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Sunrise

Sunrise icon

Sunrise

February 29, 2016

Sunrise for iOS recently replaced my stock iOS calendar app, and rightfully so. It’s a delightful piece of software that has so many neat little tricks – so many, in fact, that I’m sure this post will just scratch the surface.

Pierre Valade and Jeremy Le Van, the designers of this gorgeous app, packed several beautiful details into Sunrise with the latest iOS7 update. I’ve only been using the app for a week at this point, so be sure to give me a shout if I’ve missed any of your favorite design details!

Vertical scroll

When you start scrolling up and down in the calendar list view, an orange arrow appears in the lower left corner of the screen. Depending on which way you scroll, the arrow rotates so that it’s always pointing you back to ‘today.’ Tapping the arrow brings you back to ‘today.’

Week view

Tapping the hamburger icon (are we still calling it that?) in the menu bar switches the calendar from monthly to weekly view. I love the animation in the header as the icon rotates and the new view slides into place.

Slow motion switch

Let’s see that again, but in sloooooww motion.

Horizontal scrolling

Same thing here as the first view – as you scroll horizontally in the weekly view, the orange arrow appears in the lower left corner of the screen. I love how it gently rocks back and forth, guiding you back to the starting point.

Back in time

Start scrolling within the calendar view, and we suddenly get a wonderfully-clear monthly view. I love how this little interaction makes browsing long spans of time (forward or backward) super obvious and uncluttered.

Contextual icons

I’m really impressed by Sunrise’s ability to find context in my events. In this case, I have the word ‘birthday’ in the name of the event, so Sunrise adds a little balloon to the event indicator.

Importing calendars

I reinstalled the app a couple of times just to watch this one again – when you first import your calendars into Sunrise, the logo opacity increases in time with the loading progress bar. A fine attention to detail, indeed.