[image]

News: Frigcal

This page documents the releases of the Frigcal app, from newest to oldest:

For Android, the Google Play store notifies users about updates to the app. Check this page for updates to PC, source-code, and Android sideload packages, as well as change details that apply to all platforms.

4.2.0: Apr-1-2026, All Platforms — Multiple Upgrades

This update has both new functionality and fixes, and is a recommended upgrade for all users on all platforms. It includes a Cut button that speeds event moves, pause instead of close on Android Back, faster search-result scrolls on PCs, and GUI improvements and bug fixes.

The following list details 4.2.0's changes, with items that apply to all platforms unless labeled otherwise:

Add a Cut button in the event-edit dialog
The event-edit dialog, opened on event taps, has a new Cut button. Cut acts like a Copy + Del (delete) combo, but saves one tap in the common event-move use case. It's still confirmed as for Del, but it avoids having to also tap Copy for a later paste of the cut event.

As part of this addition, the event-edit dialog's former Update, Delete, and Cancel were shortened to Save, Del, and Exit, respectively, to save horizontal space, and Create became Save in the event-add dialog to match. Delete was retained to allow you to remove without erasing a prior copy, and Copy is still available for event repeats via pastes.

Android: pause instead of closing on Back
On Android, this app now enters paused mode instead of closing altogether, when the Android Back button or gesture is used in the main Month screen. In paused mode, the app remains in memory and may be quickly resumed in Android Recents without calendar reloads. This is the same state that arose formerly for Android Home and Recents taps while using the app. To close the app in full and reclaim its memory, swipe the app in Recents as usual. Android Back is also no longer ignored when a dialog is open: the dialog simply stays open during the pause.

Important: Back no longer warns about unsaved calendar changes, because it no longer closes the app. As before, the app has no way to warn about unsaved changes when it's closed by Recents swipes, so take care when performing such closes: check the changes indicator at the main menu's Save Calendars to be sure. On PCs, the app still warns about unsaved changed on close requests, but this same caution applies to PC forced closes. There is no auto-save in this app because it would preclude abandoning unwanted changes.

Stylize more text in dialogs, Help, and About
There has been additional styling to the text of both dialogs and the Help and About tabs, including colors that better call out salient points. For example, cautions now appear with bold red to alert users, and orange text replaces underlines where appropriate. Colors used are all readable in both light and dark themes.
Move confirmations Cancel to the right
For consistency with other cancel and exit buttons, the Cancel button in action confirmation dialogs has been relocated to the right side of the dialog. This commonly crops up on event-edit Cut, Delete, and Exit with changes.
Android: improve path display in Settings
On Android, calendar paths displayed in the Settings screen are displayed with the same friendlier format as in load and save confirmations: replacing hex escapes returned by Android (%3A and %2F) with their equivalent characters (: and /). These paths are content URIs required by Android's proprietary Storage Access Framework, not portable POSIX pathnames.
PCs: boost scrolling speed for Search results
On Windows, macOS, and Linux, the scrolling speed of the Search screen's results list has been increased to be the same as that of the Help and About screens. This is particularly useful when there are many results and you want to skip ahead to another month or year. For finer-grained control of scrolls, use a press-and-move gesture. Android scrolls were already fast.
Fix: use default color for unknown categories in event-edit dialog
This app no longer aborts when users tap an event whose event category name is not a valid color name. Such unknown category names are now simply colored with the default event color when opened in the event-edit dialog, as they already were in the Month screen. Although category names in new events added in the app can be color names only, this use case can arise when using calendars created in other calendar programs, including unconverted Frigcal 3.0 calendars.
Fix: fill empty numeric fields with defaults in Settings
This app no longer aborts when users tap Save in the Settings screen after leaving a numeric input field empty there. Instead, such empty fields are filled with their preset defaults post edits, and an info popup alerts the user. These fields also now restrict their inputs to digits 0-9, but they can be left empty after user edits.
Retake screenshots and add a video to demos
All screenshots were updated to reflect the UI changes noted above, and a video shot on Android was added to the app's demos library.

