Cron Changelog

New name

Cron has a new brand and is now Notion Calendar. It remains the quality app you love, with a slightly new look. To automatically get the new experience, update the app to the latest version. Read more on the Cron blog about this milestone and our continued commitment to reimagining the calendar.

The first public Cron changelog was on Jan 4th, 2021, and this is the 69th and final one. From now on, Notion Calendar updates will be included in Notion’s What’s New notes.

Notion databases

With event attachments, we launched the first Notion integration: seamlessly search, attach, and even create Notion pages for events.

With databases, we’re launching the second extensive integration: see Notion database items alongside your calendar events in Notion Calendar.

• Add a database to Calendar by first connecting a Notion workspace in the left-hand calendar list, then hover over the workspace’s header to open the ⋯ menu and select “Add Notion database…” (also via Ctrl/⌘ K > Show Notion database…).
• Alternatively, from within the Notion app, use the “Open in Calendar” button in calendar and timeline views to quickly add a database to Notion Calendar.
• View, edit, and create database items from Calendar, just like regular events. Edits are always kept in sync between Notion and Calendar.
• Use this to see and manage deadlines, project timelines, tasks, time-blocking — and anything you can imagine.

Once set up, connected databases also show up on the mobile app. We can’t wait to see how you use it.

Languages

Many of our international users can now use Notion Calendar in their native language. In addition to English (US), the app and scheduling snippets/pages are now localized in: Korean, Japanese, French (France), German, Spanish (Spain), Spanish (Latin America), Portuguese (Brazil), Finnish, Danish, Dutch, Norwegian, and Swedish.

The language can be changed in Settings > General > Language on web and desktop apps. On iOS, the language will always match the system’s locale.

Other improvements

• Improves ranking of results when searching teammates’ calendars.
• Improves Notion doc attachment titles that contain dates.
• Updates email address for communication when changing primary account to log in.
• Fixes upcoming meeting notification on macOS sometimes stealing focus when the app is quit.
• Fixes date shifting in mini month navigator when hiding weekends.
• Fixes creating holds not working in certain situations when sharing availabilities.
• Fixes blocking and unblocking events in certain situations for repeating series.
• Fixes repeating event times visually resetting on updating a single event instance.

Google Groups

We continuously improve Cron and fill feature gaps based on your feedback:

When inviting a team alias to a meeting (e.g., designers@ or product@) it should “expand” the participants and pull up RSVP and availability of my colleagues in that group.

Cron on desktop and web now displays groups in the participants’ section distinctively. Hover over the group, then click the expand icon to view its members and response statuses. To overlay an individual participant’s calendar, click the diamond icon next to their email/name.

Groups and their permissions are managed by admins in the Google Workspace Admin Console under Directory > Groups.

Drag and drop all-day events

I want to drag and drop all day events into a time slot. Almost no calendar app I’ve come across allows for this but it’s very powerful for those of us who like to plan their days by first making all day events, then organizing into time slots in the morning.

On Cron desktop and web, pick up and move event chips from the all-day section to anywhere on your calendar grid, and vice versa! This is especially useful for events that represent reminders or tasks. More to come in that area.

Apple Maps

My only wish list item for Cron is the ability to choose which map service I want to use for directions. I prefer Apple Maps over Google Maps, so having a default would be nice.

Cron on Apple devices has a new setting to select Apple Maps (instead of Google Maps) as the default for opening location links.

Configure on macOS in Cron Settings under Calendar > General > Location.

Configure on iOS in Cron Settings under Location > Default maps app.

All Cron apps including for Windows can be downloaded at cron.com/download.

Other improvements

• Adds support for creating private Notion pages when adding event attachments.
• Adds support for creating Notion pages using a database’s default template.
• Changes upcoming meeting notification swipe gesture to dismiss instead of snooze.
• Improves the date picker by defaulting to the month that matches the selected event’s start and end dates.
• Improves truncation of repeat labels in the event context panel.
• Improves cursor focus when using the command menu.
• Fixes ⌘ H on macOS not completely hiding Cron in some instances.
• Fixes bringing up the incorrect email when emailing a meeting participant in some situations.
• Fixes selecting the incorrect Webex link for certain event descriptions.
• Fixes pulling incorrect Zoom passcode from Zoom links for certain event descriptions.
• Fixes menu tray interactions to prefer opening up events in Cron vs. conferencing.
• Fixes removal of self from event causing appearance of event acceptance segment view.
• Fixes event switching to all-day when an event is moved in the monthly view.
• Fixes unable to set time zone after switching an event from all-day.
• Fixes upcoming meeting notification on macOS stealing focus when closing (legend #iykyk).
• Fixes inability to select an event chip on the grid in certain situations.
• Fixes grid scrolling unexpectedly when changing a view setting.

Event attachments

Most meetings have relevant documents or links — and as a participant, these resources should be right there at the start of the meeting. Cron now bubbles up event attachments the same way as the link to join conferencing.

To add attachments to an event as the organizer, there’s a new “Docs and links” section in the right-hand context panel. Any link can be pasted and some types are treated distinctively:

• Figma links
• Google Docs, Slides, Sheets, etc.
• Dropbox Paper links
• Notion links

For Notion users, Cron takes it a step further…

Notion pages

Cron lets you connect Notion workspaces to attach Notion pages to events seamlessly. Type to search across your Notion workspace or select from recently visited Notion pages. Share meeting notes, link to relevant resources, or attach a collaborative brainstorming doc without leaving Cron.

“Create Notion page…” even lets you quickly create a new page for the meeting and attach it in one go.

When participants don’t have access to an attached page yet, Cron smartly prompts to grant permissions (full access, edit, comment, or view) to that specific doc.

Connected workspaces are listed in Settings > Integrations > Notion and lay the foundation for more to come.

Other improvements

• Shows meeting room(s) for upcoming meeting in menu bar/system tray and upcoming meeting card.
• Shows availability status when filtering rooms and resources.
• Adds support to open ICS files in Cron on Windows.
• Allows attaching files (also via drag and drop) when sending feedback.
• Fixes occasional unnecessary email update when updating a repeat event series.
• Fixes incorrect scheduling links displayed in the iOS app.
• Fixes RSVP footer incorrectly shown in the iOS app for pinned teammate calendars.

General availability

Cron is now available for everyone! Read more on our blog about this milestone and our continued commitment to building the next-generation calendar.

We’ve removed the waitlist, and everyone can sign up at cron.com. We should be able to handle the traffic now. You can still invite friends or teammates directly (Ctrl/⌘ K > Invite to Cron…).

With general availability (GA), we’re releasing a long list of improvements across all platforms: better event blocking, more robust offline detection, updates to time zones, and much more.

Other improvements

• Adds event previews in Arc browser for Cron for web.
• Adds command (Ctrl/⌘ K) to join conferencing of upcoming or selected event.
• Improves reliability of the iOS widget refreshing data.
• Improves searching time zones with accented characters, e.g., typing “montreal” or “geneva” matches the “Montréal” and “Genève” time zones respectively.
• Improves reminder presets for all-day events (e.g., “1 day before” instead of “5 mins before”).
• Improves auto-blocking events on calendar by removing the block for declined events.
• Updates time zones (e.g., Mexico and Jordan discontinued their use of DST).
• Merges duplicate upcoming events in the iOS widget and desktop menu bar/system tray.
• Simplifies event deletion dialog when meeting is already declined.
• Allows viewing and editing events using your primary time zone on iOS.
• Allows changing event color, visibility, free/busy, and reminders for all events of a repeat series at once.
• Shows days from adjacent months in the date picker for event start and end dates.
• Shows warning toast when attempting to create an event while offline.
• Shows days from adjacent months when choosing the start and end dates of an event.
• Removes pinned teammate calendars that no longer exist automatically from the left-hand calendar list.
• Decreases likelihood the menu bar calendar preview gets hidden on Macs with a “notch.”
• Reduces app bundle size and thus initial loading time of app.
• Fixes Cron on desktop getting stuck in offline mode in rare cases.
• Fixes some labels in all-day section overlapping when weekends are hidden.
• Fixes all-day events of teammates (like OOO events) still showing after hiding their calendar.
• Fixes prompt to change time zone not always shown when traveling, or incorrectly shown when the system and primary time zone are the same.
• Fixes wording in confirmation toast when deleting an event as a participant.
• Fixes upcoming meeting notifications on Windows sometimes not clickable.
• Fixes “Open calendar window” system startup setting on macOS Ventura and Windows.
• Fixes iOS widget going blank or falsely prompting to sign-in again.
• Fixes occasional duplicate events created on auto-blocking calendars.
• Fixes incorrect grid layout when syncing time zones from desktop to iOS.
• Fixes wrong end date shown when creating a multi-day event on iOS.

Cron for web

For people who prefer to have their calendar right there in a browser tab, the full Cron experience is now available on the web. Visit calendar.cron.com and simply sign in with your existing Cron account.

Cron on the web is accessible on all major browsers and any OS: Chrome, Safari, Firefox, and Edge on macOS, Windows, ChromeOS, and Linux. With this, we’re bringing beloved Cron features to a web calendar:

• Multiple calendar accounts in a unified view. Work and personal calendars can now live in the same tab. Connect additional Google accounts at calendar.cron.com/settings/calendars in settings. Learn more
• Event reminder notifications. Receive timely and rich browser notifications. Join conferencing directly from the notification. Learn more
• Dark mode. Enjoy a gorgeous calendaring experience when your OS is in a dark theme. Bright websites stick out like a sore thumb.

We’re excited for you to be able to bookmark or pin calendar.cron.com in your browser for daily use.

Other improvements

• Fixes “Include calendars” setting for the iOS widget not being saved.
• Fixes multi-day events sometimes not shown in iOS app.
• Fixes all-day section layout in the iOS app when showing several events on a single day.
• Fixes declined and not-responded-to all-day events in the iOS app not displaying correctly.

iOS app and widget polish

Since the launch of Cron for iOS, we’ve continuously shipped fixes and added the ability to create and edit custom repeat patterns on the go. Now, we’re bringing new iOS widgets and more improvements to the app.

The Home Screen Widgets show a rich preview of upcoming events, plus a button to quick-add events. The Lock Screen Widget (new in iOS 16) lets you see what’s up next when picking up your phone. In addition to the existing small 1×1 and medium 2×1 widgets showing upcoming events, Cron now has:

• The upcoming events widget in a large 2×2 size.
• A new month view widget in small, medium, and large sizes.

Users now have the option to show all-day events in their widgets. A new in-app widget setting also lets you configure which events to show, whether to hide event titles on the Lock Screen (for privacy), which calendars to include, and more.

The Cron for iOS app also got faster, more robust, and more polished.

Other improvements

• Displays Google Calendar Out of Office (OOO) events that are lasting all day in Cron’s all-day section.
• Displays more all-day events in iOS app by scrolling (previously limited to 4 events).
• Allows to “Delete Cron account” under Settings > Account > Profile.
• Enables creation of all-day events in iOS app by tapping-and-holding on empty spot.
• Enables collapsing/expanding of the all-day section on iOS.
• Enables “Create event from hold” action in iOS app when selecting a shared availability hold on the grid.
• Truncates long calendar titles in the iOS app’s calendar list.
• Improves ordering of events that start at the same time according to RSVP status (macOS menu bar calendar, Windows system tray calendar, and iOS widgets).
• Fixes the today button of iOS app navigating to the incorrect date in specific situations.
• Fixes initial scroll position when opening app near midnight on iOS.

Custom repeat patterns

Cron is adding custom repeat patterns to both iOS and desktop apps. This enables creating unique recurring rules, like “meeting every Tuesday and Thursday,” for example. It also allows setting an end date to repeat events.

When selecting an event’s “Repeat” field, you will see a “Custom…” option at the bottom of the available presets. The custom repeat view allows you to customize day, week, month, or year frequencies. The week option lets you select the days of the week for the event to repeat, while the month frequency allows you to choose an exact date number or a relative day of the month (e.g., the last Wednesday).

