I built a visual annual calendar for Mac. Launch week: $2.99
I just launched Petals — a macOS app that shows your entire year in a single window, with a free-form canvas layered on top so you can decorate it with images, stickers, text, and shapes. It's two tools in one: Annual calendar view — your whole year at a glance, synced with your existing calendars (iCloud, Google, Exchange). Switch between yearly, quarterly, and monthly views depending on how far out you need to see. Drag to create events, see multi-day events as color bars, filter by calendar. Whiteboard mode — an infinite canvas for brainstorming, vision boards, or anything that doesn't need a grid. Everything syncs across your Macs via iCloud. Launch week price: $2.99 (going up after this week) Mac App Store A bit about why I'm building this — I'm a solo developer working on a small suite of apps under Onessa. The throughline is a simple idea: we're all working with finite time, finite energy, finite attention. Most productivity tools pretend otherwise. I want to build tools that help you actually see and work with your limits, not paper over them. Petals is my third app in that lineup. The other two: Peek — your next event and the minutes left, always in sight. Lives in your Mac menu bar, iPhone lock screen, and Dynamic Island. Spendy — a budget app that opens straight to the input screen, because recording comes before reviewing. All three are about the same thing: seeing reality clearly — your time, your schedule, your money. Happy to answer any questions. And if you try it, I'd love to hear what you think.
Collected discussion
Looks interesting, congrats! A few questions: Can I select and deselect agendas? So, when synced with Apple Calendar can I choose what I see in Petals? Can I make multiple Petals-files? Suppose I make a planning for marketing and a year planning for projects, can I save these as separate files? I guess the whiteboard can be a nice extra in some cases. But especially when you can open it as a second window besides a Petals calendar window. Is that possible?
Thanks! 🙏 Yes — you can toggle exactly which Apple calendars show in Petals. 2 & 3. Not yet, but love both ideas — separate files and a standalone whiteboard window are going on the roadmap. 🌱
point 1. Can I toggle those in Petals or do I need to 'prepare' this in Apple Calendar? Would love to see an image of the settings. What's the difference between the free version and the premium version? There's no info on these points, nor on your website, neither in the Mac App Store.
There's no comparison to other similar apps? What happened to the PCP template?
Making a year overview, similarly to what's possible in Petals, can for example be done in BusyCal. Which is of course in a different price range. Apps that are somewhat similar to Petals are: Agenda 2026: Year Planner (Reddit) Lineár Calendar (Reddit) Full Year Calendar Yearli
Oh ok. Thank you
It's available in BusyCal.
I found a nice little app called Conmigo. Can't remember where I saw it, but it provides me a beautiful year view. I think it was free too. This looks like a good product too though.
Guess this is it: https://conmigo.io Looks like this is a SaaS only.
I couldn’t find it on the Mac App Store. Is it available there?
https://apps.apple.com/us/app/petals-visual-year-planner/id6775719671?mt=12
Is it supposed to just show my iCloud calendar stuff? I don't see anything. Also, I can download the app for free, what do you get for paying/Premium?
Seeing the whole year at once is something most calendar apps avoid, so that alone makes this stand out. The overlay idea for notes/vision boards feels like a good way to avoid context switching. Do you find people use the whiteboard more for planning or more for unrelated stuff like notes and ideas?