PocketLife Calendar Reviews

Love that it links w other calendars (though I'd prefer to mesh them all together onto one grand calendar), love that it's linked w my reminders, and the alerts AND the alerts based on location/drive time!! (though could use more options for the audible alerts) love the layout-that I can see a portion of what I wrote w the color I chose on each day instead of a simple dot that doesn't mean anything without clicking it... don't like that I have to keep paying for it over and over every year but like it so much I keep doing just that. Recently figured out how to view my calendar on my iPad- and share it between the two devices- so I can be on the phone and adjusting the iPad calendar at the same time.

Main thing I would change: when you have 2 events for the same day, be able to choose which one goes on top! To prioritize the at a glance display. I’d rather know at a glance I have a doctors appt that day over knowing it’s my lil icon indicating it’s a pay day.. as even tho I try to do things w different colors, inevitably the more important one defaults to the bottom layer and I miss things.. easy to click and view but not so much at a glance to see that little border..

I absolutely LOVE how many specific things you can customize in PocketLifeCalendar to make it the exact way you want it to work for you! This is by far my favorite calendar app I’ve ever used, but it has a few downfalls in my experience.... The major one is that for some reason when I add an event, it creates like 15 duplicates and then if I need to delete it, I have to delete every single duplicate event individually and it gets very aggravating! It also takes up all of the space in the month view and anything later in the day is hidden at the bottom of the list of duplicates and you can’t see it unless you scroll through the billion copies of the earlier event. I’m not sure if this is only my app doing this or if it’s a common issue. It does get very annoying, but it hasn’t caused me to switch calendar apps yet, because all of the other benefits PocketLifeCalendar has to offer outweighs the issue in my opinion, but it would definitely be awesome and gain that fifth star if they would fix it! All in all though, I would absolutely recommend PocketLifeCalendar to anyone that wants to set up their calendar just the way they like it because the possibilities are endless!

I like everything about PocketLife calendar EXCEPT how it manages time zones when scheduling an item. I would much prefer to name the Time Zone rather than pick a city in that zone to identify it. Seems quirky, and it is annoying when entering multiple items in my schedule. Furthermore, not sure how it handles items that cross time zones. Do you enter the time it would have been in the original zone? Or do you enter the time it will be in the zone where the activity ends?

Other than that repeating time zone entering annoyance I really like everything about PocketLife calendar. MUCH better and easier to see my schedule than in Apple’s Calendar. The little dots in Apple’s version don’t tell me much of anything. In PocketLife I can see the title (or at least enough of it) and the color to know what activity is scheduled for any given day.

Plus..you can have 4 different calendars, with 4 different contents, with PocketLife. Imagine a “work” calendar, a vacation calendar, a travel calendar, a home calendar, holiday calendar, or any combination of types. Makes it very easy to see my schedule.

I was looking for a shareable calendar with a good weekly view. This certainly fits the bill with two weekly view options. As well, the monthly view gives an excellent detailed glimpse of events. As opposed to an iOS calendar you can actually see all events without going to the individual day which is exactly what we wanted.
The cons: syncing and sharing is poor. I spent a considerable amount of time formatting the calendar how we wanted it to look for best visibility and planning, shared it...and none of those edits transferred. When it synced to my iPad, none of those edits transferred. When I followed troubleshooting, deleted and reinstalled, all edits were gone along with several hours of my time and patience.
As well, family sharing doesn’t work for the full version of PocketLifeCalendar, so it’s a rip off. That means the husband paid $4.99, didn’t get any of my careful edits, I have to pay $4.99 and edit all four versions of the calendar (phones and tablets). This is a yearly charge as well 😤
While there’s some useful tools in this and we will be using it for the moment, I’m certainly looking around for a more functional option. Please developers, instead of focusing so much on pointless design functions give up better syncing and sharing.

I have used PocketLifeCalendar for a few years and really enjoy it. It's easy to use and the option of colorizing events makes it easy, with a quick glance. I have come to depend on the ability to colorize events and personalize the look by changing pictures. I’m so disappointed recently because I bought a new phone and iPad and my calendar did not sync with either. I tried reloading it and that didn’t work. So I’ve had to go back and manually copy my stuff onto the new devices. I have gotten new devices many times in the past and did not have the same issue. I’m not going to do it again. Really frustrating! I’ve tried others but none are like this one. Super sad : (

Update: I received an unexpected response to my complaint and was able to fix the problem. I recommend PocketLifeCalendar for sure! But it shouldn’t require a poor review to get the problem solved. It should be a seamless transfer of information when transferring to a new device. Hopefully next time it won’t be so hard and disappointing.