We’ve also added the ability to select when a recurrence ends. You can choose an end option of: never, on a specific date, or after a number of times.

Other improvements

• Clarifies dialog when deleting an event as participant without changing it for others.
• Lists organizer in confirmation change set when deleting an event.
• Adds link on iOS app login screen to request account access for people that aren’t Cron users yet.
• Displays start/end times in event’s native time zone in iOS event details bottom sheet.
• Prevents prompting to change the time zone at a new locale when it has already been changed.
• Prevents showing events of temporarily overlaid teammate or participant calendars in iOS widgets.
• Prevents RSVPing to a selected event that is readonly with keyboard shortcut sequence E then Y/N/M (Yes/No/Maybe).
• Fixes week number in the grid header (“Week numbers” setting on) showing incorrectly under specific circumstances.
• Fixes OOO/Focus events showing up in menu bar calendar despite “Events without participants” setting turned off.
• Fixes iOS app going blank on launch and then crashing in rare circumstances.
• Fixes iOS app sometimes showing stale events from previous app sessions.
• Fixes iOS app crashing when tapping create button without having the required Google Calendar permissions.
• Fixes iOS app crashing when making an all-day event multi-day.
• Fixes toggling “Weekends” iOS app setting on/off not taking effect immediately.
• Fixes light/dark theming of certain iOS UI elements, e.g., the RSVP control.
• Fixes “Restart and upgrade” toast on Windows.

Cron for iOS

The iOS app brings the power and design of Cron from desktop to mobile. Get Cron for iPhone and sign right in with your existing Cron account. Cron has everything you need to replace the current calendar app on your phone.

A few highlights:

• Multiple time zones. Pull the time zone column to the right to “travel to any city” and add more time zones. Tap on the time zone headers to rename or reorder — all instantly in sync with your desktop.
• Event Blocking. Cron’s powerful calendar syncing is also available on mobile. Select an event, then tap ⋯ and “Block on calendar…” to swiftly block an event from a personal calendar on your work calendar, for example.
• Widgets. The Home Screen Widget shows a rich preview of upcoming events from all your connected calendars in Cron, plus a button to quick-add events. The Lock Screen Widget (new in iOS 16) lets you see what’s up next when picking up your phone.

And, of course, gorgeous light and dark modes.

A mobile app has been the top request, and we wanted to ensure we did it right. We are taking the same deliberate approach to Android and tablets, and work is well underway. Check out our docs for more info and ways to request platforms and features.

Other improvements

• Allows customizing profile photo in Settings > Account > Profile. Your avatar shows up in the Cron desktop and mobile apps, and externally on meet pages when sharing availabilities.
• Sends availability booking confirmation email to associated calendar account’s email address instead of always the Cron user account’s email address.
• Adds warning icon in the upcoming meeting card, upcoming meeting notification, and menu bar calendar for events where all other participants have declined.
• Improves performance when hovering meeting rooms list.
• Simplifies view selector in app header by nesting “Number of days” in a submenu.
• Updates time zone identifiers America/Nuuk (prev. America/Godthab), Europe/Kyiv (prev. Europe/Kiev), and Pacific/Kanton (prev. Pacific/Enderbury).
• Updates Terms and Privacy Policy effective November 30, 2022 to Notion’s (no changes to the way Cron collects or processes data).
• Fixes resizing event chip spanning two days in the past when weekends are hidden.
• Fixes moving view with arrow keys ← / → when weekends are hidden.
• Fixes order of events in month view.
• Fixes cursor incorrectly staying in “Location” field after confirming autocomplete suggestion via keyboard.

Notification improvements

Cron has two notification systems (system-delivered event reminder notifications and upcoming meeting notifications) and both are improved:

• Adds the event’s location (from “Location” field, meeting room, or conferencing) to notifications — especially useful in hybrid office environments.
• Shows upcoming meeting notifications even if Cron is in macOS fullscreen mode (currently visible or on another virtual Desktop). Note that if another app is in fullscreen mode and currently visible, it can’t show on top of it.
• Tweaks appearance of upcoming meeting notifications on macOS 12 Monterey and newer.
• Increases reliability of event reminder notifications.

People autocompletion improvements

Cron’s contact name/email autocompletion is improved:

• Ranks contacts with frequent and/or recent meetings higher.
• Ranks teammates from within your organization higher.

This applies to the “Participants” and “Meet with” fields in the right-hand context panel, as well as the “Show teammate calendar…” command (hotkey P).

Other improvements

• Fixes “Join meeting” button not working for conferencing links without http(s)://.
• Fixes sub-context menu’s getting dismissed on window blur.
• Improves security of the app.

Help center and docs

We’re introducing a lightweight help center and in-depth docs to make it easier to find information about Cron right when you need it. From the ”?” help button in the bottom-right of the app, select “Help center” for quick access to FAQs, popular guides, and product requests. Or, press G then H to “go to help.”

Other improvements

• Adds informational toast when duplicating or pasting events that have been manually blocked.
• Adds warning toast when attempting to show teammate calendar with P with no team calendar account connected.
• Adds the ability to manually block or unblock multiple selected events.
• Improves conferencing link detection for Around.
• Improves switching between the source and target calendars for manually blocked events.
• Changes reminder notifications to use system time instead of the primary time zone.
• Fixes blocked event chips for the same original event not being merged when the original calendar is not showing.
• Fixes the wrong conferencing ID sometimes showing in the context panel when multiple conferencing options are set.
• Fixes empty time range fields in the context panel when the current grid selection matches the default start time and duration for a new event.

Zoom integration improvements

Cron has always been best in class at creating and joining conference calls. Features like default and custom conferencing and numerous integrations make everything feel seamless. Zoom is our most popular integration, and we’ve made significant improvements under the hood.

Zoom’s own app has the notion of “Upcoming meetings”. Previously, changes to a calendar event with Zoom in Cron wouldn’t be reflected in Zoom’s app. This could lead to wrong notifications, stale room reservations, or confused participants.

With this update, all edits to events in Cron that have Zoom are instantly synced to Zoom’s broader platform. For example, all meetings in Zoom are titled like their calendar event. Even repeat events with Zoom are all kept in sync now.

Everyone with Zoom connected in Cron (Settings > Integrations > Conferencing) will automatically benefit from these improvements. Additionally, any Zoom meeting that seems out of sync with its calendar event can easily be fixed by removing Zoom from it and re-adding Zoom to it.

Other improvements

• Improves visual appearance of merged event chips by showing/hiding additional colored ribbons based on calendar visibility.
• Fixes automatic and manual event blocking for modified instances of certain repeat events created outside of Cron.
• Fixes automatic and manual event blocking for events that change from all-day to a fixed time (and vice versa).
• Fixes error toast improperly showing after manually blocking an event, then selecting the blocked copy.
• Fixes removed system-wide keyboard shortcuts getting reset when restarting the app.

Time zone improvements

Cron has the most powerful time zone support of any calendar. You can add multiple time zones to your grid, personalize their names, and reorder them with drag and drop. To temporarily travel to a time zone, press the Z hotkey. And when scheduling an event, Cron’s instant time zone autocomplete lets you naturally type city names and popular abbreviations.

However, we continuously further improve these core areas based on user feedback:

I’d prefer to always see the time in the detail panel in my timezone rather than what the event was originally scheduled as.

When selecting an event created in a different time zone, Cron’s right-hand context panel now displays the time in your current time zone. Furthermore, you can fluidly “Switch to event’s time zone” and back. It feels just right.

Other improvements

• Improves natural language processing for the “Go to…” command (. hotkey).
• Improves auto-blocking behavior when the same calendar is auto-blocked using multiple Cron accounts.
• Improves event merging and auto-blocking for calendars synchronized by other services.
• Changes the default freebusy status to “Free” when creating all-day events.
• Fixes the N keyboard shortcut selecting the wrong event if the primary time zone and system time zone are different.
• Fixes manually blocked events not updating when the source calendar requires a full sync.
• Fixes events not updating in Cron when the source calendar requires a full sync.

Automatic event blocking improvements

With our recent introduction of automatic event blocking, Cron lets you sync events between entire calendars and accounts. Your feedback has been fantastic, and we’re already auto-syncing calendars for a large number of Cron’s users.

Cron now displays an info toast while the initial auto-(un)block is in progress. Further, we’ve increased the reliability of large calendar syncs. We’ve also resolved a rare crasher when auto-syncing a calendar and removing the same calendar from Cron.

Additionally, shared availabilities are correctly excluded from automatic event blocking, and we now allow circular auto-blocking of calendars. For example, you can show all events from calendar “Personal” as “Busy” on calendar “Work” and show all events from “Work” including details back on “Personal”.

Other improvements

• Adds confirmation dialogs when one-off unblocking an event and when disconnecting a calendar with an active block.
• Improves Ctrl/⌘ K commands when in month view.
• Renames “Remove calendar from list” to “Remove teammate from list” for teammates pinned to the left-hand calendar list.
• Allows outstanding shared availabilities to be confirmed by the recipient even if the calendar account got disconnected from Cron.
• Fixes hold ribbons sometimes showing for confirmed holds after app refresh.
• Fixes hold ribbons showing for disconnected calendar accounts.
• Fixes stale account state in the calendar list after disconnecting an account.

Automatic event blocking

We introduced event blocking to mark a personal doctor’s appointment as “busy” on your work calendar, for example. With automatic event blocking, we’re making this feature even more powerful by letting you sync entire calendars automatically.

As with manual event blocking, right-click on any event and select “Block on calendar”. There, you now have the option to “Block all events” from that calendar. Cron will then automatically block all future events from, for example, your calendar “Personal” to your calendar “Work”.

This prevents double bookings and works in any direction across accounts and calendars. You can choose to share event details or just show “Busy”. You can also one-off unblock or override the visibility.

Give it a try! The best way to set up automatic event blocking is to select any calendar in the left-hand Cron menu and then “Event blocking on calendar” in the right-hand context panel.

Cron aims to empower everyone to be in control of their time — we hope this moves us a big step in this direction.

Other improvements

• De-duplicates event reminders for merged events.
• Shows blocked events on the grid even when the original calendar is hidden.
• Fixes “Block on calendar” menu entry falsely disabled in certain scenarios.

Event blocking

I REALLY need my personal schedule and my work schedule to “talk” — I want to be “busy” on my work schedule when I have personal events and vice versa.

Cron’s event blocking is intuitive and effective: Right-click on an event and select “Block on calendar”. It works in any direction across accounts and calendars. For example, mark a doctor’s appointment from your personal calendar as “busy” on your work calendar. Or block a flight on your personal calendar, so your partner knows your travel schedule.

You can choose to make the original event’s details visible or keep them private. If kept private, it will simply appear as “busy” to people viewing the other calendar.

One-off event blocking builds the foundation for automatic event blocking entire calendars soon to come.

Other improvements

• Shows merged events in the all-day section and month view.
• Improves event merging by automatically de-duplicating more event types.
• Allows copying/duplicating auto-generated events (e.g., flights from Gmail) onto different calendars.
• Allows creating events and availabilities with keyboard shortcut while an input field is focused (⌘ return on macOS / Ctrl Enter on Windows).
• Adds keyboard shortcut to update event without sending an email to participants when prompted (shift ⌘ return on macOS / Shift Ctrl Enter on Windows).
• Re-focuses “Participants” when pressing F in “Meet with” mode.
• Prevents moving “Meet with” event when dragging on another event chip.

Event auto-merge

When overlaying other peoples’ calendars, mutual events show up twice, thrice, and it gets noisier with every participant.

Cron now combines event duplicates into a single event chip, making your schedule easier to read. These merged chips indicate their calendars with multiple colored ribbons.

