WALLPAPER!
We believe we are the first full featured calendar planner on iPhone to offer this great customization with unlimited potential. We already have the most customizable calendar with colored themes and multiple variations on how you can display your calendar, but this takes it to a whole new level.
And our mature feature set rivals and surpasses the big boys in this space including Fantastical, BusyCal, and Readdle Calendar, so this isn’t some vibe coded AI calendar with limited features. We have been building mobile calendars since 2004.
Our wallpaper implementation allows you to select from and save to a library of pre-made wallpapers or select any wallpaper you add to your camera roll. It also lets you change the text on the month view to match the needed darkness for the wallpaper you have chosen. Brightness, contrast, and blurring allow you to further adjust the wallpaper’s look.
And checkout wallpaper websites, apps, and Reddit for the perfect place to find wallpapers to take advantage of this feature. With great subreddits like r/phonewallpapers, r/MobileWallpaper, r/iWallpaper, r/iphonewp, r/iphonewallpapers you are sure to find some great choices that will work well on both your lock and home screen, and now your calendar!
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2026 has started out with a bang with the new 3.0 version of Ulti-Planner hitting the iPhone and iPad AppStore. The new version has been heavily redesigned to flow with the new iOS26 design language, and has great new features like Infinite Scrolling or a Day Grid view being shown as the selected view in the month view.
If you are not familiar with Ulti-Planner, it is a powerful customizable calendar made to give you productivity features like calendar text and templates for FREE, to use as your daily driver. And then it has some of the most advanced organizer additions in our Premium version like a full project organizer, full family planner screen and other advanced calendar views, reminders, contacts, weather, and more….
So give Ulti-Planner a try and see how evolved your calendar can be.
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So the main use case would be to setup a custom filter for each of your family members. We link to the Apple Calendar to allow the adding and managing of shared calendars, so you could have a shared calendar and/or list with each family member. And then in the filter select just choose these calendars/lists in each filter in order to have a column for each. So Mom, Dad, Bobby, and Maggie all can have their own columns with events for the day, as well as reminders of the todos/chores they need to accomplish.
With the flexibility of using calendar filters it doesn’t have to be just for the family. If you want to see your work, home, and entertainment calendar sets in different columns or one that is your ToDos, you can do that too…
This new view obviously presents itself better on the iPad and Mac where more columns can be shown at once. So you could have a device in the kitchen that is set to show this view and help plan everyone’s day. But it also does work very well on your iPhone with just a bit of swiping.
So we hope you enjoy the all new Split Day view for Ulti-Planner.
Thanks
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I have been involved with and studied the poker scene since the beginning of the AppStore. With Apple immediately sherlocking the whole market with their own hold ’em game and the popularity of some of the big budget online sites it has been a hard market to crack. But I have had a very good AI poker engine, dating back to 2004 and the success of my All-In Hold ‘Em game on Windows Mobile, that I have never quite showcased perfectly on iOS.
I did figure out the poker timer market way back then with PokerTimer, and to this day it is the most popular app for running your tournament blinds, with very little change from the original. It just does what it needs to do clearly and stylishly. And I have had All-In Poker, which focused more on having a bunch of poker varieties that weren’t covered by other games out there, but that ended up as more of training and simulation app.
But I have always wanted to do a really good career based Texas Hold ’em game with a great cast of characters with really good AI, the blueprint which made the original game in 2004 so successful!
With the popularity of the new AI graphic sites that allow really good characters to be made, without requiring a team of graphic designers and animators, and 15 more years of experience and AI updates, I finally felt like I had the missing pieces to make the game I wanted to make.
All-In Hold ’em is that game. Featuring over 60 animated characters that you can play in cash, single table, or multi-table tournaments, each with different levels of aggression, and tells, tilting and bluffs. Advance your career to try to become a poker legend and earn achievements and move your way up the GameCenter leaderboards to see where you stand.
And if you want a bit more, we offer a VIP pass, that gives access to an exclusive casino which lets you play other varieties of poker, including Omaha, Razz, and Stud, and also contains at least one other special game, with more cool ideas on that front coming throughout the game as it evolves.
The market has evolved to where most of the games are online “All-In fests” where most of the flashy play involves you sitting at a table and being forced All-In with your millions of chips, by someone who has billions of chips, and once your out you wait, buy, or play some silly side games to get millions more chips. Or there a few offline games(or online bots), where the level of poker AI they play with was an obvious afterthought. We aren’t that.
So try All-In Hold ‘Em and let us know if the game we wanted to make is the game you want to play.
Go All-In!
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/poker-all-in-hold-em-offline/id6736566394
]]>I did it once before with Extreme Agenda, by setting up a Getting Things Done like reminder list for Extreme Agenda 5.0 in the early builds of EA5, which I covered in another blog post. This same system could be done in Ulti-Planner even better now, our reminder lists have grown to be crazy powerful.
But I wanted to take advantage of the new Project views inside the app and see just how great that would work on the desktop. Yes, Kanban also lends itself to a GTD like idea, with items draggable between columns to easily change status.
We had started with Ulti-Planner 2.0 and had some basic ideas what the big pieces would be. The Mac version was not a part of that, and was scheduled more for this summer. But on a whim after reading some Tweet and checking out a competitor’s pretty bad Mac app that they push heavily, I decided to compile the app in Catalyst and see how close ours was. The iPad app did lend itself to a pretty nice start in this regard.
I had always knew I wanted to not just release an iPad copy, the quality needed to be there, which is why it hasn’t materialized until now. But after seeing where Apple has catalyst now(a system to re-use iOS code for Mac), I knew I could get it to where I’d be comfortable in a short period of time.
So Mac was added to the 2.0 plan.
