Golden Hour Appointments
Business
Free · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Golden Hour Appointments is the operating system for solo beauty professionals — spray tan artists, hair stylists, lash techs, nail techs, estheticians, bridal makeup artists, massage therapists, and barbers. One app for the three tools you used to run from three apps.
YOUR BOOKING LINK, ON INSTAGRAM
Share a link in your bio. Clients pick a service, see your real-time availability, leave a deposit, and book themselves. No DMs to chase. No back-and-forth. Your link in their hand is a closed booking.
TAP TO PAY ON IPHONE
Charge a card from the phone in your pocket. No card reader, no plastic dongle. Funds in your bank in two business days. Tip-friendly receipts go out automatically.
A CLIENT LIST YOU OWN
Notes, photos, prep instructions, return cadence, allergies, preferences. Export to CSV any time. We never sit between you and your clients.
CONFIRMATIONS, REMINDERS, AFTERCARE
Booking confirmations, 24-hour reminders, and aftercare follow-ups go out by SMS and email automatically. Built on Golden Hour's shared infrastructure — no Twilio account to manage, no Resend keys to wire up. Just works.
TRAVEL ZONES, AUTO-APPLIED
Set your drive radii once. Customers in each zone see the right travel fee at booking. No back-and-forth quotes. No surprises.
THE TODAY SCREEN
The hour before the appointment is the one that matters. Today shows what's next, countdown to start, where to go, who's running late, what to charge. Live Activity shows the same on your lock screen.
BUILT FOR YOUR TRADE
Pick spray tan, hair, nails, lash, brow, massage, esthetics, makeup, or barber at signup. We pre-load service templates, intake questions, aftercare messages, and rebook cadence calibrated to your craft.
WE DON'T TAKE A CUT
No platform commission on bookings, payments, or tips. You pay a flat monthly subscription. Stripe charges its standard processing fees (2.9% + 30¢ online, 2.7% + 5¢ in-person). Your money is your money.
PRIVACY YOU CAN AUDIT
Your client list is yours. Export it any time. Delete your account from in-app and we're gone within 24 hours. Full privacy policy at goldenhourhq.com/privacy.
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Golden Hour Appointments is operated by Gabriel Oleas, a single developer, in Florida, USA. Real human support at hello@goldenhourhq.com — replies within one business day.
more Fixed Location Services
1.5.4 Oct 18
• Mobile appointments & operating mode: Enter a client's service address when booking manually in the app, and switch between In-studio, Mobile, or Both under More > Account.
• One-tap booking & reschedule cards in Messages: Approve house-call or provider requests and act on Text-to-book time suggestions right from the client's conversation thread.
• Send invoices & links in Messages: Use the + button in any thread to send an invoice, reschedule link, review link, or photo.
• Upgraded Calendar & Today view: 15-minute drag snapping with live time previews, accurate daily revenue breakdowns with a weekly goal, and a full Memberships desk under More > Memberships.
• Custom payment methods (Venmo, Zelle, Cash App) at checkout, plus faster background refresh.
1.5.3 Oct 16
A warmer, calmer look from top to bottom. The whole app now matches your booking page, with a floating tab bar and a rebuilt calendar that shows how full each day is at a glance.
Also new:
• Book from a text. Every conversation has a calendar button that opens booking with that client already picked.
• Ask Siri "What's my next appointment in Goldenhour?" or "What's on today in Goldenhour?" and hear the answer without opening the app.
• Stay signed in. The app renews your session on its own, so a few days away no longer sends you back to the sign-in screen.
• Times stay on your salon's clock, wherever your phone is.
• Send invoice tells you what is missing, has its own client search, and can text a pay link when a client has no email.
• A member's tan credit now takes the tan off the bill.
• Half-past times are one tap when booking or rescheduling.
• Cancel is easy to find on an appointment.
• Clearer card reader: a battery gauge, a warning before it dies, and plain words when it drops.
• Message search finds words in your texts, and you can search inside a single conversation.
1.5.2 Sep 21
Faster, steadier payments, plus a set of fixes from behind the counter.
The first charge of the morning no longer wedges. The reader screen could sit on
"Looking for your reader..." with no button and no way out except force-quitting.
Both the counter reader and Tap to Pay now give up on their own and hand you a
button instead of a spinner.
A custom amount now asks for a tip. Ringing up a custom charge went straight to
the card with no tip screen. Custom work counts toward the tip the same way a
service does. Retail still does not.
A reader software update no longer ends the sale. When the reader starts a
required update mid-charge, you can send a payment link or charge a card on file
instead, and you can see how long the update expects to take.
