Drag and drop images, Ink to text, and more!

Work has been underway for a few weeks now on the next update to Ink Calendar and Journal. Two new features are working and a going to be great! One is an easier way to get images on to your calendars, and the other is a way to be more productive by converting your handwritten ink to text.

Adding images to Ink Calendar has been an option for a while but it required a few taps. Now you can drag and drop one or more images from File Explorer right onto your calendars and they will drop on! It is a fun and easy way to make your calendars even more personalized!

Dragging and dropping 3 images onto the Day View

While I have been using Ink Calendar I have wanted the app to be more productive when it comes to meeting notes. The first step in this process is making it possible to copy Ink as text, then use that text elsewhere. Copying meeting notes from Ink Calendar and pasting them into the body of an email or into a Word doc makes it so much easier to take advantage of the handwritten notes.

In addition to new features I am always working to make Ink Calendar less buggy and more stable. Hopefully this release makes good progress on that front!

As always, thank you for using Ink Calendar and always feel free to reach out with questions, concerns, or comments.

Joe

Journals are in 2.3 and they are awesome!

I have been hard at work on the next feature version of Ink Calendar. This version is bringing Journals, a feature which many users have requested for a while now. Unlike the other calendar views Journals do not have dates and are not tied to dates in any way. There are a few different styles to choose from and offer the flexibility to make Ink Calendar work for you!

Journal Builder Page
Bullet Journal and Graph paper backgrounds

The app has been submitted to the Microsoft Store now all I do is wait! As always thank you for using Ink Calendar and it brings me so much joy knowing people use this app every day!

Joe

What is next for Ink Calendar 2.3+

I have been working on bug fixes and planning the next slate of features for Ink Calendar.

New Features being planned and designed

  • More space for writing
  • Extra writing pages
  • Week numbers more places
  • Text on views
    • Clickable Hyperlinks
  • Surface more Custom Views
  • More?
    • Leave a comment or email me if you have another idea you’d like to see added!

Bugs or Issues being worked on

  • Appointment Management Bug in Windows
  • Use latest Microsoft Identity packages
  • Use WinUI 2.7
  • Improving defaults to be more of what people expect
  • Better explanations in the app
    • How Ink Calendar gets appointments
    • How to add or remove accounts
    • How to sync ink etc.
  • General bug fixes
    • Custom Views not updating when changing view settings
    • Reducing memory usage
    • More tests for different elements on the app
    • Better cloud sync error management

I hope Ink Calendar has been working well for you! Feel free to reach out if you have anything you’d like to share.

Joe

Selection Time in 2.1

Work has been going well on Ink Calendar 2.1. The major new feature is selection time. This feature is simple; on week and month views, show text of when the selected ink is. There is a dot which will highlight the exact location being picked when trying to understand the date.

I personally find this feature useful when planning out an itinerary for trips. When I’m zoomed in tight on a week view it can be hard to tell which hour is which and which day is which. Now with selection time it is obvious.

In addition to selection time 2.1 should be faster to load views, more memory efficient, and hopefully fixes a few bugs.

As always, thanks for using Ink Calendar,

Joe

Day View Agenda and Better Settings

Work is coming along quite nicely on the next version of Ink Calendar. This next update has two major features.

1. Day View Agenda

The Day View has been reworked to be more useful and powerful. Now every day see a break down of what is on your calendar for today. Use the agenda to organize time over the day and plan your time well. There is a customizable hour by hour area, a place for all day appointments, and a bottom area for notes.

If you prefer a standard dot grid, that is still an option. This new view will be the default, but the setting is there to change it back to the dot grid if you prefer.

2. Better Settings

The advanced settings area is now more intelligent and works better. But more noticable are the new background options available to everyone! Pick from a gallary of new choices. Mostly landscape and nature shots, with all custom backgrounds included as well.

Background Image Options
Background Image Options

If none of these suit your needs then feel free to add your own background as always. These images were chose for their diverse and rich color pallet which should make a great background behind the acrylic calendars.

That is it for now, thanks again for using Ink Calendar.

Joe

Swiping Coming Soon!

Update 1.19 is rolling out to the Microsoft Store now. This update brings a highly requested features: natural swiping between views. Now you can change the view by swiping or by clicking the next/previous buttons as always.

This change introduced a fairly major change to the way Ink Calendar handles the different sets of ink + calendars. I have done lots of testing for performance and found it to be acceptable. However it is impossible for me to test every device. I’ll be watching the crash statistics and will continue to optimize Ink Calendar with future updates.

Hopefully this update makes Ink Calendar more natural and easier to use. If you have suggestions, comments, or feedback then please reach out by email (support@inkcalendar.com) or twitter (@thejoefin).

Thanks again for using Ink Calendar.

Joe

P.S. If you are a digital artist using Ink Calendar and are interested in being paid for some promotional artwork please reach out and we can work something out.

Current Time and Bug Fixes in 1.18

Current Time and Textures

In the latest update there are two visible features added to the Week View. The first is a line showing the current time (of the current week). The other visible change is a texture given to calendar appointments to distinguish between different states of ‘busy.’ These textures mirror the ones provided by Windows for continuity and clarity. 

The current time indicator for the month view looks the same, but now will move to the next day if Ink Calendar is left open over night. In the same way the Week View current time indicator will move to indicate the current time when the app is left open. This makes it easy to locate where “NOW” is when glancing at a week view. 

Other than these changes I have made improvements to the way the Week View displays appointments. There was some odd behavior happening when there were several overlapping appointments. Also appointments sometimes not showing the correct end time when the appointment crosses over between weeks has also been fixed.

Thanks for using Ink Calendar. Let me know what you think and what you’d like to see improved.

Joe

Organized Settings and Appointments On This Day changes in 1.15

Appointments On Changes in 1.15

Two areas of focus for 1.15 have been organizing the app settings and improving the ‘Appointments on this day’ dialog. Organizing the settings and changing how it is displayed gives space to add more features and give users the ability to customize their experience.

Settings in Pivot for 1.15
Settings in Pivot for 1.15

The changes to the ‘Appointments on this day’ dialog are focused on adding more appointments without a pen. This makes Ink Calendar span the usage scenarios more gracefully from pen & touch to keyboard & mouse.

As always there are small improvements and bug fixes wherever I can find them.

Thanks for using Ink Calendar!

-Joe

Enjoy Ink Calendar in your own language

In the new update 1.14 Ink Calendar will use the language settings you have set in Windows 10. The month names, days of the week, and day abbreviations will all be translated automatically by Windows.

Next up I will be translating the text in the app itself. All the button text will soon be translated with the help of anyone I know who speaks that language! If you’d like to help translate then email support@inkcalendar.com

As always, thank you for using Ink Calendar

-Joe