I now have THREE favourite apps for managing my calendar and reminders

Recently, I posted information about an App that was free for a short period, called Week Calendar.  

This app is still my 'go to' app on my iPhone, for seeing my 'week at a view', even when my iPhone is in 'portrait' mode.  Unfortunately, this is something that the standard iOS Calendar app does not provide - which is a great frustration for many iPhone users.

My Week Calendar app allows me to easily view what's booked when, and see my availability at a glance - great when someone is asking for an appointment. 


Of course, it also provides other views of my calendar (day, month, year, today) should I need them, but I tend to stick to the 'week view' most of the time.  Here is an example of my week in Week Calendar!

Fantastical

In Fantastical, not only can you view the day's reminders, you can also 'tick off' the reminders as they are completed, or touch on a reminder to edit it from within the Fantastical App.  

This is so much quicker than opening up the Reminders app to go and modify (or tick off) any reminder. 

Now I have 3 favourite Calendar Apps!

I now also use two other calendar apps on a regular basis, because I find that these apps offer features that neither Week Calendar nor the standard iOS Calendar apps offer.  

These two great calendar apps are

• Fantastical (which is fantastic!), and 
  
• Sunrise  (which has been recently acquired by Microsoft)
  

The reason these two apps are so useful to me is that they both integrate my Reminders into my Calendar.

This means that, for each day, you can see a list of your events for the day, PLUS a list of any reminders that you have set for that same day!

For someone like me who uses Reminders ALL THE TIME to keep on top of my busy life, being able to view my reminders in my calendar is such a massive help and has made a real difference to my days.

Sunrise

Sunrise will also show you all your reminders from your iOS Reminders app, but it won't allow you to 'tick off' or edit them. I go to Fantastical when I want to do this.

But the key reason I also use the Sunrise calendar is that it also includes my Evernote reminders - which, unfortunately, are not included in my standard iOS Reminders list, so are not included in the Fantastical list of reminders.  I am hoping this might change over time, but for now I rely on Sunrise.

Given that I am using Evernote more and more to set reminders about bills, school notices and other documents that I receive and store in Evernote, Sunrise is where I go to view my Evernote (and any other) reminders for the day.  

The other thing I love about Sunrise is that it allows me to 'Open in Evernote' any Evernote reminder that I see, so that I can immediately view the content of the Evernote Note, to view the bill, notice or other document of which I am being reminded.  

This digital recording of bills, notices and other important documents saves me scrounging through papers to find further information about the reminder - once again saving my sanity by giving me immediate access to the information I need to run my household and business.

Widgets for these apps

But wait, there's more!

Both if these calendar apps have additional features called 'widgets'.  Widgets are mini versions of apps that you can add to your Notification Centre.

Here is what I see when I swipe down from above the top of my iPhone's screen to view my Notification Centre.

You can see here that I can see a preview of my day, via each of these apps.  

If I want further information, I can tap on either to go directly to that app - giving me quick and easy access.

The topic of how to set up these widget will be a topic for another day (sorry!).

Do you want to become more organised through your technology? 

If you want to learn out about becoming more organised using Reminders, Calendars, Evernote, Widgets and more, why not come along to the iTandCoffee class called 'Bring your busy life under control using your iPad and iPhone'.

Register you interest here, and we'll let you know when the next class series is scheduled.