There’s nothing you have to do, and all common scenarios are covered. For example:

• You toggle on shared calendars from colleagues or friends.
• You “Show teammate calendar…” in the left-hand Cron menu by hovering over the account header’s ⋯ menu (also via Ctrl/⌘ K or directly with hotkey P). To permanently “Pin to calendar list”, right-click on teammates.
• You “Show participant overlay” of a selected event in the right-hand context panel.
• You have two accounts connected to Cron that share calendars among themselves.

Say you’re selecting an auto-merged event on your calendar “Work”, the calendar dropdown in the right-hand context panel will indicate that this event appears on ‘Work and 3 more” calendars. You can continue to move the event etc. — everything just works.

Other improvements

• Auto-shows primary calendar when dragging a teammate onto the grid to schedule a 1:1.
• Adds to list of known cities mapping to time zones.
• Improves picking of colors for teammate calendars to avoid collisions.
• Improves “Send feedback” when offline
• Fixes toggling “Events included in menu bar” switch affecting the setting of other calendars under the same account.

Meeting rooms

Cron now supports adding meeting rooms and other physical resources to events for Google Workspace accounts.

When selecting “Participants and Rooms” in the right-hand context panel for the first time, you can grant access to rooms and resources. After that, you’ll see the new “View rooms and resources” that lets you browse all rooms and resources grouped by availability, building, and floor.

Once a room or resource is added, you can see its availability overlaid onto your calendar and expand its details to see things like how many people fit into the room.

Other improvements

• Matches design of “Participants” (and “Rooms”) suggestions with “Location” suggestions.
• Prevents holding shift from showing “Drag to select multiple events” hint when typing text.
• Fixes ignored clicks on “Day” in the view selector dropdown on Windows.
• Fixes date icon appearing in menu bar when “Menu bar calendar” is turned off in settings.
• Fixes changing the active calendar not immediately reflecting in the right-hand context panel.

More conferencing options

We’re adding support for more conferencing providers. Cron detects their link, surfaces the “Join meeting” button, shows them with icon in the menu bar calendar, etc. In addition to Cron’s existing conferencing integrations, we now support:

• Doxy.me
• Vowel
• Webex

Improvements to conferencing

Default conferencing lets you auto-add conferencing to meetings (once a participant is added) and availabilities. You can set this up in settings and it can be overridden on a per-calendar basis in the left-hand calendar list. New you can now unset default conferencing at the calendar level with the “No conferencing” option.

Another critical improvement is a set of new dialogs when moving events between calendars and accounts. Cron will now prompt to change conferencing to the default for the new calendar, including contextual options like changing the host from one Google Meet account to another. The devil is in the details here, and we took care of the devil.

Lastly, we’ve further improved parsing meeting identifiers and passwords from event descriptions.

Other improvements

• Improves performance of multi-select box (hold shift to select multiple events).
• Improves 24-hour time formatting to disambiguate midnight at the start vs. end of day.
• Fixes adjusting an event’s reminders falsely prompting about pending changes.
• Fixes horizontal resizing in month view for events that span multiple weeks.
• Fixes start/end date input parsing for all-day events.
• Fixes search back button falsely showing without search query.

Multi-select box

We’re introducing a requested quality of life improvement that is a first for a calendar app and pushes Cron’s grid-level interactions to the next level:

I’m going on vacation, so I want to drag a box around all events next week and hit delete.

Dragging and selecting multiple events would be neat, like in a design tool, to move them together!

You can now hold shift and draw a box around multiple events. While still pressing the key, you can also click on individual event chips to toggle their selection.

With multiple events selected, you can — all at once — move them, change their duration, delete them, change their color with a right click, and, if they’re all meetings, even RSVP to them at once. It’s powerful. If the selection includes repeat events, events with participants, or events that can’t be edited, Cron always does the right thing and smartly prompts you as needed.

Other improvements

• Improves drag and drop target rectangle for 0-minute duration events.
• Fixes small regression not showing ”← Search” back button after selecting a search result.
• Fixes small regression always showing Yes/No/Maybe even for organizer.
• Fixes modifier keys sticking after using a global keyboard shortcuts.

24-hour time option

You can set Cron to 24-hour time in Settings > General > Time format if you prefer it over AM/PM.

The 24-hour clock (e.g., 16:30 instead of 4:30PM — sometimes referred to in the United States as military time) is the ISO standard and most commonly used time notation globally.

The preference affects time formatting across time zone columns, event chips, and menu bar calendar. Additionally, time picker suggestions will smartly detect inputs like “16:30”. Lastly, the availability snippets you share reflect your preference. When including a scheduling link, meet pages will format times based on the recipients’ locale.

The default for new users will be based on their Google Calendar settings.

Other improvements

• Auto-hides meeting participant’s calendar when participant is removed from meeting.
• De-duplicates upcoming meeting notifications when showing multiple attending calendars.
• Fixes duplicate event reminder notifications for calendars shared across multiple accounts.
• Fixes crasher when selecting events created by certain apps (Flighty, App in the Air).

Month view

We’re introducing month view in Cron to give you a high-level overview. Use it to plan projects, schedule multi-day trips, or see upcoming holidays. To display month view, simply press M. Navigate by scrolling vertically through the contiguous months and drag events between them. Of course, the arrow keys and J K also work.

Additionally, we’re adding a powerful view selector at the top of your Cron window. Display day/week/month (D W M) or select a custom number of days (2 – 9). You can show/hide weekends, declined events, and week numbers from the same selector. Week numbers are an excellent way to track your yearly progress.

Events created in month view are, by default, all-day events. Click-and-drag, double-click, or press C to create new events. You can drag from the left or right side of an all-day event to extend or shorten it.

Other improvements

• Integrates with app launcher Raycast as one of the default calendars to open events with.
• Adds a simple API for other tools to open Cron to a specific event.
• Adds -, =, ;, and ' as allowed keys when customizing global keyboard shortcuts.
• Adds Setting > Calendar > General > Calendar view > Week numbers.
• Shows week label at top-level (in addition to in mini month navigator and month view).
• Allows changing start and end dates of all-day events by horizontally resizing the chips.
• Fixes erroneously show that calendar accounts were disconnected in certain situations.
• Fixes layout issue with multi-day all-day events that cross hidden weekends.

Cron for Windows

The Cron app for Windows (download link) brings next-generation calendaring to Windows desktops! We made no compromises, and Cron tightly integrates with the system:

• System tray calendar displaying upcoming events.
• Upcoming meeting notifications with join conferencing button.
• Global keyboard shortcuts to open the system tray calendar and to join conferencing.
• Native event reminder notifications.
• Light and dark modes corresponding to the system setting.

On top of that, all core features from Cron for macOS are now available on Windows. You can log in with your existing Cron user account. Press ? to explore Windows-specific keyboard shortcuts. Note that support for Microsoft Outlook calendar accounts will ship separately later. We’re excited to hear your feedback on Cron for Windows.

Cron as Mac Homebrew Cask

For people that install their macOS apps with Homebrew Cask, there is now a cask for Cron:

> brew install --cask cron

Other improvements

• Adds country names to time zone selector (e.g., try Z then “Swe” or “Switz”).
• Adds 4 and 8 hours options for the “Preview upcoming event in menu bar” setting.
• Matches “Start week on” setting in the right-hand date picker.
• Shows active calendar in the context panel when selecting a time range on the grid.
• Adjusts display of multi-day all-day events in menu bar calendar to never show past dates.
• Improves suggestions in start/end time inputs when specifying exact times.
• Prevents grid from auto-scrolling when changing event start/end time via the context panel.
• Disables the color picker in the context panel for events on read-only calendar subscriptions.
• Hides the “Propose new time” button for events on teammate calendars.
• Fixes events with a non-IANA time zone (e.g., some auto-imported flights) freezing the app.
• Fixes resetting global keyboard shortcuts in settings causing a blank screen.
• Fixes importing certain .ics files causing a blank screen.
• Fixes right-clicking to “Paste event” inserting the event at the correct position on the grid.
• Fixes joining the wrong meeting URL when there is a separate meeting URL from the same conferencing provider in the location or description field.
• Fixes clicking the join meeting button in the context panel (or Ctrl/⌘ J) not dismissing corresponding upcoming meeting notification.
• Fixes selecting an event from the menu bar calendar while an event with pending changes was already selected in the main window.
• Fixes scrolling the grid horizontally getting stuck when there is an event 15 minutes or less before midnight.
• Fixes clicking near the edges of the grid unexpectedly scroll for certain window sizes.
• Fixes app becoming unresponsive when typing lots of characters in the command menu.
• Fixes wrong ranges getting copied in rich text fields like event description.
• Fixes certain calendars not appearing in the left-hand Cron menu in rare circumstances.
• Fixes all-day events not showing correct time range in the context panel.
• Fixes occasional invisible “ghost window” creating an unclickable spot on the screen.
• Fixes ⌘ tab on macOS not opening Cron calendar window in certain situations.
• Fixes availability hold creation via double-clicking on the grid.
• Fixes exiting the “Share availability” mode with esc in certain situations.
• Fixes top-level join meeting action sometimes not showing in menu bar calendar.

Meet pages

We’ve drastically improved the external booking pages you create when sharing availabilities. Most notably, recipients see the time zone of the slots and can adjust to view them in any time zone they’d like (defaults to their system clock).

For the recipient, these pages offer a familiar scheduling experience. For the Cron user, turning on “Scheduling link” enables a super-powerful workflow to coordinate external meetings. We have more ambitious plans for these pages; stay tuned!

The sharing availabilities UX for the Cron user is also improved. The title now defaults to “Meeting with <your full name>“. This prevents the “Create” button from getting disabled because a title is required when “Scheduling link” is on. If you know who the meeting will be with, you can adjust the default to, e.g., “Alice / <your first name>“.

Other improvements

• Improves support for non-U.S. and alternative keyboard layouts (e.g., Dvorak).
• Improves layout algorithm to account for 0-minute duration events.
• Improves the app’s behavior when the backend undergoes maintenance.
• Enables scrolling for calendar lists that exceed the height of the window.
• Fixes creation of repeat event series in “Meet with” mode.
• Fixes changing the calendar of a shared availability across multiple accounts.
• Fixes the sound for upcoming meeting notifications playing twice when a notification is showing and changing it in settings.

Invites

You can now invite a friend or teammate to Cron. Simply ⌘ K > Invite to Cron… or access your invite(s) in the bottom-right help menu. We’ll also start showing an invite card in the right-hand context panel when nothing is selected. We hope this is tasteful and helps bring Cron to your community.

Global shortcuts

We have changed the defaults for the two system-wide keyboard shortcuts to avoid conflicts:

• Menu bar calendar control ⌘ K
• Join conferencing globally control ⌘ J

You can change it from the new default to whatever you like: Settings > Calendar > Menu bar.

Other improvements

• Changes keyboard shortcut for “Join conferencing” to ⌘ J.
• Changes event chip style to stripes if all participants RSVPed “Maybe”.
• Shows tooltip “Show/hide Cron menu” (backtick to toggle).
• Enables scrolling for very long calendar lists.
• Fixes events created from holds sometimes not appearing instantly upon hold confirmation.
• Fixes auto-added conferencing sometimes being re-added when creating an event.
• Fixes unable to dismiss settings and feedback views in rare instances.
• Fixes side by side layout of zero-duration events.
• Fixes creating repeat events in “Meet With” mode.
• Fixes showing temporary time zone that matches an existing time zone.
• Fixes copy button not appearing in join meeting button tooltips.
• Fixes positioning of tooltips after resizing the window.
• Fixes toggling all-day for events that start at midnight.
• Fixes help button unread items badge sometimes being reset without opening it.
• Fixes mini month navigator and to/from date pickers not always showing “Today” in the primary time zone.
• Fixes background color when hovering today’s date in mini month navigator.
• Fixes one-in-a-million-crasher for event titles with multi-byte characters at specific positions.

