Google Calendar for Mac Free Download Updated

Google Calendar for Mac Free Download

The wrong calendar app is worse than no calendar app at all, which is why finding a native Mac calendar app is so of import. Inconsistent keyboard shortcuts, notifications, and user interfaces take away from the joy and ease of using an otherwise well-designed operating organisation.

Bring context to your calendar by connecting other apps

A calendar plays a really important role in keeping my life organized, and equally a long-time Mac expert, I take pretty strong opinions on how apps should play squeamish with Apple'due south pattern philosophies.

I wasn't looking for the best agenda app (we've already done that)—I was looking for the all-time Mac calendar app. To find information technology, I tried all the top Mac desktop calendars. These were my 5 favorites.

The 5 best calendar apps for Mac

Apple Calendar for macOS for the best costless calendar app for Apple users
Fantastical for the best-designed Mac calendar
BusyCal for the most flexible Mac calendar
Microsoft Outlook for Microsoft Office fans and syncing with Windows and Android
Calendar 366 Two for the best menu bar icon for Apple'southward Agenda
Other options that might work for you

What makes the best agenda app for Mac?

How nosotros evaluate and examination apps

All of our best apps roundups are written by humans who've spent much of their careers using, testing, and writing about software. We spend dozens of hours researching and testing apps, using each app as information technology'due south intended to exist used and evaluating it against the criteria we set for the category. We're never paid for placement in our articles from any app or for links to any site—we value the trust readers put in us to offer accurate evaluations of the categories and apps we review. For more details on our process, read the total rundown of how we select apps to feature on the Zapier blog.

Allow me beginning with this: there's no Google Calendar app for Mac. But whatever of the apps on this list sync with Google Calendar to bring you the best of both worlds.

In add-on to that requirement, the best calendar apps for Mac all have a few central characteristics:

Offer a clean, native user macOS interface. This means following Apple'south design language and integrating well with macOS by offering native keyboard shortcuts, notifications, bill of fare bar icons, and even features like Today widgets. The ideal app, similar macOS, is easy to use at a glance, simply not in a fashion that compromises on functionality.
Make it quick to add appointments. Speed is everything when it comes to a calendar. If you can't add events in a few seconds, you're much less likely to go along it updated. Ideally, you only need to click one button or use a keyboard shortcut to outset typing and add together an appointment. Natural linguistic communication processing, which allows you to add together appointments past typing something like "Drib off dog at the vet Monday at 5pm," is a big plus here.
Make it quick to run into your appointments at a glance. Calendars are only useful if you lot can really run into what you have coming up, and so the ideal agenda app needs to be like shooting fish in a barrel to arrange nevertheless you adopt. Daily, weekly, monthly, and agenda views should all be offered, and they should all be easy to parse.
Offer syncing, both to mobile and other computers. It doesn't affair if this is via iCloud, Google Agenda, Exchange, or some combination of those three—some sort of syncing is a must. Your calendar should be available everywhere at all times—that's the point of using an app.

Apps that tin't do these things weren't considered, but the best apps offer even more than. Besides, with i or two exceptions, I but looked at pure agenda apps. Lots of to-exercise apps, email apps, and other types of productivity apps have some kind of calendar functionality, merely information technology'southward not quite the same every bit being a dedicated calendar app.

To exam all the apps that potentially met the criteria, I connected my personal calendars and used them over the form of a week to go a feel for how they worked on a daily basis. (There were a lot of appointment icons in my Mac'due south bill of fare bar for a few days.) Since I've been writing virtually productivity for almost a decade, I was already familiar with near of the apps, but I made sure to evaluate how they'd changed with recent updates to macOS.

Here they are—hopefully one of them is right for y'all.

Best gratuitous calendar app for Apple tree users

Apple Calendar (macOS, iPhone, iPad)

A screenshot of the built-in macOS calendar, our pick for the best free calendar app for Mac.

Not sure where to offset? Apple's Calendar, which is already installed on your Mac, is clean, functional, and syncs with your iPhone and iPad without any try.

Adding appointments is simple: click the + push. Natural language processing means you can blazon something similar "go for a walk at noon" and look your computer to figure out what y'all mean. You can too click-and-drag on the agenda itself to create an appointment. There are iv primary views: mean solar day, week, month, and year.

You lot can create equally many local calendars as you desire, and all of them volition sync using iCloud. You can also add together calendars from Exchange, Google, Yahoo, or AOL accounts. This is handy if yous've got a work business relationship and personal calendars to keep balanced, and also makes it easier to utilise shared calendars.