I setup a UP project with a custom ‘status’ system that is a hybrid I often use, with an ‘Inbox’ for new tasks, a ‘Next’ up status for things on deck, an ‘Active’ status that I’m actively working on now, and then a ‘Maybe’ section for stuff if I have time. I also have a ‘Push’ section for ideas that have to wait for another version, or feature creep wins, which it did for a few years for the 1.0 of Ulti-Planner 
. And then if you scroll over the final column is ‘Completed’. You like that one getting very full.
I tend to like the ‘Cards’ for this view, as it mimics online project management boards I have used on other projects. Setting the priority of each task allows it to stay sorted with the most important on top. Clicking on items shows it’s card view with easy access to notes or embedded lists attached to each reminder.
Having the real estate of the desktop with the dragging of cards and the quick right click for context menus makes using this a breeze, I stayed extremely focused and got the app to Beta in a very quick turnaround. Using it frequently, it made me see where a few shortcuts could be added to make the Mac experience even more smooth.
And then our projects can also keep track of events associated with the project. To stay on task and get 2.0 out the door before a major vacation, I had some milestone events saved that show up in the main screen of my project, as well as right on the calendar.
Marketing plans of Ulti-Planner 2.0 is covered in its own project, and is heavily dated reminder orientated, to hit those milestones right from my daily calendar checkins and complete them.
And just like that the big new version of our popular calendar app has been planned out and completed, using itself!
Hopefully having a Project system built right into your calendar can help you be more productive too. Whether it be Mac, iPad, or iPhone, it helps get things done.
Your calendar evolved.
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Here is a breakdown of what we see as benefits of each:
| Ulti-Planner | UP Premium | Fantastical | Fantastical Premium | |
| Price | Free | $12.49/yr | Free | $57.00/yr |
| Requires Account | No | No | Some features | Yes |
| Universal Support | ||||
| Family Sharing | Yes | $33.00/yr | ||
| iPhone | X | X | X | X |
| iPad | X | X | X | X |
| Mac * Account Required | X | X | X* | X* |
| Apple Watch | X | X | ||
| Views | ||||
| Month View | X | X | X | X |
| Week Strip View | X | X | X | X |
| Year View | X | X | X | X |
| Block Week | X | |||
| Timeline Day | X | X | X | X |
| Timeline Week (3+ day iPhone) | X | X | X | X |
| Agenda List | X | X | X | |
| Search | X | X | X | X |
| Contacts | X | Second App | Second App | |
| Reminders | X | X | X | |
| Projects with Kanban | X | |||
| Goal Tracking | X | |||
| Features | ||||
| Reminders on Calendar | X | X | X | |
| Meeting Support | X | X | X | |
| Scheduling Suggestions | X | |||
| Schedule Collaboration | X | |||
| Natural Language Entry | X (English) | X | X | |
| Time Zone Support | X | X | X | X |
| Notifications | X | X | X | X |
| Drag-n-Drop | X | X | X | X |
| Templates | X | X | X | |
| Calendar Filtering(Sets) | X | X | 1 | X |
| Color Themes | X | X | 2 | 2 |
| Weather | 10 Day | 3 Day | 10 Day | |
| Widgets | X | X | X | X |
| Focus Sessions | X | |||
| Hashtags | X | |||
| Icons | X | |||
| Embedded Lists | X | X | ||
| Month Day Choices | X | X |
Ulti-Planner 2.0 features the all new Mac version of the app. Designed around the “Mac Hub” sidebar to resemble the common design paradigm of Mac desktop, it allows the quick view of today’s weather, day bar, and current month, and has quick access to all of the screens available in UP. The quick entry system of event creation is also integrated directly into this screen for always there availability.
The Mac version works great with our existing drag-n-drop interfaces and we have added built in zoom choices in the toolbars. So the Kanban project board can show multiple columns in multiple sizes with dragging for status planning, and the timeline view can easily be switched between 1 day, 3 day and 7 day usage for easy rescheduling options.
Goals and Habit Tracking
We have added a complete Goal/Habit Tracking system into the app as another module for premium subscribers. Conceived as a type of event, users will easily be able to track their daily goals right in their calendar, and do thing like filter them and interact with them to keep track of their stats on how well they are doing to keep those streaks going.
Focus Sessions
We have added Focus Sessions into the app with both timer based and Pomodoro based sessions available to help the user stay focused on a particular task right from their calendar. When completed the app can record the session as an event to keep track of all your weekly sessions.
Design Refresh
The app is already one of the most customizable on the App Store with a ton of theme choices and calendar settings to allow you to see what you want to see the way you want to see it.
We have now gone over the app with a fine tooth comb to clean up some clutter and adopt a couple of new things like a number based “today button” and standardized view menu system. We’ve also added the option to use a tab bar based approach in the entire iPhone app, and this has become the standard interface on iPad.
And we were inspired by the new Apple Sports app to offer some very cool new Gradient based color choices for the background on iPad and iPhone.
Other Features
We didn’t stop there. Other features our users will appreciate are the new reminder tag filtering built into reminder lists, the travel time display for events on the map card, tag coloring, birthday notifications, and we’ve completely reworked calendar handling with easy editing and icon assignments.
The Ultimate in Organization. Your Calendar Evolved.
]]>We really feel like as far as iOS goes, we are hovering at the top of the “Best iPhone Calendar App” pile.
And we aren’t resting. We have big plans for a Mac version this year that will be included in the same subscription. And work is already underway on VERSION 2.0 of the app, which has some very big new pieces already designed out. We can’t wait.
So help us spread the word however you can, we just need more eyeballs finding the app and passionate users continuing to help us evolve. The sky is the limit.
And we hope you have a productive 2024! ]]>