Freebusy and event visibility

You can now easily set Free/Busy and privacy for any event in the context panel. Free/Busy is useful to indicate to teammates (or other tools) that certain windows of time should be blocked or not. The event Public/Private visibility is used to, e.g., prevent anyone from seeing the details of a specific event — the options are nuanced but we explain it clearly with the question mark tooltips in the UI.

We have some cool ideas how to soon take this area one step further by letting you automatically auto-block times from one calendar to another.

Other improvements

• Changes keyboard shortcut to set theme to light/dark from control ⌘ L to shift ⌘ L.
• Enables creation of events with a 0-minute duration.
• Enables changing the color of events as participant.
• Enables direct editing of OOO events (no need to go through Propose new time flow).
• Renders Focus Time events that were created in Google Calendar distinctively.
• Skips the upcoming meeting notification intelligently if the meeting was already joined (e.g., by clicking on “Join meeting” button in the right-hand context panel).
• Improves where an event gets inserted when creating it via ⌘ K “Create event”.
• Prevents auto-adding conferencing on “Create event” without participants.
• Fixes error when creating an event from a hold with default conferencing.
• Fixes opening the browser to the correct Google account when joining a meeting with V.
• Fixes menu bar calendar preview showing “1h left” in cases where it should be “2h left” (and “0m left” instead of “1h left”).
• Fixes settings like added time zones getting reset after restart in rare scenarios.
• Fixes upcoming meeting not showing in context panel for “30 mins before meeting” setting.
• Fixes duplicating repeat meeting only saving the first instance in the series.
• Fixes multi-day all-day event title not displaying sticky when scrolling in rare scenarios.
• Fixes showing default values in “Useful shortcuts” for customizable keyboard shortcuts.

Teammate calendars

Display any teammate’s calendar instantly with the press of a button. No more calendar sharing or using “Meet with” just to check someone’s schedule. You can pin a teammate permanently to your left-hand Cron menu by right-clicking on them.

You find “Show teammate calendar…” in the left-hand Cron menu under the account header’s ⋯ menu, or via ⌘ K. The hotkey P opens it directly.

Drag and drop 1on1s

Schedule a 1on1 meeting with a teammate simply by dragging them from the Cron menu onto your grid. The title is auto-filled, the time set, and the participant added. Even conferencing will already be auto-added based on your preferences. This interaction is so joyful it will make you want to schedule random 1on1s with your team.

Other improvements

• Fetches participant overlays across different accounts.
• Prevents event reminders for drafted holds (“No Title” notification).
• Fixes repeat notifications after dismissal.
• Fixes occasional glitchy vertical chip placement.
• Fixes blocking clicks on an invisible area on the display due to notifications.
• Fixes location autocompletion not working in rare instances.
• Fixes ⌘ A not selecting all text when sharing feedback.

Propose new time

For events where you’re not the organizer, you can now propose a new time. This works either by moving meetings on the grid or with the “Propose new time” button in the right-hand context panel. If you have edit permissions as participant, the button reads “Edit event”, and you can make the change directly. For now, Cron will open to the appropriate flow on calendar.google.com.

Profile settings

The new Settings > Account > Profile page lets users with multiple connected calendar accounts (e.g., Google Workspace work email and personal Gmail) change which account to use as primary account to sign in to Cron.

On the same settings page, you can update your full name and username. The username will be your personal scheduling link at cron.com/… so be quick to grab your preferred nickname!

Other improvements

• Support predictive typing as input method (Chinese Pinyin, Japanese Hiragana - Kana, etc.)
• Auto-shows hidden calendars when adding them as participants in “Meet with”.
• Auto-asks to change time zone to new locations upon launch.
• Adds “Select all” command and menu entry to select all visible grid items.
• Fixes ⌘ A and ⌘ shift A (adds all visible grid items to existing selection).
• Fixes keyboard grid navigation (J, K, →, ←) when interface scale is greater than 100%.
• Fixes grid viewport sometimes shifting when changing interface scale/browser zoom.
• Fixes rescheduling “All events” from the first instance of a repeat event.
• Fixes toggling all-day failing for events that have custom reminders set.
• Fixes date picker off in certain situations for events in a different time zone.
• Fixes rare instances where event editing wasn’t properly disabled for participants.
• Fixes holds on secondary calendars reverting to the primary calendar during sync.
• Fixes keyboard sequence E then U to “Edit meeting duration” of an availability.
• Fixes keyboard sequence E then Z to “Edit time zone” of an availability.

Google Maps links

The location field auto-fills addresses as you type. Once set, the entered location now auto-links to the corresponding place in Google Maps.

Other improvements

• Adds keyboard shortcut shift ⌘ E to show/hide weekends.
• Adds keyboard shortcut shift ⌘ D to show/hide declined events.
• Fixes auto-adding conferencing in “Meet with”.
• Fixes upcoming meeting notification showing in “Meet with” before event is created.
• Fixes duplicate reminder notification appearing above upcoming meeting notification.
• Fixes time zone not applied when importing ICS files in certain situations.

Calendar performance

Cron is used by people that have 100+ calendars, teammates, and resources. Such busy calendars now load much faster through a progressive loading strategy.

Navigation is also much faster to the point where you can press-and-hold down nav keys. The common J and K shortcuts go to next/previous week, and the arrows ← → move the view left and right. Press the period hotkey . to instantly jump to any date.

Other improvements

• Shows toast that drafts are saved when dismissing feedback view.
• Auto-selects correct Google account when opening a Google Meet URL via link-style button.
• Auto-selects correct Google account for “Open selected event in Google Calendar” command.
• Removes menu bar setting switch to include “Events on hidden calendars”.
• Hides “Description” and “Reminders” fields of OOO events.
• Fixes ⌘ + from zooming in twice.

OOO event improvements

Cron now handles Out of Office (OOO) events that were created in Google Calendar better and renders them distinctively. These special events may be just a few hours long, all-day, or even repeat. Other third-party calendars commonly show OOO events with an “Unknown Organizer” and in other incorrect ways.

We also have ideas how creating such OOO “Zones” within Cron will be incredible — let us know if this is a priority for you. We might be able to share a peek.

Other improvements

• Persists the active calendar across launches.
• Fixes booking meeting via scheduling links on secondary calendars.
• Fixes duplicating events (e.g., option drag).
• Fixes all-day OOO events appearing for an additional day.

Default and custom conferencing

We’re introducing two conferencing features at once — and they’re even more powerful in combination.

First, you can choose to auto-add conferencing to new meetings you create. The instant you add a participant, your default conferencing will be added automatically. You can even override the default setting on a per-calendar basis directly in the left-hand calendar list.

Second, you can now save any link as custom conferencing. Cron includes a set of popular default providers such as Zoom, but now you can make your own integrations. Participants will see the link in the location field. This is useful to add links to rooms in tools like Around or Slack Huddles. You can also get creative and add, e.g., FigJam links — the possibilities are endless.

Other improvements

• Hides Google Meet as conferencing option if the Google Workspace disables it.
• Prevents Zoom from generating short (3-letter) meeting passcodes.
• Prevents upcoming meeting notification from showing for “Meeting participants” calendars.
• Excludes declined events from menu bar calendar.
• Auto-selects correct Google account when opening a Google Meet link from the menu bar.
• Fixes declined meeting preventing upcoming meeting from showing in menu bar preview.
• Fixes menu bar calendar temporarily not visible.
• Fixes bad layouts for upcoming meeting notifications due to zoomed interface.
• Fixes upcoming meeting notification of canceled event falsely showing.

Upcoming meeting notification

First, Cron now shows a popup with a big “Join conferencing” button just before the start of a meeting. It’s nifty. You can fine-tune it in settings. It appears in the top-right corner and can even punch through “Do not Disturb” mode. In case you’re running late, it has a one-click “Email participants”.

Second, the standard event reminder notifications are now more actionable, too. In addition to 1-click joining conferencing and emailing participants, you can snooze notifications for various durations.

The entire Cron notification subsystem is improved: clicking a notification automatically shows the event’s details; declined meetings no longer trigger notifications; and Cron picks a better time to ask for notifications permissions (if you don’t get notifications from Cron yet, allow “Alerts” in macOS System Preferences > Notifications > Cron).

Other improvements

• Surfaces “Join conferencing” as top-level button in menu bar calendar.
• Allows “Copy” and “Duplicate” for events on readonly calendars.
• Auto-selects correct Google account in the browser when opening a Google Meet link.
• Enables inserting newlines in multi-line text inputs with shift return.
• Applies set time zone to all instances when creating a repeat series.
• Fixes unable to remove conferencing from event that was created from a hold.
• Fixes autocomplete when deleting a pasted link in “Location” field.

Multiple accounts

Connect additional Google accounts to unify all calendars in a single place.

You may have a work and a personal account, be involved in multiple organizations or just want to keep things separate. Previously, you’d have to tab between calendars. In Cron, simply select “Add calendar account” in the left-hand Cron menu (or press ⌘ K and type “connect”).

Once added, you can reorder accounts in the Cron menu via drag and drop. To clean up previously shared calendars, right-click on them and select “Remove calendar from list”. Invites will be sent from the correct email address. It all just works as calendars always should have.

Other improvements

• Improves handling of incomplete Google OAuth scopes (not all boxes checked).
• Prevents auto-fetching participant overlay when selecting an event with pending changes.
• Fixes Zoom link detection logic for rare edge cases.
• Fixes vertical spacing in right-hand context panel when clicking on participant overlay events.
• Fixes white scroll bar in dark mode when system preference is set to always show scroll bars.

Drag and drop ICS files

ICS files are used for Internet Calendaring and Scheduling sharing or, simply put: many apps allow importing and exporting calendar events with these files.

Cron now supports drag and dropping ICS files onto the Cron window to import events. You can also drop files onto the Cron icon in the Dock (it will even launch Cron if it isn’t already running). To open Cron automatically when double-clicking a “.ics” file, change the “Default calendar app” in Apple’s Calendar app’s settings.

If you ever need to export ICS files from Cron, select the events (hold ⌘ to select multiple) and then press ⌘ K > Export (ICS) selected events.

Other improvements

• Adds system startup settings “Start menu bar calendar” and “Open calendar window”.
• Fixes animation glitch when reordering time zone columns.
• Fixes title/location field input breaking when entering > and continue typing.

New installer

The latest version of Cron comes with a new installer that reflects Cron’s grid-based brand. In addition, you’ll find this visual language applied in other corners of the app and our web presence.

Next-level grid UX

We’ve taken grid-level interactions to a whole new level. Moving items on the grid is as fluid as in no other calendar app. The interaction is delightful and precise. You can select multiple items and drag and drop them.

When navigating to another date, we highlight the day with an orange flash. For example, this happens when clicking in the left-hand mini month navigator or when using the ⌘ K > Go to… command. It’s both delightful and helps you quickly orient yourself.

Furthermore, grid items got a highlight hover state, and Cron more accurately matches colors from Google Calendar.

Other improvements

• Adds ⌘ K command “Change color of selected event” for selected event(s).
• Enables buttons “Go to next/previous event” right away during creation of a series.
• Changes button text in pending changes dialog from “Continue editing” to “Cancel” when deleting an event.
• Hides “Pick an available time on your calendar” once a time is picked.
• Fixes auto-linking of URLs.

More conferencing options

We’re adding support for more conferencing providers. Cron detects their link, surfaces the “Join meeting” button, shows them with icon in the menu bar calendar, etc. In addition to Google Meet, Zoom, and Microsoft Teams, we now support:

• BlueJeans
• Whereby
• Around
• Skype
• Google Duo

Let us know which integration to build next.

Other improvements

• Remembers recent time zones.
• Makes events from the primary calendar take precedence in menu bar calendar.
• Adds switch “Events included in menu bar” when selecting a calendar on the left.
• Adds download link and note on permissions to used invite pages.
• Focuses “Add participant” instead of “Title” when entering “Meet with” mode.
• Enables “Add participant” for participants with edit permissions.
• Enables pasting multiple email addresses at once in “Add participant”.
• Fixes dates getting clipped in right-hand context panel in specific scenarios.
• Fixes “Zoom Connect” appearing in context panel for readonly events.
• Fixes menu bar showing “X m ago” when remaining time left is exactly a multiple of 1 h away.