Canceled visits clear out of your own calendar. Canceling from the web dashboard
or a second phone used to leave the entry sitting in your personal Calendar app,
showing a client who was not coming.
Mark done on the home screen widget works. It used to animate and then do nothing.
On a shared iPad, offline sales sync back to the artist who rang them up, so
takings always land in the right account.
Also in this release: quicker card connections when you open a visit, larger tap
targets on iPad, and a more accurate subtotal on receipts.
1.5.0 Aug 14
Fixes for the card reader on iPad, and for receipt totals.
The reader could get stuck on "Connecting" and stay there, with quitting and relaunching the app as the only way out. Connecting is now on a timer, and if it runs out the app recovers on its own and hands you a button instead of a spinner. A reader software update still gets all the time it needs.
The card reader screen no longer strands a search behind it when you swipe it away, and a failed connection now offers a Try again button to match the message telling you to tap it.
Receipts add up on every kind of sale. A sale that arrived through a texted pay link or an invoice tip showed the wrong subtotal, so a $100 link with a $20 tip read Subtotal $80, Tip $20, Total $120. Sales rung up on the app were always right, which is why it stayed hidden.
1.4.9 Aug 12
Tips now read in whole dollars. The tip keypad counted in cents, so a customer tapping 1 then 0 for a $10 tip left you ten cents. One tap is $1.00 now. The ceiling lifted too: a 40% cap was refusing generous tips the card network would have settled without complaint, so a $20 service can take a $50 tip.
Cash and check payments get recorded. The Charge button on a receipt marked the visit complete and stamped it PAID without saving any money, so the visit read unpaid again after the next sync. It is called Record now, and it saves the payment before it claims anything.
Cash sales no longer stall. With cash rounding switched on, the rounded total stopped matching what the sale added up to, so the sale was refused and held up every sale behind it. Rounding is its own line on the sale now.
Sell retail on an appointment. Charging a client from the calendar reaches the full product catalog now, with the same variant picker, stock deduction and sales tax as the walk-in register.
Log a visit that already happened. The booking wizard refused a start time in the past, so the walk-in who came in at 2pm could not be recorded at 2:01. Past visits are allowed now and land completed, with no confirmation text for a visit that already finished.
Text a pay link for a client you cannot invoice. When there is a phone number and no email address on file, send a link to pay instead.
One card reader at a time. On an iPhone that had ever paired an M2, opening checkout woke that reader and Tap to Pay together and they competed for the single connection allowed. Checkout now wakes only the reader the sale is going out on, and stepping away to another app no longer drops it.
Messaging a client goes out on your business line. Eight buttons around the app offered to text a client and six of them opened Apple Messages, which sent from your personal number and put the reply where the app could not show it. All eight open the client's thread now.
The Inbox keeps up on its own. A new text lands in the conversation while you are looking at it, instead of only after a pull to refresh.
Double bookings are readable on iPhone. Two overlapping appointments sit side by side instead of one client's name drawing over the other's.
A better booking wizard on iPad. A proper date card and a tappable start time with one-tap hourly slots, "Assigned to" works again, and "Book it" is no longer cropped. Number pads across the app have a Done key.
1.4.7 Aug 6
Payments
• Tap to Pay is ready before you are. The reader used to set itself up
from scratch on every charge, so your client watched it get ready every
time. It now stays ready between sales, and checkout starts warming it
while you build the cart.
• Charges that used to get stuck. Tap to Pay could jam on "Already
connected to a reader" until the app was force-quit. A failed charge no
longer strands an authorization on the appointment either, and error
messages say what to do instead of quoting the payment processor.
• On iPad, the card reader stays connected instead of being searched out
again through the day.
• The member rate is caught at the register. If a visit was booked before
we could tell the client was a member, checkout spots the missing perk
and offers the difference instead of charging full price.
• Members get 15% off retail automatically, in the same cart as their
service discount.
• Collect payment straight from a calendar row. An appointment with a
balance shows the amount on the row, and tapping it opens the charge.
Calendar
• Add-ons are visible wherever a booking is: the day timeline, the List,
Today, the client's page, and the staff and room columns on iPad. You
can see which extras a booking carries without opening it.
• Swipe the row of dates to move week to week.
• Change a booking's service without rebooking it. The prep question
follows the new service, and the answer shows on the appointment.
• Block time is a labeled button now, and the Calendar and List toggle no
longer squeezes itself onto three lines.
Reliability
• Installing an update no longer drops you at the sign-in screen.
• The app tells you when a newer version is available.
• A failed retail lookup no longer takes the rest of retail down with it.