I’ve been using PocketLifeCalendar for years & I absolutely love it. It’s so much better than other calendar apps I’ve tried. You can customize everything from the background photos each month to the colors to the calendars you use making different ones for things like work, school, family, doctor appointments, etc with everything color coded & easily recognizable. It’s great & so easy to use. My only problem with it is you have to pay again each year & the price keeps going up. I think when I first started using it paying for a new year was $0.99 or maybe $1.99. Last year I paid $2.99. Now for 2022 they want $4.99. While that’s not a lot of money, having to pay that every year basically forever gets expensive, especially if they keep raising the price. I’ll probably pay it for this year but start looking for another option before next year which is unfortunate.

Since I pretty much only downloaded PocketLifeCalendar strictly for my watch - the Apple calendar app for the iPhone is sufficient but on the watch? Not so much. I like being able to see the full month display with your app on my watch because you can’t get that view with the Apple calendar. It shows everything else but as far as the “at a glance” view, no. One thing I would like to see for the watch face is the ability to, when I go to customize my complications, I would like to be able to select your app for the date display on my watch for the date and day instead of using the default “date” selection. Reason being, in order to view the month the way I like to see it is that I have to go through all them extra steps to open your app. I could just use your app as a complication but the default view isn’t the day and date. It’s the next upcoming event. Can we change that to displaying the date and day? Or at least change it so that we can choose what it shows there as a complication?

I was trying to keep up with my schedule and my husband’s plus 2 daughters and monthly puppy medicine for 5 dogs. Now I’m retired and need it even more......now there is even more to keep up with vacations, doctor appointments, church functions, meeting friends for breakfast or lunch and last but not lease my husbands still works some for the company he retired from and a side job doing special projects for another company. I downloaded PocketLifeCalendar because it can be shared. Now my husband has a copy on his phone, there’s a copy on my phone and my iPad so I don’t have to stop what I’m doing when he asks what are we doing on such and such a date or did I work last any last week, or when are we supposed to meet the “Jones?” Now I can keep up with birthdays, deaths, holidays, special events and I even set up colors to see at a glance what’s coming up. I recommend it for anyone with a busy family, I wish I’d had it when my girls were younger.

Why?
1. The size of the lettering is larger & easier to read. Less fatigue, faster performance.
2. Flexibility of assigning & reassigning color coding to events & Calendar structure makes PocketLifeCalendar much easier to use & visually group events. I can see the flow and stacking of events in a colorful way superior to the other top 3 calendars I am testing.
3. Love the logic & flow. It’s generally intuitive.
REFINEMENTS?
I would suggest more innovation, refinements, and user control options around the three suggested areas I’ve outlined above. Additional work in those areas will, in my opinion, earn this calendar app a top position. With those improvements this calendar should be a 4-7$ purchase. Allow your loyal base to upgrade for less.
Last Thoughts:
I have been evaluating this calendar intensely for about three weeks. I evaluate a lot of software programs & apps and some of them play games or have annoying ads or try to get you to do certain things and buy under pressure and what not. So far PocketLifeCalendar has been very fair and has allowed me to get to know PocketLifeCalendar to understand it without having to sell one of my children to pay for it! If that changes I’ll try to give a heads up.

BTTTOM LINE:
A Thoroughly enjoyable calendar app that needs a little more sophistication to be a truly great app.
Congratulations to the developer and thank you for your work.

I do not know how to type in an event for my schedule if I am in a different time zone for an event in my own time zone and have the correct time display when I return home!! (The time zone shows Cupertino and can't be changed!! Don't know what that is for anyhow! ) I was in Calif and had to type in an event for when I got home into Central Time and I put in the time the event began in my home zone or what I thought was my home zone and when I got home it showed it 2 hours later because I had entered the event in Calif and it automatically must have converted to PST! I went to edit it to the correct time and it won't let me change the time zone showing as PST to CDT on the beginning and ending time ! I had to delete the whole event and begin all over again! How frustrating!! This needs to be clarified, please! You can contact me if I just don't understand how it works ! Thank you!

Wish it cost less or had a totally free version with ads...that being said I do find it extremely helpful and totally understand they need to charge for ongoing costs of upkeep with operating system updates. Only thing that bugs me is how the quick add (+) works -for me it’s counterintuitive and I would prefer to pick the date first instead of giving the title first, it’s very often that I end up adding something quickly on the wrong date because that is where the calendar was hovering. I know it sounds weird but you can be looking at your calendar and remember that you want to set a date for someone else and when you hit the plus sign it should first double check or verify the date for which you are adding the event first instead of below the description box. That way it would force you to make sure you are entering that Quick add event on the right day.