Share availabilities improvements

Cron’s Share availabilities is the best way to place some holds on your calendar and get a text snippet of those time windows. And it just got a lot better.

The visual overhaul makes the picked slots clearer and fun when “scratching” the slots open. In addition, the same powerful multi-select from events (hold ⌘ while clicking) also works for holds.

The right-hand context panel got more powerful: you can edited fields directly (without having to enter edit mode first), get the snippet in the clipboard automatically after clicking “Create”, and you can delete individual holds from the context panel.

Finally, we’ve dropped the /meet path for cleaner and shorter booking links.

Other improvements

• Shows search field in the right-hand context panel even when an event is selected.
• Ensures the context panel gets focus when entering “Meet with”.
• Ensures selectable text is copied as plain text to the clipboard.
• Disables left-hand calendar list when in “Meet with” or “Share availabilities” modes.
• Disallow F to enter “Meet with” when in “Share availabilities” mode.
• Fixes unable to delete first instance of a repeat series with “This and following events”.
• Fixes visibility toggle (eye icon) not showing in the left-hand Cron menu for long calendar names.
• Fixes falsely showing calendar id when renaming a calendar from within Cron.
• Fixes “Request Entity Too Large” error when saving availability (hold group).

Team scheduling

“Meet with” lets you overlay a teammate’s calendar, pick an available time, and create a meeting in one go. It’s the quickest way to schedule and feels like magic.

The new participant overlay now shows your teammate’s event titles. To inspect the full event details, simply click into their shared events. You can even show participant overlays of already scheduled meetings: select an event with teammates and click the stacked diamond icon in the right-hand context panel. Alternatively, you can “Show participant overlays” by pressing E then F.

Other improvements

• Improves rendering of holds that are longer than 24h.
• Deselects selected items on the grid when selecting a time zone.
• Prevents showing declined events as “upcoming” in the right-hand zero state context panel.
• Prevents auto-showing a participant’s calendar overlay if that calendar is already visible (subscribed to in the left-hand calendar list).
• Fixes autocompletion for recent participants in rare cases not working.
• Fixes menu bar calendar setting to preview upcoming event 30 mins before the event.
• Fixes freebusy background pattern when primary time zone is different from system time zone.
• Fixes URL opening behavior for nested <a> tags in description field.

All-day improvements

The all-day section at the top of each day is core to a calendar. It’s used for all-day activities, birthday reminders, or multi-day vacation plans. And it has just gotten a whole lot better in Cron:

• Multi-day all-day events now display as wide contiguous elements across days.
• Titles use the whole width so that long event names show in full.
• “Sticky” titles fade in and out, ensuring they’re always visible when scrolling.
• Increased responsiveness and performance of the entire all-day section.
• Enables an immediate re-layout of the all-day event section when new events are added.
• Fixes to layout, copy & pasting, and toggling all-day events on/off.

Other improvements

• Adds command ⌘ K > Change color when an event is selected.
• Adds Cron > Settings… to macOS menu (also ⌘ , or G then S).
• Improves legibility of the current time indicator label.
• Improves detection of conferencing details pasted in the location and description fields.
• Fixes Zoom getting stuck at “Connecting…” screen when opening a personal Zoom URL.
• Fixes unable to add Google Meet conferencing in “Meet with”.
• Fixes unable to clear location or description from an event with participants.
• Fixes having to click twice on an event to edit an instance of this event (for newly created repeat events).
• Fixes setting the wrong start time for repeat events with participants if the events are moved before sending the invite.
• Fixes clicking in empty grid space shifting the grid by 1 day in specific scenarios.
• Fixes changing the end day for an all-day event from the date picker.
• Fixes wrong “to” date sometimes showing for holds when the hold time zone is not the primary time zone.

Performance and Reliability

The superior Cron UI and UX are enabled by a rock-solid core engineered for calendar performance and reliability. This summer, we’ve invested in improving three areas of Cron’s core:

1. Performance of the right-hand context panel
2. Reliability of complex repeat events
3. Coverage of time zone math edge cases

Context panel performance

For accounts with thousands of contacts, typing into fields in the right-hand context is now over 10× faster. Keyboard entry could, in certain scenarios, take up to 200ms, which would feel sluggish. This is now down to 16ms per keystroke. We’ve stress-tested this by synthesizing tens of thousands of contacts, events, etc.

These performance improvements will also make grid selections more responsive. As always, if you feel an interaction within Cron isn’t super fast, let us know.

Repeat event reliability

Repeat events can create complex scenarios, especially when combined with participants, time zones, and one-off changes to the series. Many calendaring applications — even the most widely used in the market — reach their limits in these scenarios. This manifests for users through subtle data loss and scheduling errors, not so with Cron.

We have also fixed some bugs in this area of our own:

• Enables deleting repeat series when selecting first instance and option “This and following events”.
• Enables coloring getting picked up by repeat event series.
• Prevents repeat event dialog prompting when creating a new repeat meeting.
• Prevents duplicate event instances in various scenarios when a series has one-off edits.
• Fixes “Discard event” only discarding repeat event series but not original meeting.
• Fixes “Discard changes” not working for certain instances of a repeat series.

Time zone math

Programming time, dates, and time zones is challenging (Just use UTC!) and requires a tremendous amount of attention to get all details right. As a result, Cron’s core is engineered on top of powerful libraries such as date-fns, date-fns-tz, and Intl. While these libraries provide utility functions, a calendar requires quite a bit more.

We’ve hardened our backing store for events to fix subtle symptoms related to time zone math, mainly when occurring around UTC midnight.

• Fixes wrong event layout when changing system time zone.
• Fixes wrong time displayed in menu bar app when changing time zones.
• Fixes date picker off-by-one-day when the set time zone isn’t the primary time zone, and the event crosses a midnight boundary.
• Fixes upcoming events at certain times not showing in the context panel or menu bar calendar.
• Fixes event keyboard navigation with N and B (or shift N) skipping over events.
• Fixes changing the end day for an all-day event from the date picker.

Other improvements

• Fixes “New version available” toast not showing immediately in some instances.
• Fixes reminder notifications in rare circumstances not showing or showing twice.

Cron invites

Cron users can now invite friends or teammates to join Cron. Who from your inner circle would love a better calendar?

Invite via ⌘ K > Invite to Cron… and enter their email address. You’ll also find “Invite to Cron” in the bottom-right help menu. Note that we support Google Accounts at this time. Hang tight, Microsoft and iCloud users!

To start with, each existing Cron user has one invite. Hit us up for more. We’re excited to deliberately grow the Cron network to more people with you.

Other improvements

• Adds tooltip when hovering eye icon next to a calendar and holding option to “Show only this calendar”.
• Special-cases holding option to “Show previously visible calendars” when all but one calendars are hidden to “Show all calendars”.
• Fixes new all-day repeat events incorrectly expanding.
• Fixes unable to add Google Meet conferencing to a new repeat event.
• Fixes creating new repeat events when in “Meet with” mode.
• Fixes showing an extra dialog when discarding a repeat event in “Meet with”.
• Fixes events on participant calendars sometimes disappearing in “Meet with”.
• Fixes duplicating repeat event series when editing it as a participant.
• Fixes a blank/white screen when in some offline scenarios (e.g., spotty Wi-Fi).
• Fixes “this process is hanging” dialog occurring in rare circumstances.
• Fixes changing calendar color from the context panel.
• Fixes missing checkmark in calendar color swatch.
• Fixes setting a dark text color for Google calendars that have a custom color.
• Fixes applying default reminders when creating all-day events (e.g., 10 mins before midnight).

Help menu

The new bottom-right help button makes it easy to learn about the latest Cron product updates and announcements. You’ll receive frequent release notes from us there.

We always love to hear what you think about the product! Let us know by clicking “Send feedback” in the help menu (or pressing G then F anywhere).

Time zone improvements

Working and traveling across time zones is now even more intuitive with Cron. Cron automatically detects when you travel to a new time zone and asks if you’d like to make it your primary time zone. Of course, you can also always manually change and reorder time zones.

You can search for city names, popular city abbreviations, and time standards like “Seattle”, “Ldn”, or “UTC” to add time zones to Cron. We’ve also hidden a few easter eggs. Hint: Batman’s city.

Try searching for your co-workers’ locations — let us know if any search terms are missing.

Other improvements

• Enables one-off changing colors of events for participants (already worked for organizers).
• Shows tooltip with the conferencing URL when hovering over the “Join Meeting” menu bar calendar button.
• Copies “Full name <email>” in clipboard when using copy button next to participant name.
• Fixes blank window when in fullscreen.
• Fixes events not defaulting to active calendar in specific scenarios.
• Fixes event creation failing with a rare combination of reminders.
• Fixes unable to delete repeat event in the past when navigating from search results.
• Fixes some writable secondary calendars not showing up in dropdown and wrongly being grouped under “Calendar subscriptions”.
• Fixes duplicate “Event updated” toast when RSVPing.

Time zone switcher

For people working across time zones, Cron’s time zone columns are incredibly helpful. The new time zone switcher makes it easy to add, change, and rearrange time zones.

• Quickly show as many additional time zones as you want with the plus button.
• Drag and drop a secondary time zone all the way to the right to make it the primary one.
• Rename time zones by double-clicking or right-clicking on the label. Try city names like “SF” / “NYC” / “LON”.

A popular way to just briefly and temporarily see your calendar in another time zone is to press the Z key to “Travel to time zone…“. When you’ve traveled to a time zone, you can now pin it as a permanent time zone column by right-clicking.

Calendar reordering

Just like you can pick up and drag and drop time zone columns, you can now rearrange your calendars in the left-hand Cron menu. The order of your calendars is also reflected in the calendar dropdown in the right-hand context panel.

Other improvements

• Adds Cron > Check for Updates… to the macOS Cron menu (same as ⌘ K > Check for update).
• Adds “Log out” to the user account menu.
• Enables ⌘ return to send invite / update / cancellation (shift ⌘ return to send without email).
• Improves button texts of pending changes dialogs.
• Fixes issues with the “Created by” row in the participants list such as inability to add self.
• Fixes blank window when quitting the native fullscreen mode.
• Fixes right-click on the grid interfering with the 5-min modifier (holding option control).
• Fixes toast saying “cut” instead of “delete” in specific cases.
• Fixes participant display name reverting to email address when using “Meet with”.

Dark mode

Cron dark mode is here — and it looks hot. Light or dark, the intentionally neutral interface makes the calendar content and fiery orange accents really pop.

Set Cron to your preference in Settings > General > Theme:

• Auto — automatically follows your system appearance. This is the default.
• Light mode — now with bolder colors and higher contrast between past and future events.
• Dark mode — the gorgeous new dark mode, complementing our light mode.

You can also set it via ⌘ K > Set theme… or even quick-toggle the theme between light and dark with shift control L.

To achieve a uniform look and stay true to all possible calendar colors, we use the CIECAM02 color space and apply a set of transforms. We iterated on both modes because custom colors, viewing conditions, and personal preferences vary greatly. Let us know what you think, and we continue polishing it.

Desktop app improvements

Multiple improvements to the Cron macOS desktop app are culminating right now. The initial launch time is faster, a few issues with the native fullscreen mode are resolved, and dragging the Cron window is extended to headers of in-app modal views like the settings and feedback views.

Lastly, we’ve removed the “Switch to Cron Classic” option — big thanks to all the early users at this point.

Other improvements

• Improves suggestions for time inputs that include an explicit “am”/“pm”.
• Fixes exact times in “to” time field being interpreted as durations.
• Fixes tabbing from “start” time field focusing the wrong field in specific scenarios.
• Fixes esc not defocusing radio controls.
• Fixes holds disappearing in specific scenarios while sharing an availability.

