I usually only send one email/month, because I know how precious your time is and most updates aren't urgent ... but I'm breaking the rules for three reasons: 1) Compass is launching on Product Hunt tomorrow. PH gives small teams a chance to reach a big audience. It's also a fun way to celebrate and engage with the community. Our launch page goes live in 8 hours, but you can watch the 90-sec demo now for a sneak peek: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ia-rYanErzs. If you've never tried out...
about 19 hours ago • 1 min read
PART I: PRODUCT Compass Calendar got a lot better last month. Simpler. Compass used to have tasks, someday events, and regular events. Almost no one used the first two, so they had to go. Now it’s all about events, baby. Compass Calendar is finally at peace with being … a calendar. Sub-calendars. ALL your events from ONE google account are finally visible in Compass. Type A users with a separate calendar for each side project rejoice. Light theme. An inky, calm alternative to dark default....
13 days ago • 1 min read
PART I: PRODUCT Compass got a little better last month, especially the UX. Views. Things are more minimal and consistent across the Day and Week views. No one used the Now view, so I cut it. RIP. Styles. All these got better: colors, shortcut hints, layouts, toasts. You can also adjust the task list’s width so the titles don’t truncate. URL. The app and website used to live on separate servers. Now everything is at https://www.compasscalendar.com. Not even URLs are safe from Operation...
about 1 month ago • 1 min read
Compass got a little better last month, especially the UX. It feels smoother. I could get into the weeds about the layouts, grids, pointers, and geometry that come together to make that work. Instead, I’ll just link the PR for the curious. It looks better. We made things subtler so that you can focus on what really matters: your schedule. The sidebar got narrower, icons smaller, and the colors cooler. Here’s how it looks: Week view Day view This might seem like an underwhelming update,...
2 months ago • 1 min read
Compass got a little better last month, especially for developers. Things are faster and lighter. First-time builds for devs are 74% faster. Artifacts are 66% smaller. We ship 36% fewer dependencies. This makes working with Compass a lot more enjoyable. Self-hosting is easier. It’s been possible to self-host Compass ever since we went open-source in 2023. However, actually pulling that off took a lot of time (like, hours). We wanted to make it easier to get up and running. So, we added an...
4 months ago • 1 min read
Compass got a little better last month. Email/password signup. You can use Compass without connecting your Google account. Great news for self-hosters and anyone resisting the singularity. Sync repair. If you later connect your GCal and that connection becomes stale, Compass will display a button that magically fixes it and issues 1 BTC. Reliability & DX. Websockets → SSE, tanstack-hotkeys, and technical docs. Head over to app.compasscalendar.com and try it out for yourself. ’Till next time,...
5 months ago • 1 min read
Compass got a little better last month. Seed data. Every new visitor to app.compasscalendar.com will now see relevant demo tasks and events without needing to sign up first. The descriptions include little jokes and tips on how to use the app. This helps them catch the vibe without pressuring them to hand over their email. The delete CLI command now cleans up your browser data in addition to the database, which can get stale during development. Tasks are saved in indexeddb (previously local...
6 months ago • 1 min read
You can now go from being interested in Compass to using it for real in 3.94 seconds. (Yes, I timed it.) No long onboarding or signup process. Instead, your changes are saved locally. Once you're ready to commit, you can connect your Google account through the command palette. Behind the scenes, we then sync your local changes with your GCal and our cloud servers. Why do this? To make it easier to test out the app To pave the way to offline mode To make french aviator Antoine de Saint-Exupéry...
6 months ago • 1 min read
This time of year comes with optimism, energy, and planning. But the only thing that we can count on is our plans not going according to plan. When that happens, it’s helpful to simply focus on what you can control today. Over the last month, we made it a lot easier to do that with Compass. You can now manage your events from the /day view just like you would on your week or month calendar. This allows you to stay on top of your tasks and events without context-switching. Tasks <> Events...
8 months ago • 1 min read