I check my calendar quite literally several time a day. It’s essentially every aspect of my life right in front of me. Easily the greatest feature is that I’m able to divide everything into colored categories! I don’t forget to pay bills; I don’t miss doctor’s appointments, dentist check-ups, concerts, parties; I can see all the upcoming holidays, full moons, Mercury retrogrades (lol!); I can keep track of my dog’s nail trims, grooming, vet appointments; I even added my football team’s schedule for the season. There are a ton of different ways to repeat an event as well which is insanely useful–yearly, monthly, weekly, bi-weekly, every 2nd Tuesday, every 19 days, you name it! It’s great for absolutely everyone no matter your lifestyle. I would ESPECIALLY recommend it for anyone like myself with ADHD or those who just need a solid way to organize everything in one spot. :) I hope this review helps!

I’ve tried so many calendar apps! PocketLife is by FAR the best one ever! It’s completely customizable (I even have my own monthly pictures set as backgrounds!), the ability to customize animations for important things is unbeatable, I have different colors for each family member so I can see at a glance who needs what... Having the ability to create templates for frequently used events is incredible! I’ve customized the font and size of both letters and calendar date numbers so I can see them easily... And just for fun, I have emoji for things like birthdays!! I sync all my different calendars with it, including my son’s work schedule/days he needs babysitters. Like, seriously!!! There’s nothing this calendar app doesn’t do!!! I’ll never use anything else. Thanks for creating such a powerful -and fun to use - app for daily life!!! You rock!!!!

I absolutely LOVE PocketLifeCalendar! I’ve had it for years!!! I depend on this soooo much! It definitely keeps me organized with the color coding feature. I really like how the words show when I’m on the monthly screen, rather than dots like in the iPhone calendar app. I’ve tried many other apps as well as a physical write-in calendar, but I keep reverting back to this one. Even after upgrading my phone 3 times, ALL my information transfers over smoothly! Just as long as you set it up to link to your iCloud, you are golden! You will never miss a bill, appointment, or an important event with PocketLifeCalendar! Yes, you have to pay for PocketLifeCalendar, but for me it is way better than paying for a physical planner that is too small to write everything in, too big to carry around, or too expensive and cute that I would have to throw away anyway.

PocketLife has incorporated all the features that I have been using between multiple calendars. Now I can do it all in one calendar app. I love the templates feature to quickly add events that I add often. The customization of the interface from views to colors to fonts to sounds is a really nice feature to personalize it. It also incorporates reminders which is great because many times I just want a reminder not to have to add calendar entry. The ability to also add custom calendars for a small fee is great because then I do not have to add these events manually.

I would recommend PocketLifeCalendar to anyone who uses their calendar very heavily or not heavily because it really does make keeping track of events easy.

This says a lot because I do not typically leave reviews on apps.

Update: Calendars are now synced! (So now ignore the entire 2nd and 3rd paragraphs!)

Let me preface by saying I really love PocketLifeCalendar. My biggest problem with the native calendar app was that all I could see on my calendar were dots when something was scheduled. This one actually gives me descriptions! Without having to click on each individual day. I have made it even easier on myself by color-coding “categories”, so even without the description, I can look at my colored blocks and know how much of what I have scheduled each day.

My only draw-back - and the reason for withholding that last star - is that it can’t “download” to other apps. If I add an event to my Google Calendar, or my native calendar, it automatically shows up in PocketLifeCalendar. Perfect! I just wish it would go the other way. I have often been at my computer, with my Google calendar open, and have to pull out my phone and open PocketLifeCalendar to make sure nothing is scheduled.

For now, my “fix” has been to always ‘add’ to my calendar using either my native calendar or Google Calendar, and using PocketLifeCalendar to keep on task/schedule. It would be AMAZING to be able to add a calendar item to PocketLifeCalendar and have it be pushed to another calendar. That would make it as perfect as I can imagine.

I wrote this report and a response was sent explaining how to correct my settings so it was my settings causing the issue mentioned below. (Btw I would love each year end if they would send me a copy of my yearly calendar so I can store it with my other rental documents.)
Earlier I gave a rating 5 Star but issue I had mentioned: I do love the program but before the end of the year my calendar is erased. Luckily I've learned to make copies of it so I can file my rental reports for bed tax. But it is very disconcerting when you go back to see what was going on on a certain day and the data is gone. The data from previous years once in a while shows up on the calendar but that is sporadic. Please stop removing data from calendars of people who use calendar year to year, thank you.
Bottom line this is a great APP.

