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When I first heard about the Skylight Calendar, I thought it was a family tool. At least this one Types of devices that combine calendars and to-do lists, like the Hearth Displaygenerally advertise to families as a way to stay organized. But I live alone and use my Skylight every day, and I find it extremely useful even without kids.
The Skylight is a digital hub designed to help organize your life, and the company has done just that digital picture framesthe Skylight calendar is the most useful: it is a calendar aggregation tool, a to-do list and a dinner planner, and a digital photo frame. Looking like a cross between a tablet and a framed picture, the Skylight Calendar is available in a standard 15-inch version or a huge 27-inch Max version that you can mount vertically or horizontally on the wall with a simple clamp.
The Skylight’s display has a series of tabs on the left side that scroll through the main functions. The most important ones are calendars, to-do lists and photos. You can set a default screen by tapping the top left menu and selecting the view you want. You can also set your Skylight calendar’s sleep times by tapping the menu and selecting “Sleep Mode.” I set my clock for 11pm to 5am, but a single tap always wakes up the display and I didn’t have to double-tap or wait for the screen to respond due to a delay.
The calendar functionality is the best part of Skylight Calendar
Photo credit: Amanda Blum
The calendar is by far the most functional part of the Skylight. You can carry over your existing Google, iCal, Outlook, Cozi or Yahoo calendar and they can sync seamlessly with your Skylight in the future. You can also get multiple calendars from multiple sources, each color-coded so you can choose different colors for different members of your family (or, if you’re single like me, use color-coding to differentiate work tasks from those at home ). You can also enter custom events directly into Skylight, but I suspect most people don’t do this since most of us already have digital calendars elsewhere and there’s not much you can do with a Skylight calendar other than display it in your app or on your display.
The Skylight calendar is also a digital photo frame
Photo credit: Amanda Blum
The market is full of digital photo frames like that aura And Pexarand there are family management hubs like Hearth Display that also let you upload custom photos. Skylight Calendar walks the line between the two: it’s a shared calendar and a planning tool, but still a digital photo frame (if you have a subscription to the Pro plan), and Skylight encourages you to share pictures with other users to share. Others can send photos to you through the app if they are a shared user, or they can email the images to your designated Skylight email address. As an administrator, you can then choose which images you want to display in your calendar. As long as the display is set to Photos, your Skylight will scroll through everything that has been approved.
The idea of sending Skylight photos via email confused me a little, but in reality the calendar is not intended to be state of the art. If you have elderly parents or relatives who don’t want another app, email is simply an easier way to send pictures. My friends with and without skylights still send me pictures of their kids, and in return I send them pictures of everything I cook and my Doberman in a onesie. That’s why I like the Skylight as a cheaper hub that’s accessible to outside family and friends.
How to use Sidekick to upload tasks, chores, or events
Photo credit: Amanda Blum
Skylight has a feature called Sidekick (with the Pro plan subscription) that can take any text image – for example, a cookbook recipe, a school flyer, or a typed list – and add it to the appropriate Skylight category. You can import events, plan meals, and import to-do lists from PDFs, emails, or images, and it surprised me how well it works. I can take photos of my to-do list in ToDoist and Sidekick will transcribe them into separate tasks on my Skylight. It’s not technologically advanced, but it works. I also had my friend send me her extremely annoying PTA flyer and Sidekick got the event name, date, location and details correct.
You can also use Sidekick as a microphone to inform Skylight about your event, to-do list, or recipe. I’d prefer if Skylight synced with my voice assistants like Siri and Google Assistant so I could quickly add things to lists, but it’s just a few swipes to access the Sidekick tool and add items to a shopping list.
You can create custom Skylight lists
Photo credit: Amanda Blum
Skylight offers various options for creating individual tasks. You can create as many lists as you want, from shopping to to-do lists, with a few notable limitations: subtasks are not available, you can’t reorder tasks, you can’t assign deadlines, and that’s not possible Assign a task to a specific user, like you can with a Hearth Display. I still find these simple lists useful, but if you’re looking for something more functional, you’ll have to look elsewhere or use the Tasks feature.
Tasks are reusable, assignable lists
Although the name suggests a way to distribute chores to younger family members, “chores” is actually the functional to-do list. You can create tasks and assign them to your family members, set deadlines, have them recur as needed, and assign a reward value to the task (Skylight calls these “stars”). You can access and assign, have users redeem, or remove rewards in a separate tab in your app.
Again, this isn’t as functional as, say, Asana or ToDoist – you can’t split tasks into separate lists, only individual tasks, and I wonder why “lists” exist if they’re a less functional version of tasks – but you can choose how these tools fit your family. Perhaps my biggest pet peeve is that you can’t use Sidekick for tasks, so you can’t import lists or add to them on the fly using the microphone.
How to create meal plans with your Skylight calendar
Photo credit: Amanda Blum
The Skylight meal planning tool (with a Pro plan subscription) can take your preferences into account and plan an entire menu based on them. (I was curious to see how well the meal planner would accommodate my preferences if you told the planner your preferences in a plain text field, so I entered “I don’t like oatmeal” and all suggested oatmeal breakfasts were removed from my planner.) You can Upload your own recipes, upload images of your favorite recipes with Sidekick, or save Skylight recipes to your recipe box. You can also easily add the planned meals to your shopping list. While I can see this being a great family tool, I also like it as a tool for myself, a single person. There are tons of dedicated meal planning apps, and some of them are probably better than Skylight, but it’s a nice feature in a comprehensive organizational tool.
My biggest disappointment with the Skylight calendar
When I got my Skylight a year ago, my biggest disappointment was that it had all of these additional features—from to-do lists to meal planning—but didn’t allow for aggregation from existing apps like ToDoist, Asana, or any other number of meal planning apps. As a workaround, I’ve found that this is possible with most apps I use, including ToDoist synchronized to a Google Calendar, which I then bring into my Skylight to live in my calendar. Of course, I would prefer to have these tasks in the To Do tab of my Skylight, but I’ll have to wait for this functionality to be added.
How much does a Skylight calendar cost?
The Skylight calendar costs $319.99 in the 15-inch version and the gigantic 27-inch Max calendar costs $599 when ordered. Skylight offers an annual subscription for $39 called the Pro Plan. It’s not required, but most of the features mentioned above, from using photos to the import tool to meal planning, are only possible with the Pro plan. However, the first month of the Skylight Pro plan is free, so you can try it out and see how big a difference it makes for you.
Is the Skylight calendar worth it?
Most families probably already use apps for to-do lists, calendars, and perhaps meal planning. If you’re willing to invest $300 in a central family location, Skylight can be fantastic. I think it’s great as an individual too: as a person with ADHD it’s invaluable. I have my calendar hanging in my bathroom, so it’s one of the first things I see every morning and reminds me of my tasks and meetings every day. There are more expensive family management tools like the Hearth Displaybut they can cost almost $600 and I’m not sure if they offer twice the functionality.