Calendar options

Core properties of calendars can now be edited right within Cron.

Select any calendar from the left-hand Cron menu to inspect its details in the right-hand context panel. Rename the calendar, add a description, or change its default color. More actions such as “Remove calendar from list” are accessible in the ⋯ menu or following the “Settings and sharing” link.

The most common actions are quickly available by simply right-clicking on a calendar in the left-hand calendar list.

Two pro tips for the calendar list:

• Quickly “Make default calendar” by clicking on the color indicator to the left of the calendar name.
• Quickly “Show only this calendar” by option clicking on the visibility icon to the right of the calendar name. option click again to restore the previous state.

Other improvements

• Improves how Zoom meetings show up in the Zoom up (duration, time zone).
• Fixes entering “Share availabilities” via the command menu not focusing the title field.
• Fixes performance issue when adding (searching) for certain participants.
• Fixes typing certain values in the to time input hiding the “Choose other time” footer row.
• Fixes typing certain values in the “to time” input, causing the start time to get changed.
• Fixes ampersand characters in event titles in the menu bar calendar not showing up.

Search

The new top-right search bar lets you search for events across all your calendars. Results show almost instantly as you type. Just hit / or ⌘ F to start searching. You’ll also find search in Cron’s ⌘ K command menu.

Search is super helpful to look up people you’ve met with, figuring out when you’re going to meet with someone, or even retrieve a restaurant you’ve dined at. We search across event name, description, the participants, their company names, etc. If you found a long list of results, scroll down for future events and up for past events.

Clicking on a result brings up its full details in the right-hand context panel while keeping your current position in the calendar. With “Go to selected event”, you can scroll the grid to the search result. If you want to select and go to the event directly from the search result list, simply hold option when clicking on it. Both “Select event” and “Select and go to event” are also available by right-clicking on a search result.

Give it a try. If something doesn’t behave as you’d expect, or you can’t find a specific event — or you just think this is the best calendar search ever, let us know!

Other improvements

• Adds a “Created by” row in the participants list for events created by a non-participant.
• Makes search keyboard shortcuts (/ or ⌘ F) also work in the keyboard shortcuts help list.
• Enables instantly canceling a meeting as participant without sending an email notification by pressing shift ⌘ delete.
• Improves positioning of right-click context menu when they get close to the window edge.
• Improves start and end time parsing when input includes colons, periods, and commas.
• Uses start and end time from the current grid selection when creating an event.
• Auto-selects start and end time suggestions when clicking into another field or whitespace.
• Auto-deselects past events earlier when there are other events upcoming.
• Auto-dismisses right-click context menu when opening command menu.
• Shows hint when dragging multiple selected objects across a hidden weekend.
• Shows in-app warning notification when attempting to delete an event via keyboard shortcut without permission.
• Renders conferencing as link (not button) for events that lie further in the past.
• Fixes (once and for all) calendar visibility (eye icon) sometimes reverting after toggling show/hide.
• Fixes events that have been duplicated, occasionally not reacting to clicks anymore.
• Fixes editing event reminders causing pending changes for repeat events.
• Fixes a few edge cases of “Go to next/previous event in series” buttons for complex repeat patterns.
• Fixes falsely including “Meet with” participant calendars in menu bar calendar preview.
• Fixes behavior of esc (“Travel back home”, “Meet with”, settings dropdowns, and right-click menus).

Grid multi-select

Select multiple objects on the grid to manipulate them at once: you can move, resize, color-code, cut/copy/duplicate, and delete them instantly in one go. If they’re all meetings, you can even RSVP Yes/No/Maybe to all selected events.

To select multiple objects, just hold shift or ⌘ when clicking on other objects to add to/remove from the selection. You can also hover over objects with your mouse cursor and press the X key to select/deselect the highlighted object.

Grid navigation improvements

Navigate to the next/previous event/hold by pressing N for next and B for back (shift N also works to go back). This lets you move around the grid more efficiently using just the keyboard. If nothing is selected on the grid, pressing N will smartly select the upcoming meeting or next event/hold from now.

When selecting a repeat event, you find new next/previous arrow buttons to the right of the repeat pattern. These let you quickly navigate to next/previous occurrences in the series, e.g., to jump directly from today’s 1:1 meeting to the one next month. With a repeat event selected, this is also possible via keyboard with the ⌘ K commands “Go to next event in this series” / “Go to previous event in this series”.

Finally, we smartly show a small icon in the top-right of the context panel when scrolling away from your grid selection. This allows you to bring the selection back into view with a simple click. It’s also possible via keyboard with the commands “Go to selection” (“Go to selected hold” / “Go to selected event” respectively).

Other improvements

• Adds command “Email participants” in command menu (also E then E) for events that allow it.
• Shows in-app warning notification when attempting to join conferencing with global shortcut and upcoming meeting doesn’t have conferencing.
• Auto-unhide the active calendar when creating a hold on it.
• Allows opening settings with ⌘ , while an input field is focused.
• Improves error messaging in case of spotty network connectivity.
• Improves reliability of our API.
• Fixes date picker sometimes off by one day when primary time zone doesn’t match system time.
• Fixes declined events not show up in menu bar calendar when “Events without participants” setting is off.
• Fixes declined events showing up in menu bar calendar when “Declined events” is off.
• Fixes changed RSVP statuses of repeat events temporarily not being saved.
• Fixes “Meet with” and scheduling links temporarily not being available.
• Fixes view falsely auto-scrolling to current time on every minute.
• Fixes resetting a custom-colored event to the calendar’s default color.

Right-click context menu

We’ve added a right-click menu to quickly access common actions.

Right-clicking on event chips lets you color-code them, cut/copy/duplicate, and delete. If it’s a meeting, you can instantly RSVP Yes/No/Maybe, email the participants, and join conferencing. The menu also exposes some of the more advanced keyboard shortcut sequences like pressing E quickly followed by another letter to edit the selected event, e.g., E then Y to RSVP Yes. See the full list of sequences by pressing ?.

Right-clicking on availability holds lets you do cool things like quickly turning a hold into an event.

Right-clicking on the empty grid lets you create new events right there, and paste cut/copied events in place. When you right-click on an open spot, we show a small line on the grid to indicate at what exact time the event gets created or pasted.

The ability to perform contextual actions via a secondary click is one of the key differences between websites/“web apps” and “real productivity software” — we love the efficiency and overall feel it adds to Cron.

Event chip coloring

Color-coding of event chips on the grid is here. One-off changing the color of individual events and meetings separately from their calendar color is useful prioritize and group.

After selecting an event on the grid, open the calendar dropdown with the colored dot in the right-hand context panel to override the event color. It’s fully keyboard accessible and, of course, events can also be colored directly from the new right-click menu.

Smarter time suggestions

We’ve significantly improved keyboard entry autocompletion for the from/to time input fields in the right-hand context panel.

As you type, the top suggestion is preselected, reflected live on the grid, and can be confirmed instantly by pressing return or tabbing to the next field. The suggestions are ranked smartly taking multiple factors into account. For example, numbers 8 to 11 show AM suggestions first (e.g., “9AM” before “9PM”) whereas 1 to 7 show PM suggestions first (e.g., “2PM” before “2AM”) to predict times you’ll more likely use.

If you notice any specific instances where your input doesn’t produce the suggestions you’d expect, let us know.

Other improvements

• Maintains time offset (vertical scroll) when returning to “Today” and today isn’t in view.
• Scrolls to the current time when today is in view and “Today” / T is clicked/pressed again.
• Enables clicking outside command menu to dismiss it.
• Fixes showing stale data in right-hand context panel after discarding pending changes in some scenarios.

Location autocomplete

As you might start to schedule restaurant dinners and coffee catch-ups again, Cron’s location field now auto-fills addresses and suggests places in the real world. It autocompletes blazingly fast as you type, and additionally, remembers your recent locations for quick access.

“Today” and next/previous buttons

We have added navigation buttons next to your user account avatar in the header area. While horizontally scrolling your calendar is delightful with trackpads, clicking buttons is another excellent way to navigate the calendar, especially for mouse users:

• Go to today T
• Move view right/left → / ←

For power users, holding option when clicking the “Today” or next/previous buttons offers quick access to alternate actions:

• Left-align today in view option T
• Go to next/previous week J / K (moves exactly 7 calendar days, even when you, e.g., only display 3)

Whether the default behavior of navigating back to “Today” is the first or the second behavior is customizable in Settings > General > Calendar navigation.

If you rather keep your hands on the keyboard and don’t remember all the shortcuts, look them up with ? or just bring up the command menu with ⌘ K and start typing…

Other improvements

• Allows adjusting grid time range selections by dragging right after the double-click on the empty grid to create the selection.
• Adds ⌘ K command “Open selected event in Google Calendar”.
• Adds commands “Display day view” (also 1 or D), “Display week view” (also 0 or W), and “Set number of displayed days” accepting 1 to 31.
• Improves the position the calendar is scrolled to after setting the number of displayed days.
• Improves repeat dropdown by showing smart date-relative suggestions (e.g., “Every month on last Thu”).
• Streamlines context panel UI by omitting All-day/Time zone/Repeat fields for readonly events.
• Makes it more obvious that clicking a calendar’s color indicator in the left-hand Cron menu makes it the default calendar for new events.
• Fixes regression of stuck “Checking for update” toast when manually checking for an update using ⌘ K.
• Fixes calendar visibility (eye icon) sometimes reverting after toggling show/hide.
• Fixes typing umlauts (ä, ö, ü) and other combined characters in multi-line input fields (Title, Location).

Launch performance

Starting today, Cron displays your schedule for the day significantly faster at initial launch.

While speed is invisible when looking at static screens, we view it as one of the most valuable assets in software. A snappy calendar is the difference between one integrating smoothly into your life, and one called upon reluctantly.

To feel the engineering quality, try ⌘ K > Go to… (also simply the period hotkey .) to navigate to any date by typing. Cron will bring up the day and your schedule instantly.

Smart calendar view positioning

Cron’s calendar view aims to always serve you exactly what’s relevant for you to see. For example, if you’re viewing “Today”, you’ll likely always want to have “now” — and the hours ahead — automatically in view. However, when scrolling to morning or evening hours, you wouldn’t want to randomly get reset to the current time and loose your place. Cron now combines a sophisticated set of heuristics that mostly should remain unnoticed and always feel just right.

When you switch back to Cron after e.g. longer meetings, we’ll also smartly deselect stale selections and serve you what’s upcoming next. Similarly, when you switch back to Cron in the morning, we’ll have smartly guided you back to today, if you have left off on far away dates. However, we never make assumptions about when you go to bed and you’ll never loose pending changes or open dialogs.

If you notice any specific instances where your calendar view isn’t positioned exactly as you’d expect, let us know.

Other improvements

• Improves menu bar calendar event preview prioritization for events with the same start time.
• Streamlines context panel UI by subduing the join conferencing action button when there’s a send invite/update/cancelation button.
• Fixes availability slots created via from/to inputs in the right-hand context panel not appearing on the grid or in the snippet.
• Fixes creating Zoom meetings for orgs with strict password requirements.
• Fixes bottom grid gap showing at higher density settings (View > Zoom Hours Out).
• Fixes dynamic dock icon not updating on spotty connection and/or when coming back to Cron after a long period of time.
• Fixes arrow keys → / ← moving the viewport an incorrect number of days when hiding weekends.

Menu bar improvements

We introduce two additional preferences that let users configure whether they want to include the “Event title” and “Event time” in the menu bar event preview.

The switches are on by default, not changing anything. When switched off, however, these preferences let users dial Cron’s menu bar calendar all the way down to a minimal icon-only appearance. This is, e.g., useful on narrower screens. The four resulting appearances are:

1. Event title + time (default)
2. Event title only
3. Event time only
4. Don’t preview title nor time (shows square icon with today’s date)

We recommend moving the Cron menu bar calendar to the right towards the system clock by holding ⌘ and drag and dropping it there in any case. This ensures it always has room to show your upcoming event.

