How I Use Skylight Calendar to Manage My Life
When I first learned about the Skylight calendar, I thought it was a family tool. After all, devices that integrate calendars and to-do lists, like the Hearth Display , are typically marketed to families as a way to stay organized. But I live alone and use Skylight every day and find it extremely useful even without kids.
Skylight is a digital hub designed to help you organize your life, and while the company also has digital photo frames , Skylight Calendar is the most useful: it’s a calendar aggregation tool, a to-do list and dinner planner, and a digital photo frame. The Skylight Calendar looks like a cross between a tablet and a framed picture, and comes in a standard 15-inch version or a giant 27-inch Max version that can be wall-mounted vertically or horizontally with a simple clip.
The Skylight’s display has a series of tabs on the left that scroll through its main functions, the most important of which are the calendar, to-do lists, and photos. You can set your default screen by tapping the menu in the top left corner and choosing the view you prefer. You can also customize your Skylight Calendar’s sleep hours by tapping the menu and selecting Sleep Mode. I set the time to 11pm to 5am, but simply pressing it would always wake up the display, and I didn’t have to double-tap or wait for the screen to respond due to lag.
The calendar functionality is the best part of Skylight Calendar.
The calendar is the most functional part of Skylight. You can use your existing Google, iCal, Outlook, Cozi or Yahoo calendar and they can easily sync with your Skylight later on. You can also get multiple calendars from different sources, all of which are 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 home tasks). You can also enter your own 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 see it in yours. app or on the display.
The Skylight Calendar is also a digital photo frame.
The market is full of digital photo frames like Aura and Pexar , and there are family management centers like Hearth Display that also let you upload your own photos. Skylight Calendar falls in between the two: it’s a shared calendar and planning tool, but it’s still a digital photo frame (if you’re subscribed to the Pro plan) and Skylight encourages you to share photos with other users. People can send you photos using the app if they are public users, or they can email photos to the Skylight email address you provide. As an administrator, you can choose which images you want to show on your calendar. While photos are showing on the display, your Skylight will view everything that is approved.
I was a little puzzled by the idea of sending Skylight photos via email, but Calendar isn’t really cutting-edge technology. If you have elderly parents or relatives who don’t need another app, email is an easier way to send images. My friends with and without skylights still send me pictures of their kids, and I respond by sending them pictures of me cooking and my Doberman in overalls. So, I like Skylight as a less expensive hub that is affordable for family and friends.
How to Use Sidekick to Download Tasks, Work, or Events
Skylight has a Sidekick feature (with a Pro Plan subscription) that can take any text image—like a cookbook recipe, a school flyer, or a printable list—and add it to the appropriate Skylight category. You can import events, meal planning, and to-do lists from PDFs, emails, or images, and I was surprised at how well it worked. I can take photos of my to-do list from ToDoist and Sidekick writes them into individual tasks on my Skylight. It’s not technologically advanced, but it works. I also asked my friend to send me the worst PTA flyer ever, and Sidekick was accurate with the event name, date, location, and details.
You can also use the Sidekick as a microphone to tell Skylight about your event, to-do list, or recipe. I’d prefer the Skylight to sync with my voice assistants like Siri and Google Assistant so I can quickly add things to lists, but accessing the Sidekick tool and adding items to your shopping list only takes a few swipes.
You can create your own Skylight lists.
Skylight offers several ways to customize tasks. You can make as many lists as you want, from shopping to to-do lists, with a few notable limitations: subtasks aren’t available, you can’t rearrange tasks, you can’t assign due dates, and you can’t assign a task to a specific user like you can with 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 Housework feature.
To-dos are reusable, assignable lists.
While the name implies a way to delegate tasks to younger family members, Housekeeping is actually a list of functional tasks. You can create chores and assign them to your family members, set deadlines, make them recurring if necessary, and assign rewards for the task (Skylight calls these “stars”). You can access rewards in a separate tab in your app and assign them, allow users to use them, or delete them.
Again, it’s not as functional as, say, Asana or ToDoist – you can’t break things down into separate lists, only individual tasks, and I wonder why “Lists” exists if it’s a less functional version of Chores – but you you can choose how these tools will suit your family. Perhaps my biggest irritation is that you can’t use the Sidekick for housework, so you can’t import lists or add to them on the fly via the microphone.
How to Create Meal Plans Using Skylight Calendar
Skylight’s meal planning tool (with Pro Plan subscription) can take your preferences into account and plan your entire menu based on them. (I was curious how well the meal planner would take into account my preferences, given that you tell the planner your preferences in a text box, so I entered “I don’t like oatmeal” and it removed all of the suggested oatmeal breakfasts from the list in my planner. ) You can upload your own recipes, use Sidekick to upload photos of your favorite recipes, or save Skylight recipes to your recipe box. You can also easily add planned meals to your shopping list. While I think it’s a great family tool, I also like it as a tool for myself as a single person. There are a lot of dedicated meal planning apps out there, and some 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 purchased Skylight a year ago, my biggest disappointment was that it had all these extra features—from to-do lists to meal planning—but it didn’t allow you to bundle existing apps like ToDoist, Asana, or any other number. meal planning apps. As a workaround, I’ve found that most of the apps I use, including ToDoist, can be synced to Google Calendar, which I then transfer to my Skylight so it stays in my calendar. I’d obviously prefer to have these tasks in the To Do tab of my Skylight, but I’ll have to wait for that functionality to be added.
How much does a Skylight calendar cost?
The Skylight Calendar costs $319.99 for the 15-inch version, while the giant 27-inch Max Calendar costs $599 to pre-order. Skylight offers a $39 annual subscription called the Pro Plan. It’s not required, but most of the above features, including photo usage, import tool, and meal planning, are only possible in Pro Plan. However, the first month of the Skylight Pro plan is free, so you can try it and see if it makes a difference for you.
Is Skylight Calendar Worth Using?
Most families probably already use apps for to-do lists, calendaring, and perhaps meal planning. If you’re willing to invest $300 for a central family center, the Skylight could be a fantastic option. I also think it’s great to do alone: for someone with ADHD, it’s invaluable. I have a calendar in my bathroom so it’s one of the first things I see every morning and it reminds me of my daily activities and appointments. There are more expensive family management tools like Hearth Display , but they can cost almost $600 and I’m not sure if they offer double the functionality.