live stream. If I slide my finger down, yoga.
From 12 to 1pm my events.
Okay, so those are the two things I have going on tomorrow because I'm working from home tomorrow. And so you'll find that the list of your calendar events is underneath the month view. And the month view does include six weeks. And so that's great. You might have the first week of November and the last week of September up here. And so that's really cool. In order to add an event, we're going to go down to the very.
Bottom right corner, new event button and we'll double tap create event cancel button.
So it's focused on the cancel button. So if I swipe right, new event.
Heading is the heading add dimmed button.
The add button is dimmed because I haven't added it yet. I haven't created anything in the text box.
Create event text field is editing.
Okay, so we here we are in the edit field. And now I will just note a pretend event here. Brunch with Marty and Michael tomorrow, November 1st at 11:00am inserted brunch with Marty.
And Michael tomorrow, November 1 at 11:00am.
Okay, so now we're not going to put any location. I could have, I could have also said that we're going to do this once a month at 11am and now I'm going to find the add button in the upper right corner.
Brunch with Marty and Michael. Cancel cancel brunch. Add button, add.
So it's just beyond the edit box.
Add search button.
And now we're going to see what we have noted on the calendar here. It should be after Mac Geek Gab.
And before yoga tomorrow, November 1, 2024. Brunch with Marty and Michael from 11am to 12pm My events.
All right, so there we go. And I hope they'll be able to make it on short notice because that's what we're doing tomorrow. So we'll probably discuss all those digital bytes podcast episodes that we want to do in the future over bytes of other things. And so that is very simply how you add events. And you could have said once every month or every week or bi Weekly. You can add locations, you can add, you know, other details in that edit field. And so it's quite a slick calendar app. I really, really love it and it couldn't be any easier to use. You don't have to get the verbiage exactly right. It knew what I was talking about. Even though I said tomorrow, November 1. It doesn't really care that I indicated tomorrow, which is also November 1st. So the reason I like it is it's just very simple and easy and I don't have to go to all the little boxes and slots in the Apple calendar to indicate the recurrence and how often and all the other details like that. So this is available for iOS and it is fantastic.
Thanks for that demonstration, Chris. And if you want to hide your calendars or your fantastical app, I'll show you how to do that. But first let me show you the process of locking your applications. So I locked my Drafts application in the bottom right hand corner. If I tap drafts and then if.
I double tap on this alert 1025 user authentication, it pops up with a.
User authentication and gives me a couple of seconds to look at my phone. I felt a gentle vibration because I took too long. So if I forefinger tap at the.
Bottom of the screen, try Face id. Try Face ID again button, hold the.
Phone in front of me and double.
Tap Attend Face ID authenticated Text field is editing insertion point.
At start I hear Face ID authenticated and then I'm put into drafts. Now admittedly this is probably not the best app to Face ID lock because when you open drafts often you just want to write something down. However, I figure for the most part I will be holding my phone in front of me, so it should be a smooth process and it just authenticates. But if anyone else tries to open it, it won't work. Let me show you how I set this up. If I touch at the bottom of the screen and drag my finger up until I get to the first vibration, lift for home. I'm told to lift for home. If I lift my finger up doc drafts, I'm put back on the drafts. Now let's say I want to face lock Safari. If I tap on Safari right now.
Safari Safari home page, it opens up.
To the last page that I was on.
Sign up button image.
I may not want Safari to automatically open, so I'll touch at the bottom of the screen and drag my finger up. Wait for the first vibration, dock Safari and lift my finger. Now let's say that I want to hide that. So what I can do is touch Safari Safari and then you can double tap and hold or triple tap remove app button and this pops up a context menu for this specific app and.
Then we'll locate Require Face ID button.
If you double tap on that alert.
Require Face ID for Safari and I.
Can flick to the right.
This app will require Face ID or your passcode to open or show content in other apps. App content will not appear in notification previews or Spotlight, which is pretty important.
To be aware of.
Flick to the right Require Face ID button.
When I double tap on this, I believe it's going to prompt me to use Face id so I'll just double tap on it and then hold the phone about 6 to 10 inches in.
Front of my face alert face id authenticating face id authenticated dock safari and.
I felt vibrations as the face ID was authenticating, so I knew it was already authenticated before voiceover told me that. So I was able to move my phone. Now if I double tap on Safari it's not going to open because the phone is not facing me.
10:29 User authentication It says user authentication and then try face ID again button.
It'll do that and then point the.
Phone at my face face ID authenticated PI price chart USD heading level 3.
And now I'm back in my Safari looking at the PI page that I was exploring. Hope you found this to be useful and next week I'll show you hiding applications that way. I have some content for Digital bytes already prepared.
Opening Apps with Siri if you want to open up an app quickly and not have to search around on all your home screens or in the app library, all you have to do is activate Siri and say Open Messages or activate Siri and say Open Mail. And that's how you open an app quickly with Siri.
Thanks to Andre Louis Shorts collection for the music used today.