Further, we’ve improved the display of declined events in the menu bar. They no longer show up as menu bar preview and in the expanded menu bar calendar appear subdued to indicate they’re canceled events.

Other improvements

• Adds command ⌘ K > Create event (also simply C) to start creating a new event via keyboard.
• Improves vertical positioning of the command menu, and other modal dialogs and views.
• Fixes erroneously resetting the calendar view to the year 2000 (Y2K!) when resizing the window so narrowly that day columns are zero-width.
• Fixes specific scenarios where changing calendar of repeat events could lead to errors.
• Fixes error when changing calendar of auto-generated event from Google by disabling it.

Calendar sync improvements

We’ve made lots of improvements under the hood of calendar list syncing.

Adding or removing a calendar external (e.g., in Google Calendar) now is reflected instantly in Cron. The change also fixes a teammate’s calendar not appearing in “Meet with” if the calendar has been manually shared and toggled its visibility off. Finally, it also fixes not able to hide calendars reliably in specific scenarios.

Other improvements

• Adds hover state for in-app notification messages (bottom-right “toasts”).
• Simplifies body texts of toasts.
• Disables entering “Share availabilities” from “Meet with” and vice versa.
• Disables selecting events from the menu bar calendar when a modal dialog is visible.
• Fixes not able to change an event’s calendar in specific scenarios.
• Fixes bad request when changing time zone after toggling all-day.

Dynamic dock icon

Starting today, Cron’s macOS dock icon features the current date. Not only is it helpful to see today’s date at a glance, but it also looks terrific in your dock. When Cron is quit completely, the icon displays the number “31” to symbolize a calendar.

Cron’s icon is designed to fit perfectly into macOS 11 Big Sur. The blocks spelling “cron” describe a grid to echo the calendar grid. The icon feels like a nod to past decades of great design and like something laser-edged from the future. We hope you love it.

Other improvements

• Adds a preference to let T always left-align today in view under Settings > General > Calendar navigation.
• Adds keyboard shortcut ⌘ 1 to show the Cron window when it’s closed.
• Improves conferencing link detection for specific Zoom link formats.
• Syncs user account info more smartly to never see stale data (e.g., avatar).
• Fixes Zoom link not showing in booking link meeting confirmation email.
• Fixes RSVP change notification emails not sending in specific scenarios.
• Fixes issue blocking Cron from cleanly quitting that results in a blank screen.
• Fixes menu bar not appearing in rare scenarios.
• Fixes menu bar showing a unicode question mark on macOS 10.15 Catalina.

Settings

Cron now features a complete settings view. Go to it by clicking on your avatar or pressing G then S to “Go to Settings” (the standard Mac app shortcut to open preferences ⌘ , works too).

Select highlights:

• Set general preferences for your calendar such as whether to show weekends and what day to start the week on.
• Fine-tune what events to include in Cron’s menu bar calendar.
• Customize your system-wide keyboard shortcuts to quickly join the upcoming meeting (option ⌘ V by default) and show/hide the menu bar calendar (option ⌘ K by default).
• Connect and configure future and current (Zoom) 3rd party integrations.

We work hard on clever heuristics to always do “just the right thing” for you. Hence, you won’t find random knobs and dials in Cron’s settings that would push these decisions onto you. Instead, we introduce well-organized settings for essential configuration and customization.

Other improvements

• Shows tooltip when hovering “Join meeting” button with the full URL to not just quick-join, e.g., a Zoom meeting but also quick-copy its URL, if needed.
• Improves which conferencing the “Join meeting” button prioritizes (Location over Description over “native” conferencing, e.g., default Google Meet).
• Auto-expands organizer card when changing RSVP of a repeat event.
• Includes events without participants (e.g., created by an organizer but with participants hidden) in the menu bar calendar by default.
• Fixes invites sent from non-Google accounts (e.g., Microsoft Teams) not showing up in the menu bar calendar.

Menu bar calendar

Cron now includes a mini-calendar that lives always-visibly in your system menu bar. See your schedule and join upcoming meetings with a single click. The menu bar calendar is tightly integrated with the rest of Cron, enabling a best-in-class experience.

• Changes to events and invites to new meetings are reflected instantly in the menu bar.
• Event statuses such as “Unresponded”, “Maybe”, or “All participants have declined” are communicated with small icons resembling the corresponding event “chips” on the big calendar grid.
• Common actions for the upcoming event, like changing the RSVP status or emailing participants, can be done right from the menu bar.
• During a meeting, the menu bar shows the remaining time of the current meeting so you can manage your time.
• If you’re in back-to-back meetings, we will smartly inform you of your upcoming meeting to get ready before the current meeting ends.

To open the menu bar calendar without picking up your mouse, use the system-wide keyboard shortcut option ⌘ K (think of it as an option to Cron’s in-app ⌘ K). You can even join the upcoming meeting from anywhere with option ⌘ V.

Other improvements

• Improves the layout of collapsed organizer card in right-hand context panel.
• Fixes various API errors for edge cases.
• Fixes event duration reverting when subsequently changing the event’s calendar.
• Fixes pending invites getting discarded when subsequently changing the event’s calendar.

Participant list improvements

We’ve improved a core section in the right-hand context panel: the list of meeting participants.

For meetings with many participants, we show you the most important ones — including the organizer and yourself — and smartly collapse the list. This allows you to quickly RSVP without having to expand the list or scroll down.

We’ve also colored the response statuses semantically (green/red/yellow) to see who has accepted/declined/tentatively accepted.

Other improvements

• Improves deleting of events with participants and clarifies when cancelation emails get sent.
• Improves deselecting events and holds when clicking in whitespace (e.g., in the left-hand Cron menu, time zone column, app header, right-hand context panel).
• Improves background timers for accurate-to-the-second reminder notifications.
• Improves interaction with tooltips.
• Sets the time zone for repeat events to the calendar’s primary time zone.
• Fixes deleting repeat events when previously removing a set time zone.
• Fixes deleting events that have just been moved.
• Fixes Daylight Saving Time (DST) time zone offsets in an event’s time zone menu.
• Fixes regression with repeat event expansion.
• Fixes permission model on the backend, potentially showing incorrect data.
• Fixes launching external browser when clicking links in an event’s description.
• Fixes holds having wrong time (time zone) when created in a secondary/traveled to time zone.
• Fixes events having wrong time when the system time zone is different from the calendar’s primary time zone.

Keyboard shortcuts help

Cron’s keyboard shortcuts let power users control most actions purely via the keyboard. We’ve added a comprehensive keyboard shortcut cheat sheet to make the powerful keyboard shortcuts accessible to more users. Press ? at any time to bring it up. Press / to find useful shortcuts in the list (⌘ F also works).

In addition to general shortcuts, the list includes keyboard shortcuts for calendaring workflows, event editing, the calendar view, calendar navigation, and app navigation. We’re certain that even power users find new shortcuts that they might want to incorporate into their day.

Feedback button

We <3 your feedback. Be it bug reports, feature requests, nit-picking, or grand ideas, we want to make it as easy as possible to share anything Cron and time-related on your mind with us. Time is your most valuable resource, and we are here to get this right for you.

Bring up the in-app feedback dialog with the bottom-right feedback button, or simply by pressing G then F to “Go to feedback”. If you share a bug report about a specific event, select it on the grid before opening the dialog, and it will auto-attach debug info.

Other improvements

• Adds multi-key sequences (E then …) to edit each event field (view all sequences in ?).
• Adds option in “Share availabilities” meeting duration menu to make it the “Duration of hold”.
• Adds confirmation dialog when canceling out of “Share availabilities”.
• Auto-expands the organizer’s card in the right-hand context panel if RSVP is outstanding.
• Hides “Add participant” input when it’s disabled (e.g., because the event is read-only).
• Streamlines command “Show/Hide days” to just “Show/Hide weekends”.
• Improves display of time zones for daylight saving time (DST).
• Improves “Share availabilities” snippet to show local time zone abbreviation by default.
• Improves click-handling in menu items (select on “mouseup”, not “mousedown”).
• Improves click-handling and hovering over elements when another menu is open.
• Fixes editing “All events” of a repeat series in specific scenarios.
• Fixes moving of repeat events that have a different time zone than grid time.
• Fixes splitting a repeat series always sending a notification email for the new series, even if the “no email” option was selected.
• Fixes incorrect time zone display for exceptions of repeat event series.
• Fixes occasional logouts in specific scenarios.
• Fixes not detecting certain Zoom link formats correctly.
• Fixes double-clicking close to the current time on the grid to create a selection sometimes not focusing the title field.
• Fixes ⌘ K not opening command menu when account menu (via avatar) is already open.

Recent contacts

Cron now remembers the five most recent people you’ve scheduled a meeting with for quick access. As you start typing, Cron suggests other relevant contacts. While some products only show you manually added contacts, Cron smartly autocompletes attendees of previous meetings, etc. If you want to manually remove a recent contact, just hover over the icon to the right of it to remove it.

Personal Meeting ID (PMI) and passcode settings

If you have the setting “Use PMI for scheduling meetings” enabled in Zoom, Cron will use your configured stable PMI and passcode when adding a Zoom link to a meeting. If this setting is off, Cron will protect your Zoom calls with a secure one-time PIN and include it in the meeting for you and participants to join with a single click.

Other improvements

• Improves syncing grid time to system time when foregrounding the app for an instant accurate-to-the-second display.
• Fixes prompting dialog prematurely when there’s still a visible focus in the right-hand context panel.
• Fixes creating availability hold on a secondary calendar getting the wrong color.

Meet with…

“Meet with” lets you overlay a teammate’s calendar, pick an available time, and create the meeting in one go. It’s the quickest way to schedule a meeting and feels like magic.

Enter the contact you want to meet in ⌘ K > Meet with…, or in the zero state of the right-hand context panel (to focus the input, simply press F). If the contact’s calendar is visible to you (e.g., part of the same Google Workspace), their avatar shows a colored ring and their calendar appears in the left-hand Cron menu in a temporary section called “Meeting participants”.

When adding a participant regularly to a new or existing event through “Add participant”, we also automatically pull visible calendars for you.

Email participants

You can now email all or individual meeting participants by selecting the envelope icon next to them. Alternatively, with an event selected, hit ⌘ K > Email participants.

Other improvements

• Allows “Mark optional” for participants by clicking on the ⋯ button next to the participant.
• Shows plain text conferencing link (vs. big join button) during event creation.
• Improves copy & pasting and rich text formatting (e.g. bullet points) in event description field.
• Improves adding participants when changing focus away from the participants field.
• Adds support for “Etc/UTC” time zone.
• Fixes “Discard event” option not deleting the entire series for a repeat event.
• Fixes situations where editing an event with participants could fail after changing calendars.
• Fixes ordering of participants list when duplicating an event.
• Fixes instances where the organizer couldn’t remove themselves from an event.
• Fixes sending event invite prematurely when marking participant optional.
• Fixes moving the mouse off of a participant suggestion clearing the input field.
• Fixes event description not de-focusing when pressing esc.

Context panel zero state

When nothing is selected on the grid, we show you a new zero state on the right that attempts to always serve the most helpful actions to you.

We show you useful shortcuts, single-click access to popular functions such as “Share availability”, and the best: if there’s an upcoming event, we show you a card with quick actions such as joining the conferencing.

When selecting an event or hold, the right-hand context panel still shows you the details of those items. To get back to the zero state, simply deselect the event or hold.

