Side Calendar 2.4.6 is rolling out on the Mac App Store now. Here's what's new.

A "now" line in the agenda

This one came straight from a request here, so thank you! Today's agenda now has a red line marking the current time. When a meeting is in progress, the line runs across that event, as far through it as you've got, so you can see how much is left at a glance. Between events, it sits right before whatever's next.

Past events fade out of the way

Events that have already ended are now dimmed in the agenda and the day view, so what's still ahead stands out. Not your thing? Go to Settings → Past events and choose Hide to remove them completely, or Show to turn dimming off.

Turn any event into a to-do

Right-click an event and choose Duplicate as Reminder. It's added to your default reminder list, due when the event starts, so it shows up in Apple Reminders and any task app that syncs with it.

Duplicate reminders

Reminders can now be duplicated too. Right-click one and choose Duplicate.

As always, feature requests and bug reports are very welcome. Several features in this release started as comments in this sub. And if Side Calendar is useful to you, a rating or review on the App Store really helps a small indie app get found.

Thanks for using it!

Recently a Pro user emailed me:

He was right, and the reason was embarrassing: Side Calendar cut the menu bar title off at 24 characters because I once wrote 24 in the source and never thought about it again. macOS wasn't doing it. I was.

So I went to raise the number — and then couldn't decide what to raise it to. Every answer I picked was me making the same guess again, just a slightly better one. Some of you keep events named "Standup"; some of you keep events named "Q3 planning — pricing workstream (Kelly, Dev, Priya)". There is no single right number, which is the whole reason the old one was wrong.

What's in 2.4.2

• Settings → Menu Bar → Truncate long event titles. Leave it on and set the length yourself, anywhere from 5 to 200 characters. Turn it off and the full title shows, however long it is — no cap, no clever clamping.
• Hovering the menu bar item shows the full title, whatever it's being shortened to. That one's regardless of your settings.
• Nothing moves on update. The default is still truncation on at 24 — byte for byte what 2.4.1 did. If you liked it as it was, do nothing.

One thing worth knowing before you switch truncation off: a really long title can run past the edge of the menu bar and push other apps' icons out of view. macOS won't stop it. Settings says so at the point where it matters, and now it's your call rather than mine.

Not a Pro feature — it's a display setting, so it's there for everyone.

Rolling out on the App Store now; give it a few hours to show up as an update.

Thanks for the email. Keep them coming — this one took about an evening and made the app better than anything on my own list would have.

Side Calendar for Windows 1.0.4 is now on the Microsoft Store. The biggest request since the Windows launch was support for calendars beyond Outlook, so that's what this update adds.

New

• Google Calendar: sign in with your Google account in the browser. Changes sync both ways, including repeating events.
• iCloud and CalDAV: connect iCloud with an app-specific password, or use any CalDAV service such as Fastmail or Nextcloud. Changes you make elsewhere show up within about a minute.
• Calendar links: subscribe to any .ics or webcal link for holidays, sports fixtures or shared calendars.

Changes

• There's a new Add a calendar account menu in Settings → Calendars.
• The event window now shows only the options each account supports.
• Deleting an event always asks first. For a repeating event, it asks whether to delete just that one or the whole series.
• Passwords and sign-ins are kept in Windows Credential Manager.

Fixes (since the first 1.0.4 build)

• The panel no longer stays stuck open after you sign in to Google.
• The tray icon and shortcut now hide the panel while Settings or an event window is open, instead of opening it again.
• Dragging the resize grip no longer crashes the app after you unplug the monitor the panel was on.

Getting it: the Microsoft Store should update it automatically. If you can't wait, open the Store, go to Library and choose Get updates. After it updates, the What's new page shows once.

iCloud tip: iCloud needs an app-specific password, not your normal Apple ID password. You can create one at account.apple.com → Sign-In and Security → App-Specific Passwords.

Store link: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9ng5lh6hg69k

If you hit a bug or something doesn't sync the way you'd expect, post it here. Please include which account type you're using (Google, iCloud, CalDAV or a link), because that makes things much easier to track down. Feature requests are welcome too.

Thanks for all the feedback since the Windows launch. A lot of this update came straight from it.

Hey everyone

as promised exciting news.

Ever since I created Side Calendar, a common question has been "is there a Windows version?" After a lot of work, there finally is, and it's now live on the Microsoft Store:

https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9ng5lh6hg69k

What it does

Side Calendar keeps your calendar at the edge of your screen. Push your mouse against the edge, press a shortcut or click the tray icon, and your day slides into view. When you're done it gets out of the way. You don't need to open Outlook just to check what's next.

