Amie brings together the calendar app with your email inbox

Some people are devoted fans of Microsoft Outlook for a reason. It integrates contacts, calendar events, and emails into a single app. However, that’s Outlook. Additionally, some find its complex UI insufferable.

One of the more creative apps in the recent wave of calendar apps, Amie, is integrating emails into its app so users can arrange meetings and check their availability for an appointment without having to constantly navigate between their calendar and email client.

The software was in private testing for a few years before this new functionality was included in version 1.0. With no invite code required, users may now register and download the app. Dennis Müller, the CEO and founder of Amie, informed me that Notion’s announcement of Notion Calendar last week was the reason behind the business’s decision to remove its waitlist.

“I expected their launch to be negative for us. It ended up being very positive,” Müller told me in an email. Notion acquired Cron, another calendar startup, to serve as the basis for its second app.

“I’ve got mad respect for Cron. They’ve built the best calendar out of all the new ones. Very focused on nailing basics,” Müller said. But Notion Calendar hasn’t changed much since the acquisition of Cron.

The option to create a Notion document and link it to an event is one of its few new integrations with Notion’s main app and service; this might be helpful for meeting notes, for example. Users of Notion Calendar can also see a Notion database as a calendar, complete with deadlines and dates.

Adding innovation to the calendar application

The launch of Notion Calendar has once again demonstrated that Google Calendar and Microsoft Outlook are not the only calendar software available. Additionally, individuals have various needs, just like with task management applications. There is space for multiple calendar apps and multiple task management apps.

And with that, we return to Amie. Nearly two years later, everything I said about the app remains accurate. It’s a really well-designed product with lots of small details, creative interaction model interpretations, and lovely animations.

Remind you that the calendar app Amie is linked to your Google account. The business imports and shows your Google Calendar events in a conventional calendar format after you sign up.

Amie, however, has her own unique perspective on the calendar. A lot of people organise things that aren’t actually events. They serve as a weekly schedule of tasks that they must do.

For this reason, Amie also enables you to control your to-do list. You can create tasks in the left column without giving it any thought. It’s similar to appending a new bullet point to an ongoing list; the deadline isn’t anything to worry about right away.

You may then drag and drop the job from the left-hand side into your week view to specify the day and time for it. It will show up on your calendar as an event, right next to your other activities.

Amie has built interfaces with various third-party services, including Notion, Linear, Things, Todoist, and Ticktick, so you may import or maintain your tasks in sync with them if you’re currently using a full-featured task management tool.

Amie performs well when used alone, but it excels when combined with other employees. Every user gets a personal profile card, and Amie allows you to instantly see when a colleague is free simply swiping over their image in the sidebar. Additionally, Amie allows for multiple accounts, which is helpful if you want to view both your personal and business calendars in one app.

Additionally, users can create links that generate Calendly and share their availability with other people. A link that can be inserted into an email exchange is created by the programme. Additionally, you may send emails directly from the app because Amie now syncs your calendar with your inbox.

Though it’s still a bit basic, Amie’s email integration works well enough to write new emails and view your most recent chats. “We built it inspired by CarPlay from Apple. There you get everything you care about on one display, we want to achieve the same for productivity,” Müller stated.

The left column is also home to the email inbox. It shows up as an additional to-do list that updates automatically when new emails are received. Clicking on an email allows you to read it and immediately respond in Amie.

The split-screen feature on mobile makes viewing your calendar and email quite pleasurable. To see more of your calendar or inbox, you can drag and drop the divider in the centre of the screen.

More significantly, since many people view emails as tasks, you can drag an email into the calendar and set a time and date for responding to it or taking other action based on its contents.

It’s interesting to note that Amie is also making use of the fact that you have your calendar open. It displays a preview card of your calendar for tomorrow at 4 p.m. to check for conflicts when you draft a new email and write, “Let’s meet tomorrow at 4pm.” In a same vein, you can mark content in an email as an Amie task by selecting it.

The ability to use AI to automatically locate time for your to-do list is the second major new feature that will soon be offered to premium customers.

Numerous businesses, besides Notion Calendar, are attempting to reimagine the calendar. If you utilise Apple devices, there is Fantastical, Rise, Routine, Daybridge, Motion, and Akiflow.

There are currently 14 people working on Amie, and the business has raised $8 million in total. In 2024, let’s see if it can differentiate itself from the competition and establish itself as “a one-in-a-million product,” as Müller informed me.