Chartula: Handwriting Calendar
Write, don't type
Free · In‑App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Chartula – Latin for “a little sheet of paper”. A calendar you write in or speak into: handwriting stays handwriting, on every device.
Chartula is a calendar you write in. The name is Latin for “a little sheet of paper”.
There are exactly two quick ways to note an appointment: scribble it down or say it. Typing, and fixing the typos as you go, takes far too long. This app is for people who think on paper — and still don't want to give up what only a calendar in a device can do.
HANDWRITING IS THE TRUTH
Appointments go straight into the time grid with Apple Pencil and stay handwriting. What gets saved is the stroke, not an image of it. Text recognition is a reading aid, not content: it offers up to three readings, but only your tap turns one into a title. Nothing quietly becomes type.
OR SPEAK THE APPOINTMENT
Say the sentence and the app takes it apart: day, start, duration or end, repeat, alert, location, calendar. Every detail it finds appears on its own and can be changed on its own. Nothing is guessed. Recognition is rule-based and works offline.
WHAT PAPER CANNOT DO
Written once, the same thing stands in day, week, month and year. One sentence is enough for a series up to "every third Tuesday". Alerts speak up by themselves. Search finds titles, locations, notes — and the handwriting it has read. And what moves isn't crossed out, it is dragged.
FOUR ZOOM LEVELS, ONE GESTURE
Pinch leads from the day through week and month into the year, swiping turns the page. Press and hold on a time, then drag, and an appointment starts exactly there.
PAPER YOU CHOOSE
Blank, ruled, dotted or squared; narrow, normal or wide; white, ivory or night paper. The ruling zooms along, so what you wrote stays on its lines.
TEMPLATES FROM PRINTED PLANNERS
Several layouts per view: the time grid, the day page, the week in rows, the year strip from the office wall. Under the calendar sits a note drawer: the note for the day, the week, the month — next to it every template made for that span: weekly review, monthly goals, habits, mood, task list, meals. A page index with search keeps it together.
BINDERS FOR SCHOOL, COLLEGE AND JOURNALING
Every lesson in your timetable gets its own sheet, and a binder holds them together: history, maths, the Tuesday lecture. Opened, it reads as one continuous set of notes; as a PDF, one page per lesson. A set square and a circle template lie on the page as on a desk — move them, turn them, snap to whole degrees, and the stroke follows the edge. And the day note becomes a journal that never forgets its date.
TOOLS
Fountain pen, ballpoint, pencil, fineliner, highlighter, chalk, watercolour. The fountain pen follows pressure and tilt, on Apple Pencil Pro rotation too. Erase by stroke or by point, lasso, free choice of colour. 214 shapes lay down real ink: the one you pick lands in a frame right away — drag, distort, rotate, recolour. A shape assist you can switch off smooths lines, boxes and circles; it never touches your writing.
EVERY DEVICE, NO ACCOUNT
Syncing runs through your own iCloud. No account of ours, no password, no server of ours. Handwriting travels as strokes, not as a picture. One switch turns it off.
WHAT ELSE IS THERE
— Several calendars with colours, order and a default
— Repeats up to "last Friday of the month", several alerts per appointment
— Public holidays for German federal states, calculated on the device
— System calendars and ICS subscriptions shown along, never changed
— Due reminders from the Reminders app
— One photo per appointment
— Print and export as PDF, PNG or ICS — with the handwriting
— Trash, daily backup, export as a file
— Widgets for home and lock screen, Spotlight, Siri shortcuts
— VoiceOver in every view, Dynamic Type
WHAT THIS APP DOES NOT DO
No ad network, no analytics, no tracking. Your appointments stay on your devices and in your iCloud.
PRICE
Everything is open for 14 days. After that, a yearly subscription or a one-time purchase unlocks writing; reading stays free.
Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
• Better reading aid: handwriting is read word by word, with up to five options per word. Tap a word to see the alternatives.
• Events without typed text show the most likely reading of your handwriting on Watch, widget and in the calendar.
• Calendar markers are as wide as the event.
• Minor improvements and bug fixes.
The developer, Michael Ketelaar, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Collected
The developer does not collect any data from this app.
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Michael Ketelaar
- Size
- 10.7 MB
- Category
- Productivity
- Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.6 or later.
- iPhone
Requires iOS 17.6 or later. - iPad
Requires iPadOS 17.6 or later. - Mac
Requires macOS 14.6 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later. - Apple Vision
Requires visionOS 1.3 or later.
- iPhone
- Languages
- English and German
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- In-App Purchases
Yes
- Chartula Yearly $4.00
- Chartula Unlock $9.00
- Copyright
- © 2026 Michael Ketelaar