I can read this calendar so well. It is so much better than the calendar that comes with the iPhone. I was always scheduling things on the wrong day because he iPhone calendar would roll to a different day so easily I would easily schedule on the wrong day. where as this one does not do that so I am much more accurate and quicker. I love that I can touch the day and the event will scroll across so I can read it without actually having to open it up all the way. Or if I touch the day blows up the event for me to read. I can hide certain unwanted holidays if I don’t want to see them on my calendar whereas I could not do this on my old calendar. This pocket life calendar is just very user-friendly and I really like it.

This is much better than the standard iPhone calendar so I bought the paid version. Love that I can scroll through the days, which I can't on the standard. But just learned about more advanced capabilities of copy-paste from another reviewer, and could find no info on PocketLifeCalendar . (!) And don't like to be reminded to review it. But all in all, I would recommend this as a much better choice to anyone who depends on their calendar!
Update: I use this to keep track of things I need to do as well as things I've done. Can search for last haircut, etc. Essential. Anything that increases functionality is good. Can I print out all items input for 2016, for example? Then I could erase all but most important info in 2016 & reclaim some memory.

As a person with “disorganized” ADD, PocketLifeCalendar is super-helpful for keeping track of my appointments with clients throughout the day. I can forget things in a minute. I love being able to color-code and the bounce feature is also helpful. All in all, I have not found anything better for getting me through my day. I know that it has more complexities than I care to learn, but I just love the simplicity of it and I recommend it to others. The only reason I’m giving it 4 stars instead of 5 is because I used to be able to get reminders flashed on my phone. Maybe Google took something over but now the only reminders I get are via email, which does me no good at all. I tried to find out hot to make the reminders come up on my phone again, but to no avail.

I LOVE PocketLifeCalendar, and I would have given it five stars if it wasn’t for these couple of things:
1. Limited events. When you first get PocketLifeCalendar , it’s great and all but then after a couple of events you have scheduled, it kind of goes down hill, if your a twelve year old who doesn’t like to spend money on things like this or just someone who doesn’t like to throw money out the window. You have to pay $5 in order to get unlimited events and I know that’s not a lot or much of a problem but it’s very unnecessary.
2. Adds. They don’t just pop up on the screen, (which I am very fond of, thank you) instead they stay at the bottom of the screen. I don’t mind this, but the problem is is that some can be a little inappropriate, scary, or disturbing. For instance, if you have heard of PocketLifeCalendar Yarn, the add is on the bottom of the screen. I’m not going to go into details about this add because it is all of the above: inappropriate, scary, and disturbing.

I think PocketLifeCalendar can do a lot better and be more appropriate for kids like me who need an organizer for their homework and/or their appointments and special events. Thanks so much to the developers of PocketLifeCalendar for your great efforts. Congratulations on getting a five star with other reports, and I hope you have success in later approaches. Thank you and please help me with my problems. Thanks again!! 😊😄

Here are my thoughts in no particular order that you, the reader, may find intriguing. I always view how many updates are released and how far apart/how recent they occur (See link in app page). These folks update regularly over the years and you would be surprised how many do not. GUI is excellent, feature rich, capable, fantastic team of designers & devs. Subscription fee models allow companies to be valued higher, operate more stable and be more profitable. More and more companies have shifted to this model across all industries in the past 10 years. Kudos to the dev responding to every review consistently and logically. However, with a company such as Readdle (another high quality dev team) offering very, very solid apps into many spaces, it’s hard not to go with “Calendars 5” and pay the one-time charge for a full featured, fully unlocked app that does not charge you again except the initial cost.

OvalKey LTD obviously is a very talented team and they are very forthcoming about their business model. If you want to use the best, you have to play by their rules....or go pay about $5 to Readdle and forget about it and use their high end apps for another 15 years.

Better than other calendar apps and good sync with Outlook calendar. Only 2 complaints:
1). The most current version regularly fails to accept edits. Example: create a new calendar event. 8 of 10 times the date saves wrong and requires edit. It used to be possible to just edit. Now, when saving the change, returning to the calendar, either the change is (often) lost, or appears corrected for mere seconds, then jumps changing back to the unedited (wrong) version. After repeating several times on the same edit, it finally will take.

2) if a new iitem is added with any part sounding like a location, the item is immediately edited outside of user control, removing the info and putting in location field. For me, that is wrong much of the time. It is less of a problem now than earlier. There is no ability to turn off this “feature”. Yipes! A similar action also occurs with any description that appears with a time, tho not as offensive. Both should be options that should be possible to turn off and not override user action.