• No-show risk is measured against your own book's rate rather than a
fixed guess.
1.4.6 Aug 1
Staying signed in. The app was logging people out for reasons that had
nothing to do with their session: a dropped connection, a moment of bad
signal, a phone that had been in a pocket. Five separate causes, all fixed.
Creating an account works. New studios could get stuck in a loop right
after verifying their email, told to sign in and then told they were
already signed in, with no way out. That is fixed, and the sign-in screen
now has a Start over button if anything ever strands you again.
Charges match what you saw. If the amount on screen and the amount about
to be charged ever disagreed, the app now refuses the charge instead of
taking the wrong one.
Setup that finishes. The onboarding wizard no longer quits partway
through, and the setup card on Today tracks what is actually left to do.
Goldie. She answers date questions correctly, no longer creates duplicate
clients, and says plainly when she cannot do something instead of
guessing. Several places she was unreachable from now work.
Sign-in screen. The real goldenhour mark instead of a generic sun, and a
show/hide toggle on the password field.
1.4.4 Jul 27
This build bundles a large batch of checkout and payments fixes: a captured card charge no longer drops if the iPad locks mid-transaction, the checkout solution picker has a working skip option, a per-sale tax waiver toggle, a fixed custom-item keyboard, and in-person card sales now show the actual card used. The Transactions tab has a full redesign with appointment charges folded into one unified feed. You can now block time directly from the Schedule and see holds painted on the day view, and appointments on archived services show on the calendar again. Please focus testing on checkout (all payment types), the Transactions tab, and calendar block time, since these are the newest and least-tested pieces in this release.
1.3.4 Jul 23
A rebuilt Transactions view combines checkout sales and appointment charges in one clear history.
• Choose Tap to Pay on iPhone, a paired card reader, or a payment link directly from checkout.
• Payment confirmations and receipts now show the exact captured total, including tips, discounts, add-ons, and service changes.
• Block time from the Schedule and see holds directly on the day view.
• Improved Goldie message formatting, checkout flow, and payment reliability.
1.3.3 Jul 22
Checkout and tipping improvements:
• Add a discount to any sale, percent or dollar amount, applied to the whole cart or just the items you choose
• Add custom items when charging for an appointment
• Enter a custom tip on the register keypad
• Tip screen now fits the iPad screen without scrolling
• If a client steps away without choosing a tip, the charge completes on its own after 30 seconds
1.3.0 Jul 19
Card reader (Stripe M2) fixes
Checkout now shows "Reader connected" once paired, instead of a stale "Connect card reader" button.
The X button on the charge screen ("Swipe / Insert / Tap") now cancels instantly — it used to hang.
1.2.9 Jul 15
The calendar just got simpler. It's now a single week view built around how you actually work:
• Swipe left or right to move between weeks
• Tap the month to jump to any date
• Your day's schedule fills the screen, with rooms and staff side by side
Plus the usual round of fixes and polish under the hood.
1.2.8 Jul 11
What's New in 1.2.7
- A refreshed app icon and logo
- Phone front desk: caller ID now correctly shows your salon's number on forwarded calls
- Phone front desk: voicemails now show up right away instead of staying hidden
- Phone front desk: record greetings and prompts in your own voice
- Fixed appointment times occasionally displaying in the wrong timezone
- Bug fixes and performance improvements
1.2.7 Jul 9
This update smooths out checkout and makes the app easier to get around:
• Tap to Pay: fixed an issue that could stop a charge from starting. Tips are now added right in checkout before you tap.
• Goldie, your AI assistant, is now clearly labeled and easy to find from any screen.
• Refreshed the More menu so each section is a clear, tap-to-expand card.
Plus general reliability improvements.
1.2.6 Jul 6
Tap to Pay installed.
1.2.5 Jul 3
Fixed Stripe Reader Crash
1.2.4 Jun 19
Stripe M2 Connect bug fix
1.2.3 Jun 17
Liquid Glass Update
1.2.2 Jun 16
Your team now appears as columns on the iPad calendar, tap any open slot to book it, and Face ID is now optional (turn it on in Account settings)."
1.2.1 Jun 11
A refreshed look for goldenhour — a calmer, more refined design across
every screen, in both light and dark mode.
Also in this update:
• Service prices with cents (like $95.50) no longer get rounded down
when you edit a service on iPhone or iPad.
• Receipt tips now round to the exact cent, matching checkout.
• Small fixes and polish throughout.
1.1.1 Jun 11
Fixed Location Services
more Version 1.5.4 Oct 18
Data Not Collected The developer does not collect any data from this app.