Walkthroughs

Meet the dial

Your whole year lives on one rotating face. Instead of paging through weeks, you spin through time.

1. Open Cronicular — you land straight on the dial, showing the current year as a ring of months.
2. Drag the dial round to move forward or back through the year.
3. Pinch with two fingers to zoom in and out, or drag the zoom slider down the right-hand side of the screen.
4. Tap a date on the face to spin the dial to that day; the top drawer slides down with whatever's on it.
5. Whenever you've moved off today or zoomed in, the little date button and the reset-zoom button appear — tap them to jump back to today and the full year.

Add an event

Events are the things that happen on a day — meetings, plans, reminders. You add them from the button at the bottom of the dial.

1. Tap the + button near the bottom of the screen — it opens out into Add Event, Add Anchor and Add Ring.
2. Tap Add Event.
3. Give it a title and set the date. Leave it as an all-day event, or turn off All Day to set a start and end time.
4. Choose which calendar it belongs to — for example Work or Home — and add notes, a location, an icon or a reminder if you like.
5. Need it more than once? Set it to repeat (weekly, monthly, yearly and more), or make it an ongoing event that runs until you end it.
6. You can also link an event to an anchor — a dashed connector draws between them on the dial, tying the plan to the moment it leads up to.
7. Tap Save. The event now sits on the dial, colour-matched to its calendar.

Anchors — the fixed points

Anchors are the moments that don't move: birthdays, deadlines, trips, anniversaries. They sit on the dial as markers you can always see coming.

1. Tap the + button at the bottom of the dial, then tap Add Anchor.
2. Give it a name and a date, and pick a colour and an icon.
3. You can add a photo to make it an image anchor, or set a reminder so it nudges you in advance.
4. Tap Save — it pins to the dial at that point in the year.

Already saved anchors live in the bottom drawer under Anchors, where you can show, hide, recolour or edit them.

Living rings

Rings let you layer your life around the dial. Cronicular has two kinds: calendars — your own colour-coded rings of events and anchors (Work, Home, Fitness, a shared calendar) — and style rings — living layers like the zodiac, the seasons, planetary positions, or your Apple Health data.

1. Swipe up from the bottom of the screen to open the bottom drawer.
2. Under Calendars, add a new calendar, name it and pick a colour; assign events and anchors to it as you create them.
3. Under Style Rings, switch on the built-in layers (Zodiac, Ephemeris, Solar System, Solstice, Seasons, Seasonal Image), or tap + to build a custom ring — including one driven by your Apple Health data.
4. You can also reach the custom-ring builder straight from the dial: tap the + button and choose Add Ring.
5. Toggle any ring on or off to focus on just what you need right now.

Groups — one-tap views of your dial

A group is a saved preset of calendars, style rings and anchors. Set up a view you love — say, just your Work calendars with the Ephemeris ring — save it once, and switch back to it in a single tap.

1. Turn on exactly the calendars, style rings and anchors you want in the view.
2. Open the bottom drawer — Groups sits at the top of the Calendars drawer. Tap its + to save the current setup as a group.
3. Give it a name. Each group lists what it holds — its calendars, rings and anchors.
4. Tap a group to apply it in one tap; tap it again to switch back to your full dial.
5. Groups also power the Groups and Group Dial home-screen widgets, so you can jump straight into a view from your home screen.

Apple Health on the dial

Bring sleep, workouts, and activity straight onto the face of your year, to see how the rhythm of your body lines up with your plans. Your Health data stays on your device — it's never sent to our servers.

1. Open Settings inside Cronicular and go to Account & Data → Integrations.
2. Tap Connect next to Apple Health.
3. When iOS asks, allow access to the data you want to show.
4. Then add a health style ring: open the bottom drawer, tap + on Style Rings, choose a data ring and pick the Apple Health metric (steps, sleep, and so on).
5. Your activity now appears as a living layer on the dial.

Widgets & Apple Watch

Your year doesn't have to stay inside the app. Cronicular ships seven home-screen widgets and a full Apple Watch app.

1. Touch and hold your iPhone home screen, tap + (Add Widget) and search for Cronicular.
2. Pick from seven widgets: Year Dial — your whole year at a glance with today's position, event arcs and anchor dates; Group Dial — a mini dial showing just one group's calendars, tap to apply the group; Groups — jump to a saved group; plus Today, Next Event, Anchor Countdown and Year Progress.
3. On Apple Watch, the Cronicular app puts an interactive dial on your wrist — turn the Digital Crown (or drag the face) to spin through the year, and use the arrows to hop between your events.
4. Tap the Watch dial to snap back to today.

Insights

Analytics for your year — see how your time actually breaks down across your calendars, events and anchors.

1. Tap the Insights tab in the bottom bar.
2. Switch the scope between Current Year and All Time, and use the filters to focus on particular calendars.
3. Open the report sections — Year Ring, Life in Weeks, Overview, Day of Week, Months, Activity and Calendars — to explore the patterns in your dial.

Themes

Recolour the whole dial to match your mood or the season.

1. Open Settings and go to Appearance.
2. Pick one of the six built-in themes — Primary, Solarized, Pastel, Cream, Tokyo Night and Neon — or design your own with the theme creator.
3. The dial restyles instantly. Unlocking the full app gives you every theme.

Views & the drawers

The dial is for the year you're building; the drawers are for the detail you need right now.

1. Dial or Minimal: in Settings → Appearance, switch between the full rotating dial and a clean Minimal view. With the dial selected you can also choose a Year, Month or Week scope.
2. Top drawer: tap a date or spin the dial and the top drawer slides down with that day's events. Pull it open to see a timeline of timed events through the day.
3. Bottom drawer: swipe up from the bottom to manage your calendars, anchors and style rings, and to reach Settings.
4. Side panel: tap the handle on the left edge to open your upcoming events, filtered by Past, Today, or from the date you're on.

Import, share & back up

Bring the calendars you already keep onto the dial, share them with the people who matter, and keep your data safe.

1. Import: open Settings → Account & Data → Integrations and connect iCloud (your Apple calendars) or Google to pull existing events onto the dial. You choose which calendars to import, and you can disconnect at any time.
2. Share: open a calendar's editor and tap Share to send an invite link — whoever accepts sees that calendar on their own dial. Manage everything you've shared (and left) under Settings → Appearance → Sharing.
3. Back up: your dial is backed up to your own iCloud automatically, so a new iPhone picks up right where you left off.

Sign in, sync & unlock

Your dial follows you across devices, and the full app is a one-time unlock — no subscription.

1. Sign in with Apple — no separate password to remember.
2. Your calendars, anchors and rings sync across iPhone and iPad automatically.
3. Cronicular is free to use with light ads. A single one-time purchase (£2.99) removes ads, unlocks every theme, and adds unlimited rings.
4. To remove your data entirely: Settings → Account → Delete account.