Android smartphones and tablets come with a pretty good calendar app. Google Calendar lets you create and view appointments, manage multiple calendars, and view all of your appointments in a desktop web browser.

But if you’re looking for something a little different, there are plenty of third-party calendar apps that offer different ways to view your schedule, integration with to-do lists, and more.

android calendars

Here are a few of the best calendar apps for Google Android, arranged in alphabetical order. Note that they all synchronize with Google Calendar automatically.

aCalendar (free) and aCalendar+ ($4.99)

What I love about this free calendar app is the way it lets you view your week-at-a-glance. While Google Calendar has a week view, it can be tough to actually see details concerning your appointments, but aCal displays them clearly.

acal

You can scroll through the calendar by swiping up or down, or switch views from week to day or month by swiping left or right.

Other useful gestures include long-pressing on the little month calendar in the bottom corner to go to the day view for the current day and navigating through multiple weeks or months at a time by using two-finger scrolling.

The app also makes it easy to toggle birthdays, holidays and personal calendars, lets you adjust the theme colors, and even has an E Ink mode that disables some animations on the off chance that you’re using a device with a slow screen refresh rate.

Want more features? aCalendar+ is a $4.99 app that adds an agenda view, support for Google Tasks, and additional notifications, among other things.

Business Calendar 2 (free / $4.99)

Appgenix Software has offered a powerful calendar app for a few years. Recently the developer launched a new version of Business Calendar with a new user interface and color scheme, an integrated task manager (the to-do list used to be a separate app), and a more powerful single-day view.

business calendar 2

This is the calendar app I use on my Nexus 5.

It allows me to view my appointments and tasks in one place, quickly create appointments in my personal calendar or shared Google calendars, and it’s easy to create custom views: want to see the next 3 or 4 days instead of a full week or month? Just open the month view, drag your finger from the start date to the end date and Business Calendar will show you up to two weeks at a time.

The basic app is free, but you can upgrade to a Pro account through a $4.99 in-app purchase if you want access to the day view with integrated weather and tasks, a widget generator, and other features.

Cal (free)

This free calendar app from the makers of the Any.Do task manager takes a very different approach to your schedule.

Rather than provide detailed day or week views, Cal gives you a pretty basic month and agenda view, putting heavy emphasis on your upcoming appointments on a given day.

cal

Where it really excels is in showing you details about each appointment you click on, and offering options to set reminders, add contacts if other people are coming to a meeting, set a location, or add notes.

Cal has a clean look, pretty animations, and it’s a lot of fun to look at… although I’m not convinced it’s the most useful calendar.

DigiCal (free) and DigiCal+ ($4.95)

DigiCal is a pretty solid little calendar app that offers a variety of ways to view your appointments. But probably the most interesting thing about this app is how easy it is to use without evening opening DigiCal.

There are home screen widgets that come in 20 different sizes, and which let you display agenda, day, or month details in a variety of ways.

digical

Digical also has 6 customizeable lock screen widgets.

If you pay for the plus version of the app you get access to more widgets, extra theme pre-sets, and other features including a choice of which calendars will be displayed in widgets.

DigiCal can also display weather information, but weather updates are only free for the first 14 days. After that you’ll need to pay an annual subscription (which costs less than $2 per year) to continue getting weather updates.

Sunrise Calendar (free)

This calendar app has a clean, simple user interface that puts an emphasis on ease-of-use rather than infinite customization.

There are icons for things like upcoming flights, shopping trips, or phone calls, and you can add locations, invite participants, or add notes when creating appointments.

sunrise

 

Sunrise also allows you to add accounts for iCloud, Google Calendar and Exchange as well as linking to third-party apps such as Facebook, TripIt, Evernote, Foursquare, Twitter, and Todoist.

When you fire up the app you’ll see a two-week view of dates in the top, followed by your agenda for the next few days.

Scroll through your agenda or tap a date to see what’s coming up or what’s already happened. Or swipe left to right (or tap the three lines in the toolbar) to switch to a grid view that shows 3 days at a time.

There’s only a single agenda-style home screen widget.

There’s also a Sunrise Calendar web app which you can use to view your calendar in a desktop browser.

Note that unlike some of the other apps in this list, which automatically grab data from Google Calendar, Sunrise Calendar requires you to connect with Facebook, email, or Google+ before you get started.

It’s worth noting that Microsoft is said to be in the process of acquiring Sunrise, and the company also recently rolled out a tablet-friendly version of its Android app.

Wave Calendar (free)

A few things that set this calendar apart include smooth animations for transitioning between views, a choice of grid or agenda-style week and month views, a built-in task list, and two different agenda-style views: List and Detailed List (which shows invitees and notes for upcoming appointments.

wave calendar

The app is free to use, but you can purchase special calendar for sports, weather, finance, religious holidays and more through in-app purchases in the Wave Calendar store.

There are also some features that require you to sign up for a free account, including support for attachments and travel time in your appointments.

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7 replies on “6 great calendar apps for Android”

  1. Can any of these be set to NOT sync with Google calendar? And if so, does it have a corresponding desktop PC calendar application to sync with? Because honestly the only reason I would want to use something other than Google Calendar for Android would be if it could sync with a PC without requiring a connection to a Google account.

    1. The standard Android calendar application can sync with CalDAV calendars as long as you install a caldav-sync application.

    2. I have used business Calender’s and acalender, and they also sync with a Microsoft account if you don’t have or use a Google account. But I think the days of a hardwired sync between a handheld device and a calendar program on a pc is a thing of the past. But the reason I use these applications is because they are better than the Google calendar.

      1. Wired sync is not what I want. I want LAN sync via WiFi and my home network, not “free” “cloud” sync. I don’t need it to be in sync at all times. Syncing while in range of my home network is frequent enough.

        If I could eventually run something on a server on my paid hosting account, then I could have it be always in sync. I’d much rather do that than use Google’s “free” stuff.

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