Other improvements

• Adds commands and keyboard shortcuts to display day view (1 or D), display 2 to 9 days (numbers 2 to 9), and display week view (0 or W).
• Adds educational hints to edit repeat events and meetings with participants instantly by holding ⌘.
• Auto-deletes event when creating an event with participants and discarding the pending changes.
• Lets arrow keys → / ← move the view by the number of displayed days (J / K continue to move exactly one calendar week).
• Fixes dragging event that’s close to the all-day section down causing view to scroll up.
• Fixes instantly reflecting event edits made outside Cron due to a double UTC conversion of the last modified timestamp.

Grid density and resizing

We have drastically improved the vertical layout of the grid and added user controls to fine-tune it.

By default, the vertical density of the grid should always feel “just right”. If you resize Cron’s window to taller than 24 hours, we start increasing the row height but smartly keep you anchored in place. If you’re on a smaller screen and want that high-level overview, so you never have to scroll, we give you some controls to manually make the view more compact (or the opposite).

• See fewer hours for a more comfortable view: View > Zoom Hours In (also shift ⌘ .)
• See more hours for a compact view: View > Zoom Hours Out (also shift ⌘ ,)
• Reset to default grid density: View > Default Hour Size (also shift ⌘ 0)

You’ll also find commands for these in the ⌘ K command menu.

Other improvements

• Fine-tunes interaction when dragging short event chips (e.g., 15 mins).
• Combines start and end time into a single “Time” row in an event’s pending changes changelog.
• Improves dialogs when deleting a repeat event.
• Improves auto-saving behavior when backgrounding or closing Cron window quickly after making changes.
• Improves participants suggestions.
• Improves layout of inline quick-copy buttons.
• Changes keyboard shortcut for “Join meeting” button to V (previously M).
• Fixes remove participant button showing in pending changes dialog.
• Fixes “Go back to today” button in the left-hand mini month navigator.
• Fixes cursor position when clicking into margins of text input field.

Pending changes dialogs

We’re introducing well-designed dialogs to serve you appropriate actions when editing events.

There are dozens of permutations of dialogs to edit repeat events, events with participants, repeat events that also have participants, etc. Typically, you’ll be able to save the changes; keep the changes and continue editing; or discard the changes. Below the horizontal divider line, we summarize the pending changes in a “changelog.”

We’re also adding a few pro workflows that allow bypassing the dialogs by holding ⌘ or shift ⌘ when performing certain edits:

When moving a meeting or repeat event…

• “Commit instantly” by holding ⌘: edits “this event” only without confirmation.
• “Update instantly no email” by holding shift ⌘: commits instantly and doesn’t send a notification email.

With a selected meeting or repeat event…

• “Delete instantly” by pressing ⌘ delete: send cancelation without confirmation.
• “Cancel instantly no email by pressing shift ⌘ delete: deletes instantly and doesn’t send a notification email.

Other improvements

• Fixes auto-adding conferencing when creating event from hold.
• Fixes relative day language (i.e., “Today”, “Tomorrow”) in “Share availabilities” snippet due to time zone double conversion.
• Fixes repeat event chips flickering and disappearing in certain situations.
• Fixes bad request when editing repeat event with “This and following events” option.

Mini month navigator

The left-hand Cron menu now features a month overview and date picker. It highlights the current day as well as the displayed days. This makes it obvious what week you’re looking at. The mini month navigator provides a high-level monthly overview and quickly navigates a few weeks or even months.

To show/hide the Cron menu, click the top-left button or press ~ (the key under the esc key).

Cut, Copy, Paste, Duplicate

With a selected event or hold, you can now use standard functions and keyboard shortcuts like cut (⌘ X), copy (⌘ C), paste (⌘ V), and duplicate (⌘ D). You can also duplicate by holding the option key and dragging an event or hold.

With a cut/copied event or hold, we try to find the most appropriate position to insert it when pasting. You can, e.g., navigate somewhere, click on the grid, press ⌘ V, and it will paste it right there.

All these commands are also available in the command menu and in the Mac menu bar under “Edit”.

Other improvements

• Adds “Every 2 weeks” (bi-weekly) and “Every month” options to repeat dropdown.
• Adds “Delete” reactive to grid selections in the Mac menu bar “Edit” menu.
• Improves event title and time layout on the grid to maximize number of displayed characters and avoid truncation.
• Improves formatting of Zoom IDs in the right-hand context panel.
• Changes checkboxes to switches where appropriate (Scheduling link, All-day).
• Resets the RSVP (response status) of participants when updating a meeting.
• Fixes tabbing away from conferencing field resetting it.
• Fixes context panel getting focus after deleting an event.

Quick-join meeting button

The join meeting button lets you instantly join conferencing calls.

Cron auto-detects conferencing links in the location or description fields and serves the prominent button. Joining meetings from Cron opens natively-installed apps like Zoom directly, without opening a browser tab first. Common conferencing links that are supported included Zoom links, Google Meet links, and Microsoft Team links.

Quick-copy buttons

All context panel fields that often get copied, such as participants’ email addresses, now have inlined quick-copy buttons on hover. This lets you copy values from the Cron UI to your clipboard with a single click.

Other improvements

• Updates the current time indicator the moment Cron’s window becomes visible.
• Enables resizing the window to full size when double-clicking on draggable header area.
• Improves when to prompt for editing repeat events (e.g., when adding conferencing).
• Improves the language in “Send without email” toast notifications.
• Improves what month the title shows based on scroll offset and current date.
• Improves layout for “Conferencing” and “Location” subsections in the right-hand context panel.
• Turns “Repeat”, “Conferencing”, and “Calendar” inputs into dropdowns.
• Adds eye icon to calendar dropdown to toggle visibility of calendars right there.
• Adds icons to conferencing dropdown menu.
• Adds icons to “Share availabilities” ⋯ action menu.
• Disables booking link until the availability is created.
• Disables create and edit functions when offline.
• Fixes confirming booking link on non-primary calendar creating duplicate meeting.
• Fixes falsely showing logged-in user as participant on shared calendar events.
• Fixes the event description field not showing line breaks correctly.
• Fixes incorrect number of pending changes when changing both start and end time.

Share availabilities

Coordinating a time to meet often ends up in a message ping-pong that takes forever. And just sending over a Calendly link might be weird in some instances. With Cron “Share availabilities”, you shortcut the message ping-pong.

Simply press S to enter the “Share availabilities” mode and copy available time slots from your calendar to email and messages in seconds. Once you have experienced it, there’s no going back. The shared holds remain on your calendar alongside your regular events.

You can set a title, duration, recipient time zone, and even conferencing. Once a time is confirmed, simply click on the hold and select “Create event from hold” from the ⋯ menu. The hold will turn into an event, auto-create the conferencing link, and free up all the other holds from this group.

If you want to offer the recipient to pick a time within one of the windows you’ve sent them themselves, you can just toggle on the “Scheduling link” to include a personalized scheduling page. When the recipient picks a slot from the meet page, the meeting appears on your calendar, and the holds simultaneously disappear. It’s a really powerful feature.

Other improvements

• Allows typing multiline event titles in the right-hand context panel.
• Improves interaction with auto-linked URLs in all context panel fields.
• Shows full event description at a glance in the right-hand context panel, and for really long descriptions, makes the entire panel scrollable.
• Fixes mouse cursor position and clicked/dragged event chip slightly out of sync (especially for Magic Mouse users).
• Fixes visual glitch (z-index) for focus outline when tabbing through Cron menu calendar list.
• Fixes getting stuck when connecting to Zoom from the conferencing field for the first time.
• Fixes time zone column for non-integral time zones like India (time zones aren’t always on the hour mark, or even half-hour mark).
• Fixes regression of event ⋯ actions menu showing up empty.

Link detection for title, location, and description

Websites, email addresses, phone numbers, etc., are now auto-linked in any fields in the right-hand context panel. This is especially useful to have one-click access to Zoom meeting links that often get pasted in the location field. In addition, Cron will launch the native Zoom app directly if installed without opening a browser tab first.

When editing one of the fields, holding down ⌘ turns the text editing i-beam mouse cursor into a hand when hovering a link to follow it even when editing links and surrounding text.

Other improvements

• Enables double-clicking on an event chip to focus its title field.
• Matches top left traffic light outlines to app zoom level.
• Hides the option to delete or repeat an event if it’s read-only.
• Disables editing an event as participant to prevent local-only edits.
• Fixes mutating an event from a repeat series multiple times in short sequence.
• Fixes jumping to a wrong date when confirming the number of displayed days with return.

Create and edit repeat events

Using and editing repeating/recurring events has already been fully supported — and now you can also edit the repeat pattern itself in the context panel and create entirely new repeat events.

Other improvements

• Enables deleting events from your calendar of which you’re not the organizer.
• Displays if a participant added a note to their RSVP.
• Displays explicitly who the organizer of an event is in their participant card.
• Disables applying an RSVP change to future events only in a repeat series to prevent.
• Fixes “Not found” error when deleting event instances of a repeat series that are all-day.
• Fixes launch crasher in India with system time zone “Asia/Calcutta”.

Cron menu

Open the left-hand Cron menu to access a list of all your calendars. You can also toggle the menu with the hotkey ~ (just below the esc key). Of course, if you don’t remember a keyboard shortcut, you can always search the ⌘ K command menu and, e.g., find “Show/Hide Cron menu”.

There are two sections in the Cron menu: your calendars with write access and calendars you’re subscribed to. The ring around the calendar color indicates which calendar is active, i.e., the default for new events. With the eye icon, you toggle the visibility of events on the grid. To quickly hide or show a calendar by keyboard, type “show” or “hide” in the command menu and find a list of all calendars.

Finally, the Cron side menu has a subtle dimmed appearance when the Cron window is visible on your screen but not the active app in the foreground to fit perfectly in with other productivity apps on macOS.

Other improvements

• Adds a chevron to the avatar in the top left and when clicking on it shows “Command menu”.
• Enables tabbing into a participant’s row to, e.g., x remove a participant via keyboard.
• Enables opening any menu in the right-hand context panel by pressing ↑ / ↓ in its field.
• Enables pressing return (in addition to space) to toggle all buttons, switches, and checkboxes using the keyboard.
• Hides “Expand/Collapse all-day section” in the command menu when there’s nothing to show/hide.
• Prevents click-dragging in the all-day section from falsely scrolling to another day.
• Resets the active calendar to the primary calendar after a new launch of the app.
• Improves when an event gets saved to the calendar during event creation.
• Fixes some event chips of repeat series sometimes not showing up consistently.
• Fixes some previously deleted events falsely showing, e.g., for previous Fantastical users.
• Fixes event duplication when changing the calendar of an event with participants.
• Fixes “Not found” error when deleting certain event instances of a repeat series.

New design and colors for events

Each calendar color generates a family of colors that tint the elements of event chips: ribbons, background, title, time, and dimmed styles. This improves the legibility of what lies in the past, what is ahead, and what is selected. As such, we’ll continue to enhance the visual clarity of the calendar while maintaining a harmonious look and feel.

Drastically improved performance

Scrolling the infinite grid as well as the initial load of the app is significantly faster. It’s a feat of engineering, and we continue to invest in responsiveness across all interactions. Furthermore, we’ve more than halved the download size of the app.

Other improvements

• Keeps keyboard focus when tabbing from participants in the right-hand context panel.
• Defaults to the correct calendar when creating an event.
• Auto-shows and syncs calendar visibility if hidden when creating an event on it.
• Improves reliability of incremental push sync updates.
• Improves fade animation of toast notifications to easier catch them with the cursor.
• Fixes duplicate event chips for repeat series on Jan 1 — happy new year!
• Fixes some event chips of repeat series, sometimes disappearing on scrolling.
• Fixes some repeat series in certain time zones, only showing every other day.
• Fixes some edits to repeat series removing the RSVP status from past events.
• Fixes changing RSVP status of a single instance in a repeat series.
• Fixes “Not found” error when moving an event to another calendar shortly after creation.
• Fixes “Join Zoom meeting” not launching native Zoom app when it’s installed.
• Fixes tooltips sometimes sticking around or not showing on hover.