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BusyCal 2/Google Calendar Users Should Upgrade

We’re fans of BusyCal, the replacement for Apple’s Calendar app from BusyMac. The company has announced that on 20 April 2017, Google will no longer allow apps to sign in to Google Calendar using “web-views,” basically embedded mini-browsers. Instead, all apps will have to send sign-in requests out to a full Web browser.

This change doesn’t affect the current BusyCal 3, but it will prevent the older BusyCal 2 from connecting to Google Calendar entirely. There are three possibilities for those still using BusyCal 2:

  • If you sync with Google Calendar and want to keep using BusyCal, you have to upgrade to BusyCal 3.

  • If you sync with Google Calendar, but either don’t want to pay for the upgrade or are using OS X 10.10 Yosemite or earlier, falling back to Apple’s Calendar app is likely the easiest course of action.

  • If you don’t sync with Google Calendar at all, you don’t have to do anything — BusyCal 2 will continue to work fine.

The upgrade to BusyCal 3 costs $29.99 for existing customers, or, if you purchased BusyCal 2 after 1 March 2016, the upgrade is free. BusyMac provides full instructions on how to get the upgrade pricing and perform the upgrade. BusyCal 3 requires 10.11 El Capitan or later.

BusyCal 3 improves on BusyCal 2 in numerous ways, including:

  • Alerts that are sensitive to travel time and traffic conditions
  • A redesigned menu bar app that provides a mini-month calendar
  • Inline display of timed to-dos with other calendar events
  • Quick entry of events and to-dos using natural language

See “BusyCal Updates Mac Calendar Alternative, Expands to iOS” (1 July 2016) for more on what BusyCal 3 has to offer.

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