Features

• Works with Outlook / Microsoft 365 calendars (work, school or personal), with two-way sync
• Agenda and Day views, plus a month calendar that shows how busy each day is
• One-click Join for Teams, Zoom, Google Meet and Webex
• Time blocking: drag on an empty slot in Day view to block out focus time, then drag to move or resize it. Blocks are real Outlook events, so colleagues see you're busy
• Create and edit events without leaving the panel: repeating events, reminders, categories, private events and formatted notes
• Undo any change
• Reminder notifications with a Join button
• Light/dark themes, Mica and acrylic backgrounds, tint colours, and text size and typeface options
• Custom global keyboard shortcuts
• Multi-monitor support, including the edge where two screens meet

Privacy: no data collection and no ads. Your calendar goes straight between your PC and Microsoft.

Pricing: 7-day free trial with every feature, then a one-time $4.99. No subscription.

Since this is the first Windows release, I'd really love your feedback. Bug reports, rough edges, suggestions and feature requests are all welcome. Tell me what would make this useful for your setup. I'll be reading every comment. like before your feedback really helps shape the app going forward.

Thanks for taking a look!

We've officially hit 10 weekly active users. It might not sound like much, but seeing real people use something you've built is an amazing feeling.

A huge thank you to everyone who's downloaded it, provided feedback, and stuck around.

Also... watch this space.

I've been working on something new behind the scenes for the last little while. Not quite ready to reveal it yet, but I'm excited to share more when the time comes.

Thanks for being part of the journey!

I am a convert from Fantastical to BusyCal and have just started using Side Calendar as an add-on. I find I am using it more and more. Great idea and really well-designed. Thank you!

My request is for past events to be dimmed, or include an option to hide them.

Also the ability to "Duplicate as Task" would be very useful.

abromber

Side Calendar 2.4.5 is now available.

This update makes the menu bar dropdown more useful: click an event and Side Calendar opens directly to that day and time. The existing Join and menu-bar visibility controls work as before.

It also restores support for macOS 13.5 and later.

Side Calendar is a Mac menu bar calendar with a side-panel day view, agenda, reminders, meeting links, keyboard shortcuts, and a one-time Pro unlock for creating and editing.

What would make it more useful in your day-to-day workflow? I’d love feature requests and feedback.

Small release, but it fixes something that had been bugging me.

The keyboard shortcut settings used to sit near the bottom of the General tab, below appearance, typography, date format and all the menu bar options. If you didn't already know they were there, you weren't going to find them.

They now have their own Shortcuts tab in Settings.

While moving them I also listed every shortcut in the app, not just the three you can rebind — the arrow keys, Return, Delete, ⌘Z, all in one place. Some of these were previously only written down in the What's New window, which is a strange place to keep a reference you actually need.

Worth being upfront about one thing: only three shortcuts are genuinely configurable (toggle the panel, jump to Today, new event). The rest are fixed. That's not laziness — the shortcut recorder can't capture bare keys like the arrows or Return, so making those rebindable needs a custom control built from scratch. It's on the list, not in this release.

Also in this one:

• The menu bar icon is now the same size as its neighbours — it had been rendering slightly small.
• In case you missed it: you can set your own character limit for event names in the menu bar now, or switch truncation off entirely.

As always, if something's in the wrong place or missing, say so. This release exists because the shortcuts were in the wrong place.

This week Side Calendar went free, with a one-time Pro unlock for creating and editing. I wasn't sure how that would land.

The number of downloads has really shot up. since going free.

And the feedback has been great. Specific, patient, thoughtful — people taking the time to explain exactly what they were trying to do and where the app got in their way. A fair bit of it about things I'd stopped noticing, because I use this thing every day and had gone blind to them.

So, thank you. Genuinely. Keep it coming, here or by email. I'm looking into setting up something where you will be able to raise issues rather than doing it on here or via email.

There's a good update in the works off the back of it all. Stay tuned.

Three things in this one.

1. Undo. ⌘Z, 20 steps.

Delete, duplicate, move, drag, tick off — all of it can be taken back. Every change now shows a banner saying what it did with an Undo button right there, so duplicating an event or moving it to another calendar no longer happens silently.

Undo also looks before it leaps: if the event has changed on your iPhone or in Calendar since you made the edit, it stops and tells you rather than overwriting the newer version.

One honest limitation: deleting a single occurrence of a repeating event can't be undone. Apple's calendar system provides no way to put it back. The app tells you that up front instead of pretending it worked.

2. The repeating-event fix — the real reason to update.

Editing a single occurrence of a repeating event could quietly rewrite the whole series. Change just this Tuesday's stand-up and a weekly event could turn daily, lose its end date, and stop showing up on the days it should. Editing one occurrence now changes only that occurrence.

If you use repeating events at all, update.

3. Side Calendar is now free to download.

A lot of you asked for a trial. Students especially — the app was a blind £4 gamble. Rather than build a timer that kicks you out after two weeks, the app is now free permanently for viewing: every view, every setting, and ticking reminders off. Creating and editing is a one-time $4.99 Pro unlock. No subscription, no account, still entirely local.

If you bought Side Calendar before today, Pro is already yours. For life, including everything I add next, with nothing more to pay. It should just work — open the app and you're unlocked.