4.1.0: Feb-12-2026, All Platforms — Multiple Upgrades

This update includes both new functionality and fixes, and is a recommended upgrade for all users on all platforms:

Calendar changes indicator
The Save Calendars option in the main menu now shows a * prefix whenever there are unsaved calendar-file changes. This lets you check for changes by simply opening the menu to look for this indicator, instead of either running a save to trigger the no-changes message or closing the app to trigger the unsaved-changes warning.
Colorized category name
The category name in the event dialog is now colorized. Given that category name is simply a color name chosen from a list of predefined colors, it makes sense to colorize it in the dialog to reflect and preview the overscore bars of events in both the Month screen and event-list dialog.
Calendar statistics display
In the confirmation dialog shown after calendar loads and saves, a new small report gives the total and per-calendar number of events in the calendar folder's files. This can be used to verify calendar contents. Scroll the dialog's message to see all the details where needed.
Calendar-field prefills
When adding a new event, the Calendar field of the event dialog may be now prefilled with a sole or default file, to help you save a step. This works by trying the following options in turn:
  1. If there is just one calendar file, use it to prefill calendar in the event dialog, and do not open a calendar-selection list on calendar-field taps.
  2. If a default file has been set in the new Default calendar field of the Settings screen, and that default file exits, use it to prefill calendar in the event dialog, but also open a calendar-selection list on calendar-field taps for other choices.
  3. Otherwise, do not prefill calendar in the event dialog, and open a calendar-selection list on calendar-field taps for a required choice (this was the prior 4.0 behavior)

The net effect avoids calendar-selection steps on event adds if you either use just one calendar or store most events in a calendar set as the default in Settings. The Settings default is not applied to events copied and pasted into other days, because pastes should initially retain all field values; simply tap to select a different calendar if desired. Calendar prefills also do not count as a change for verification when closing the edit dialog.

Combine-calendars tool
There is a new tools script, combine-calendars.py, which may be run to combine multiple calendars into a single calendar. It creates a new ICS file in a new folder that contains all the events among all ICS files in an existing calendars folder. If you've used multiple calendars in the past, this can simplify some operations going forward, including the prior update's prefills. Read more here and look for this tool both online and in the tools folder of PC installs, and read its top-of-file docs for usage info.
AppleDouble skips
When loading calendar files, any ._calendar.ics files in the calendars folder are skipped. These files, known as AppleDoubles, can crop up when manually copying calendars to a FAT or exFAT drive on macOS for use on other platforms. They do not contain calendar content and it is harmless to skip them. They were formerly skipped with failure messages in load-confirmation dialogs, but are now ignored silently.
Event-scrolls reset
The day cells in the Month screen are now automatically reset to be unscrolled when navigating to a different month or loading calendars from a different folder. Formerly, scrolls of days' events in a prior month were retained after navigations and loads, even though they were irrelevant to new months' events.
Closes during dialogs on PCs
On PCs only, calendar-changes warning dialogs no longer keep accumulating if the window-close button is pressed while this dialog is open. To avoid this and other close perils, window-close button presses on PCs are now ignored if any popup dialog is open, including the calendar-changes warning as well as the field-changes warning on event dialog closes. Navigate out of open dialogs to close the app on PCs, just like you do on Android.

4.0.0: Jan-30-2026, All Platforms — Initial Release

This first release of the redesigned Frigcal is broadly vetted and functionally complete. It is available in the following forms:

While additional enhancements and repairs are normal and expected to appear over this app's lifetime, its 4.0.0 release is already robust and fully usable on all supported platforms.

For more on the app in 4.0.0 and later, see its user guide. For download links, see the abbreviated Downloads or the complete App Packages.

1.0...3.0: Sep-2014...Dec-2024 — Legacy Version

While this app has an all-new UI and much-improved Android support, its genesis lies in calendar-processing tools hashed out by the legacy Frigcal program from Sep-2014 through Dec-2024, in versions 1.0 through 3.0.

The legacy Frigcal was also created by this app's developer and used Tkinter for its GUI. It worked on all PC platforms as well as Android, but on Android it did not build a standalone app and relied on other apps and their permissions to run its source code.

The new 4.0.0 Frigcal uses the same ICS files as the legacy Frigcal but uses Kivy for its GUI to provide a standalone app on Android that delivers a much more seamless user experience. As before, the new app also works the same on all PC platforms.

Frigcal legacy users: the new 4.0.0 Frigcal's event-color model is not backward compatible with the legacy versions' configuration-files scheme. This is by design, to avoid configuration-file syncs across devices. For help converting legacy color settings to 4.0.0's new model, please see the conversion script.

For More Info

Watch this page for news about future releases. For info on using the app in general, see the User Guide.