Apple's Agenda used to offer a to-do listing, just tasks now live in Reminders, a separate app. If you lot want to see tasks alongside your appointments, this app won't cut it. But in that location are enough of other integrations. Addresses, for instance, testify upwards in Apple Maps, and you can optionally get travel fourth dimension notifications. There's even a Siri Suggestions calendar that pulls in potential events from iMessage, Mail service, and other Apple apps.

Apple'due south Agenda is simple, sometimes to a fault, only if you just use Apple tree products, you should try it earlier installing anything else considering information technology covers all the calendar basics.

Apple Agenda for macOS price: Included with all Macs, iPhones, and iPads.

The best-designed calendar app for Mac

Fantastical (macOS, iPhone, iPad)

A screenshot of Fantastical, our pick for the best-designed calendar for Mac

Including the word "Fantastic" in the name of your product is risky. Making the name of your product a pun is even riskier. Fantastical pulls off both.

Put just, this is the best-designed calendar app for macOS, and I am completely biased—I've been using Fantastical for years.

Start with the left panel: most apps put a mostly useless list of calendars here. Not Fantastical. Here, that space is used for an agenda view or your reminders. It'south a small affair, but I use it almost every mean solar day, and it reflects how carefully the developers thought about every blueprint element to make the calendar intuitive to employ. Some other little thing: if an identical effect shows upwards in two calendars, it will but show up once, with a pin-stripe blueprint letting you lot know it'south in 2 different calendars. Utilize Fantastical for a while, and yous'll find all kinds of petty things like this.

Adding appointments is quick: but hitting the plus button and outset typing. There'due south natural language processing with animated existent-time feedback, making information technology very clear how the natural language processing works. Viewing appointments is also great: there are daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual views, all well thought out. In that location's also a great card bar icon, which basically gives you access to the left console in the primary interface at whatsoever time. Native notifications and a actually great Today widget circular out the integrations.

Fantastical supports syncing with iCloud, Substitution, Office 365, Google, Yahoo, Fruux, Meetup, and whatsoever CalDAV service, and so you lot've got nearly endless syncing options. The only downside I tin recollect of is the toll, which is high.

The complimentary version of Fantastical offers enough for most people, though it lacks a few features like travel time estimates, back up for invitees, and automatic conference call detection that you lot'd kind of expect an app of this caliber to have. The $4.99/month Flexibits Premium subscription adds all of them, equally well every bit Calendly-style scheduling, and a few other squeamish-to-have features. Really, the price is the but downside to Fantastical, just it might be worth information technology for you lot if you spend a lot of time in your calendar.

Fantastical for macOS price: $4.99/month

The most flexible calendar for Mac

BusyCal (macOS, iPhone)

A screenshot of BusyCal, our pick for the most flexible calendar app for Mac

BusyCal, at beginning glance, looks almost identical to Apple tree's Agenda. Information technology isn't.

Wait close and y'all'll run across a few things. A weather forecast and moon phases show up in the weekly and monthly views, for example. And at that place'south more. The right panel can evidence your to-do list—tasks are pulled in from Reminders. If you don't use Reminders, this panel tin can show details from the currently selected result. Or, if you want both Reminders and details, you can take i atop the other. Your Reminders can also optionally show up in the calendar itself, on the dates that they're due.

Which is just to say that everything virtually this programme is very flexible. Dig through the preferences and you'll observe ways to alter the color scheme, what shows up in the info console, and fifty-fifty customize the fonts. You can add a second timezone to the side console, which is great if yous happen to travel a lot or work with teammates in another area. You can testify an alternate calendar, so you can see Hebrew, Islamic, or Chinese dates aslope the Gregorian ones. There'southward an availability panel, which is useful if you want to quickly observe the next available open spot in your schedule. In that location's also a great bill of fare bar icon for chop-chop browsing appointments. Dig in, and I'm sure you'll notice even more things to tweak.

Adding tasks is quick: merely use the + button to use the natural language processing, or click-and-drag the time yous desire to allot. And in that location are five master views for seeing your appointments: daily, weekly, monthly, annual, and list. Syncing is handled using the default calendars and iCloud, or you can add accounts from Google, Yahoo, Fruux, Fastmail, Office 365, CalDAV, and Exchange.

It's a lot of flexibility. The but downside, as with Fantastical, is the cost point, but again this just might be worth it for y'all if yous're looking for the most customizable calendar for Mac or want to avoid subscription pricing.

BusyCal for macOS price: $49.99 with a 30-day gratis trial. BusyCal is too available on SetApp, a $9.99/month subscription offer dozens of indie Mac apps. BusyCal for iPhone costs $4.99.

