Fantastical gains significant meeting scheduling improvements and more

Fantastical Iphone Hero (Image credit: Christine Romero-Chan / iMore)

What you need to know

Flexibits has a big new Fantastical update out.
Users can now take advantage of improved scheduling features for easier meeting planning.

Fantastical, the popular calendaring app for iPhone, iPad, Mac, and Apple Watch, has a new macOS update out that improves on a big new feature that was added earlier this year. Fantastical Scheduling makes it easier for people to schedule meetings and now it's been improved to help "streamline your meeting planning."

The new update, carrying version number 3.6.5, adds a number of improvements including automatic conference calls. Now, users can create Openings templates that give people their conference call details to recipients when needed.

This means you can now create Openings meeting templates that automatically add conference calls to the time slots people request from you.Try setting up different templates for online and in-person events, and then share both template URLs with your clients or co-workers, and give them the option to choose between a face-to-face meeting or an online one.

Another improvement is the addition of Break Time, a feature that allows people to essentially add padding to their meetings. With Break Time, people can ensure that others can't book back-to-back meetings with them, ensuring that there will always be a pre-set amount of time between them.

Fantastical Openings Availability Screenshot (Image credit: Flexibits)

Fantastical 3.6.5 also adds a new Openings availability view, giving you instant visibility of any available timeslots you still have available.

Your Openings slots will be clearly marked by whether they are 'Out of range' (meaning the time for the slot has passed), 'Blocked' (when you have a conflict in your calendar that's preventing people requesting this time slot), or 'Available'. This helps you to understand how people who use your Openings URL will see your availability, and allow you to make adjustments to your schedule as necessary.

You can learn more about what Fantastical has been working on in the announcement blog post and the app can be downloaded over there, too. Fantastical is available with a free trial for all of the Premium features and they're definitely features you're going to want to try out. I'd wager that Fantastical is one of the best Mac calendaring apps around, and it's a similar story on Apple's other platforms as well.

Oliver Haslam has written about Apple and the wider technology business for more than a decade with bylines on How-To Geek, PC Mag, iDownloadBlog, and many more. He has also been published in print for Macworld, including cover stories. At iMore, Oliver is involved in daily news coverage and, not being short of opinions, has been known to 'explain' those thoughts in more detail, too. Having grown up using PCs and spending far too much money on graphics card and flashy RAM, Oliver switched to the Mac with a G5 iMac and hasn't looked back. Since then he's seen the growth of the smartphone world, backed by iPhone, and new product categories come and go. Current expertise includes iOS, macOS, streaming services, and pretty much anything that has a battery or plugs into a wall. Oliver also covers mobile gaming for iMore, with Apple Arcade a particular focus. He's been gaming since the Atari 2600 days and still struggles to comprehend the fact he can play console quality titles on his pocket computer.