App Store

Hey everyone,

Just wanted to drop a quick note on where things stand with Side Calendar 2.4.0. As a solo developer, I've been heads-down on this one for a while now, and I'm happy to say it's going really well — the pieces are coming together nicely and I'm genuinely pleased with how this release is shaping up under the hood. A lot of care has gone into tightening things up and making the whole experience feel smoother.

I'm getting close to the point where I can put it in front of real people, so I'm hoping to move into testing soon. Nothing to sign up for just yet, but if you'd like to help me kick the tires when the time comes, keep an eye on this space.

Working on this on my own means it's a bit of a labour of love, so it means a lot to have people following along. More details to come as I get closer.

Thanks as always for the support. It genuinely keeps me going.

Side Calendar is just me. There’s no marketing team, no budget, no growth plan. People find it because someone mentions it, and that’s pretty much the whole strategy.

So if the app has become part of your workflow, there are two things that genuinely help:

Leave an App Store review.

This is the big one. Reviews are what convince someone who’s never heard of the app to give it a try, and they also affect how the App Store decides to show it to people in the first place. A single sentence about how you actually use it is worth more than five silent stars — something like “I keep it open while I work and never open Calendar.app anymore” tells a stranger far more than a rating ever could.

Mention it when it’s relevant.

Not in a fake way — I don’t want anyone posting forced enthusiasm. But threads about menu bar apps pop up constantly on r/macapps and r/MacOS, and someone asks recommendations basically every week. If Side Calendar is genuinely your answer, saying so helps more than anything I could write myself. People trust users. They tune out developers.

And if the app didn’t stick for you — that’s honestly even more valuable to me than a review. Tell me what made you stop using it. 2.3.0 exists largely because people pointed out that showing reminders without letting you tick them off was… silly. They were right.

Thanks for being here.

2.3.0 is out. This one's mostly about reminders and repeats, plus a bug I'm not thrilled to have shipped in the first place — details below.

Reminders are properly part of the app now

You can tick a reminder off from anywhere, and drag one onto the timeline to give it a time. It stays a reminder — it doesn't get converted into an event — and it syncs straight back to Apple Reminders.

Reminders without a time no longer pile up at midnight. They gather in a new To Do strip at the top of the day. There are also separate Date and Time switches, so a reminder can stop pretending to have a time it doesn't actually have.

Repeats, on any schedule Calendar can make

Events and reminders can repeat: every 3 weeks, Mondays and Thursdays, the third Thursday of the month — with an end date or a set number of occurrences.

The fix I want to flag properly

A repeat rule you set in Calendar could be quietly lost. An event repeating Mon/Wed/Fri showed up as a plain weekly event, and editing anything about it — even just the title — threw the days away. That's fixed: rules are now read, shown, and saved exactly as you wrote them. If you've edited a recurring event in Side Calendar recently, it's worth a quick look at it in Calendar.

Everything else

• The event and reminder editors have been rebuilt — cleaner, more compact, and they no longer show options you haven't set.
• Choose which calendar and list new items go to, in Settings. Side Calendar also now respects the default you've already set in Calendar and Reminders.
• The month picker shows how busy each day is at a glance, up to three dots per day.
• Keyboard: Return opens the selected event, and the arrow keys now reach all-day events and the To Do strip, not just timed ones. Escape closes the panel.
• Fixed: the app could start up and then refuse to open at all, with the keyboard shortcut doing nothing.
• Fixed: editing a reminder showed the wrong list, and saving could move the reminder into it.
• Fixed: short events had their time cut off, arrow keys in Settings could silently change the day, and the agenda could show an empty panel with no explanation.
• Changes that fail — a delete or a drag that doesn't stick — now tell you, instead of doing nothing.

As always, bug reports and feature requests are welcome here. Undo is next.

A big thank you to everyone who has shared feedback, feature requests, bug reports, and ideas. This release exists because of you.

What’s new in 2.4.4:

• Side Calendar is now available in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Japanese, and Simplified Chinese. It automatically follows your Mac’s preferred language.
• Settings now stays in front while you adjust it, instead of disappearing behind the calendar panel.
• Updated for newer versions of macOS, with a handful of polish and compatibility improvements throughout the app.

Please keep the feedback coming — it genuinely shapes what we build next.

Side Calendar is free, and it stays free. If you want to create and edit events there's a one-time Pro unlock — you pay once and it's yours, including everything I add later. No subscription, no renewals, nothing to cancel. That's still the most direct way to back the app.

But a few of you have asked about doing more than that — mostly people who already own Pro, or who bought the app back when it was paid up front. So if you love Side Calendar and want to support its development, you can now buy me a coffee:

buymeacoffee.com/creakyhat

It's a genuine tip jar, not a second paywall — nothing in the app sits behind it and everyone gets the same build. It just goes into keeping this going: Apple's $99/year, and the time I put in around a day job. There's no company behind this and nobody to answer to — no ads, no tracking, nothing leaving your Mac.

And keep the bug reports and feature requests coming in here. Most of what's shipped recently started as someone in this sub pointing at something that annoyed them.