Best Mac calendar for Microsoft Office fans and syncing with Windows and Android

Microsoft Outlook (macOS, Windows, Android, iPhone, iPad)

A screenshot of Outlook for macOS, our pick for the best Mac calendar app for Microsoft users and for syncing with Windows and Android

Mac applications tend to focus on doing one thing well, which is why Apple computers come with carve up email, contact, to-practice, notes, and calendar applications. Microsoft's Outlook does not attach to this philosophy—it'southward all those things, and more, all at once. If that's what you lot're looking for, and so Outlook might be just right for you.

There are 4 main views to see your appointments: daily, piece of work calendar week, week, and month. The work week view, which isn't offered past any other tool outlined here, is a good case of how work-focused Outlook is. There are some other nice features: a 3-24-hour interval forecast in the toolbar, for example. Collaboration is a primal focus, and the integration with email and contacts helps with that. You can also create templates for appointments, which is useful if y'all regularly invite people to similar things. Substitution accounts are supported, plain—Microsoft congenital the Commutation protocol around Outlook. But the well-nigh contempo versions of Outlook for macOS also support Google Calendar, which was missing equally recently as Role 2016. This is a very welcome addition.

Adding appointments is a little more complicated than other applications we've outlined here: there's no smart entry, for instance, which is disappointing. Appointments are created in their own window, only you can still create an outcome pretty rapidly using the tab primal.

Outlook might not be the first app you think of using for a macOS calendar, only it's worth checking out, especially if you're already a paying Office user. It doesn't feel as Apple-y equally the other apps on this listing, and doesn't offer macOS-specific features like Today widgets, but it does everything you need a calendar to do.

Outlook also integrates with Zapier direct, then you tin can do things similar create Trello cards or Todoist tasks from new events.

Microsoft Outlook price: Starting at $6.99/calendar month as part of Microsoft 365 Personal or $5/user/month as part of Microsoft 365 Business concern Basic.

The all-time menu bar icon for Apple tree's Calendar

Agenda 366 Ii (macOS, iPhone, iPad)

A screenshot of Calendar 366, our pick for the best menu bar calendar icon for Mac

Calendar 366 2 is a surprisingly complete card bar calendar. You tin can basically manage your agenda using only this app, fifty-fifty though it functions primarily every bit a supplement to Apple tree's Calendar, which it uses for all information.

You lot tin can open the calendar past clicking the card bar icon or by using a global keyboard shortcut. Adding tasks is quick, cheers to natural language processing, and you can view your appointments in a variety of ways. The default puts an calendar view below a monthly agenda, but there are other views offered: year, calendar month, agenda, calendar week, week with agenda, and even the current day.

And everything about the awarding is customizable. There are numerous colour schemes, for example, and you can modify up the font and layout to your liking. The menu bar item tin can be an icon or supervene upon your system clock.

Information technology'due south neat as a supplement to Apple'south Calendar, but it could likewise replace information technology completely depending on your workflow.

Calendar 366 II for macOS price: $xiv.99 (with a 30-day gratis trial). Calendar 366 for iPhone and iPad costs $vi.99.

If yous just want a calendar in your menu bar for chop-chop glancing at merely don't care about all the extra features, Itsycal is a neat complimentary option.

Other Mac calendar options

Do none of the apps above hit the spot? Here are a few other options that didn't quite fit our criteria:

Google Calendar in your browser works really well (we stuck to desktop software for this article).
A few of the best macOS to-exercise list apps tin can likewise manage your agenda.
Alfred, a productivity app that can change the manner you lot work, makes information technology really easy to add calendar appointments to Apple Calendar.
Instacal, available for $4.99, is another card bar supplement to Apple'south Calendar just is less customizable than Calendar 366 II.
Meeter helps you lot quickly detect links to video meetings in your macOS calendar, which is perfect for remote workers.

How to automate your agenda

Regular readers of Zapier'southward blog will know that we normally highlight a few means dissimilar apps can exist automated. What's unusual with our picks today is that, while only Outlook tin be automated directly using Zapier, they all work with calendars that tin be automated.

For example, every one of our acme picks can sync with Google Calendar. This means you can automate pretty much annihilation you want. For example, y'all tin create an event in Fantastical for your Google Calendar and have Zapier create Trello cards or Toggl fourth dimension entries automatically.

Similarly, simply because you use the congenital-in macOS Calendar app, doesn't mean you can't use Zapier to create a listing of your adjacent day's meetings (so long as you're syncing things through a Google Calendar). Remember: all these apps are Mac-native frontends for a variety of different agenda backends.

Google Calendar for Mac Free Download Updated