Here you will find answers to some of the most frequently asked questions about the different licensing options we offer for BusyCal & BusyContacts on macOS. If you don't find your question answered below, feel free to contact us.

You can take part in beta testing voluntarily by enabling it in preferences

Snoozes are not pushed to the server by Outlook

BusyCal Menu is a helper app that lives in the macOS menu bar, allowing you to quickly view your appointments and managing registered alarms.

iOS apps can only be purchased directly from the iOS App Store.

We will no longer be updating BusyCal 2. You may upgrade from BusyCal 2 to BusyCal 3 at any time.

Unfortunately not. We do not currently have any plans of bringing BusyContacts to iOS

Certain features, such as creating a To Do from BusyContacts, requires the presence of BusyCal

When you launch Reminders the first time on iOS 13 or macOS 10.15, it asks you if you'd like to "Upgrade" your reminders. If you choose "Yes", then these calendars will no longer sync over CalDAV and thus will not work with third party apps.

BusyCal has built-in support for CalDAV and WebDAV servers & subscriptions, and by extension supports any third party app that supports the same.

In order to enable Mail Activity within BusyContacts, you need to install the BusyContacts Mail Plugin and enable it under Apple Mail. The Manage Plugins button may not appear for some users.

Recent updates to macOS have broken WAN sync which uses a legacy communication protocol.

From the View > Appearance menu

iCloud aliases (i.e. alternate email addresses to your real account) won't work. Similarly, you cannot connect to an iCloud account via 3rd party apps, such as BusyCal, using an alias. Please use the real iCloud account ID

This appears to be due to a bug in how migration is handled by macOS.

This is due to incorrect permissions set when setting up sharing in Exchange

BusyCal 3 defaults event titles to Black with a colored dot, reflecting the calendar's color. This can be changed under Preferences > Appearance. Set the Events Text color to be displayed with their Calendar / Tag colors.

BusyCal requires access to location services for Weather, Travel Time and Time to Leave Alarms.

BusyCal and BusyContacts can send messages using Apple Mail and several other third-party mail clients.

You may upgrade from BusyCal 2 to BusyCal's latest version as follows:

By default, BusyCal for iOS creates new events using natural language.

BusyCal does not directly support Google resources, such as conference rooms, but there is a work around.

Apple requires all third-party apps that sync with iCloud (like BusyCal and BusyContacts) to use app-specific passwords - your standard iCloud password will not work. An app-specific password is essentially a 16 to 19 characters long, custom password generated by Apple that is different than your standard iCloud password. Only Apple's apps (Mail, Calendar and Contacts) can use your standard iCloud password. All other apps must use an app-specific password to connect with your iCloud account.

BusyCal or BusyContacts is unable to sync with your Yahoo account because it now requires that third-party apps use an app-specific password to sync with your Yahoo account. Your standard Yahoo password will not work.

No it does not, BusyCal and BusyContacts already use OAuth 2.0 to access your Google / G Suite accounts. We don't use or store your Google account passwords.

The BusyCal Inbox displays notifications of meeting invites or changes to existing events. You can accept / decline or ignore (delete) notifications directly from the Inbox.

When you snooze or dismiss an alarm, BusyCal must sync that action with the server in order to update the alarms on other devices that are syncing with your account. BusyCal must be running in order for it to sync with the server so it will be launched in the background if it is not already running when you snooze or dismiss an alarm.

To hide a calendar from view without deleting it, you can unsubscribe from it by double-clicking on the calendar in the left sidebar to show the Calendar Info dialog and click the Unsubscribe button. Then choose Hide Unsubscribed Calendars from the View menu to hide it from view.

macOS Calendar, Reminders, and BusyCal can each display alarms for your Events and To Dos. You should disable the alerts for macOS Calendar and Reminders to prevent receiving two alarms for every event — one displayed by macOS Calendar or Reminders and another displayed by BusyCal.

You may set BusyCal and BusyContacts as the default apps as follows:

When you enable iCloud Family Sharing, two shared calendars named "Family" will appear in BusyCal's sidebar. One is an Event calendar and the other is a To Do calendar (the To Do calendar has a checkmark √ next to its name and syncs with the Reminders app on iCloud and iOS). These calendars are automatically created by iCloud and shared with all family members.

You can change the colors of events in BusyCal using calendars or tags.

Starting with BusyCal v3.11 for macOS, BusyCal does sync Tasks with Google Tasks.

Facebook provides calendar feeds for Upcoming Events and Birthdays, which you can subscribe to in BusyCal, as follows.

macOS Calendar, Reminders, and BusyCal can each display alarms for your Events and To Dos. You should disable the alerts for macOS Calendar and Reminders to prevent receiving two alarms for every event — one displayed by macOS Calendar or Reminders and another displayed by BusyCal.

Yes, BusyCal supports location based travel time alarms.

BusyCal supports links to Google Hangout for normal Google accounts. However, it does not support Google Hangout links on Google Apps accounts.

BusyCal requires permission to access your Me Card in Apple Contacts for creating and responding to meeting invitations. It also requires access to your Contacts for displaying Birthdays and Anniversaries in your calendar.

You can merge multiple calendars into a single calendar by exporting calendar A and importing it into calendar B.

Dock needs to be force quit in order to reload the new icon

Office 365 connections normally fail due to one of two things.

BusyCal or BusyContacts can be installed on up to 5 computers that you own, using the same registration code.

Microsoft has deprecated Basic Authentication (login / password) and has turned it off for most clients, switching to MFA instead (Multi-factor authentication).

BusyCal syncs over CalDAV - by doing so it is able to sync meta-data required by the app, and offers tremendous flexibility and additional features that it would otherwise be unable to offer it was to sync via the native Calendar SDK

There can be a number of reasons why the badge count won't refresh.

BusyCal on the mac, starting with v2023.1.3, allows you to add Microsoft Teams meetings to all your Office 365 events.