Why I Built Matí — A Free Calendar App for Mac, iPhone, and Vision Pro

I’ve been a Fantastical user for years. It’s a great app. But when they switched to a $40/year subscription for features I considered basic — like full-screen views and Apple Watch support — I started wondering: does a calendar app really need to cost that much? (I wrote a detailed comparison of Matí and Fantastical if you want the full side-by-side.)

So I built Matí.

What Matí does

Matí is a native calendar app for Mac, iPhone, iPad, and Apple Vision Pro. It connects to your existing calendars through EventKit — iCloud, Google, Exchange, whatever you already use. No account required, no sync service to trust.

Here’s what you get:

  • Day, Week, Month, Year, and Agenda views — all of them, no paywall
  • Natural language event creation — type “Lunch with Sarah tomorrow at noon” and it just works
  • Drag-to-create and drag-to-move — click or drag on any empty time slot to create events, hold to move them
  • Conference call detection — Zoom, Meet, Teams, Webex, FaceTime, and GoTo Meeting links are detected automatically with a one-tap Join button
  • Location search — autocomplete powered by MapKit with inline map previews
  • Widgets — lock screen, home screen, and interactive calendar widgets
  • Keyboard shortcuts — Cmd+N, Cmd+E for quick add, arrow keys to navigate

One-tap Join for every video call

This one deserves its own section because it’s the feature I use most. We’ve all been there — the meeting starts in 30 seconds, you open your calendar, and the Zoom link is buried somewhere in the notes. You scroll, you squint, you copy-paste. You’re late.

Matí scans every event for video call links and surfaces a prominent Join button right in the event detail. It doesn’t matter where the organizer put the link — the event URL, location field, or notes — Matí finds it. It works with:

  • Zoom (zoom.us)
  • Google Meet (meet.google.com)
  • Microsoft Teams (teams.microsoft.com, teams.live.com)
  • Webex (webex.com)
  • FaceTime (facetime.apple.com)
  • GoTo Meeting (gotomeet.me, gotomeeting.com)

One tap, you’re in the call. No digging.

What it doesn’t do (yet)

I’m building in the open, so here’s what’s coming:

  • Tasks/Reminders integration — the #1 feature request
  • Calendar Sets — group calendars and toggle them as a set
  • Weather — at-a-glance forecast in the calendar view

Why free?

I’m an indie developer. I make apps because I use them. Matí is free because I think a good calendar app should be accessible to everyone. If I add premium features down the road, the core experience stays free.

The tech

Matí is built with Swift and SwiftUI, with UIKit for performance-critical gesture handling in the day and week views. The architecture uses EventKit for calendar data, MapKit for location search, and WidgetKit for the home screen and lock screen widgets.

If you’re on a Mac or iPhone and you’re tired of paying for a calendar app, give Matí a try. You can also learn more on the Matí app page.

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