My favorite app for thinking with numbers
I’m not even a math person but I love this thing. Unlike a spreadsheet, the operations are in plain sight, so they are part of the story. And unlike Soulver (which is also great in its own way) I can interleave text such that I can describe a scenario, make a case, frame the numbers, etc.
Best calculator app by a wide margin
Calc is pretty much all the good things in one. It lets you enter equations, solves them algebraically, handles graphing, is super flexible and free-form to the point where you think, document, and calculate all at once.
Love it!
So useful. Use it all the time on iPhone and my MacBook.
A cessé de fonctionner
Depuis une récente mise à jour, l'app ne fonctionne plus. Le développeur contacté n'a pas répondu. J'ai dû basculer sur une feuille de calcul dans Apple Numbers. Dommage, Calca était bien pratique.
Fantastic app
I’ve used Calca for years on iOS and Mac, and I love it for all sorts of computation.
The most recent update with iOS 18 support fixes some issues I’ve hit with iPad Pro and Magic Keyboards—I really appreciate it!
The most recent update with iOS 18 support fixes some issues I’ve hit with iPad Pro and Magic Keyboards—I really appreciate it!
Not completely accurate
I had hoped that, being based on a CAS, it would be able to handle cases like this:
(10^100) + 1 - (10^100) => 0
As you can see (this is pasted from Calca), it does not. The correct answer is 1.
(10^100) + 1 - (10^100) => 0
As you can see (this is pasted from Calca), it does not. The correct answer is 1.
One of the best apps despite maybe being abandoned
I first got Calca when it originally came out (and way before I did for real 🥲), over 10 years ago. I was in college and I had an iPhone 4s, I think. It had apps, most of them not very useful.
Calca was *something else*.
Calca could do math, and Calca made it convenient to do math that involved more than just punching in two numbers to get a single result. No longer did I need to break out a spreadsheet (which are still awkward on a phone, even in 2024, even on our now massive smartphone screens). I could calculate the rent split for my college roommates. I could calculate the total cost of a trip for me and my friends, with a bunch of flight tickets, accommodations, and whatever else, with the total cost split between all of us. I could estimate fuel costs given the fuel efficiency of a car. I could calculate means, standard deviations, and other arbitrary statistics on some data I was thinking about (don't you hate not having an app on your phone for figuring out stats for some random piece of data?). I could plot things.
And I could annotate it all with Markdown, which I had then only just discovered. All on my phone.
It was probably the first app I ever got on my phone that made it very real that this thing I always have on me is actually a legit computer, and having a computer that is always on me is actually useful. (Except for when it's the opposite of useful, but that's not Calca's fault).
Calca is not perfect. Over the years, I have encountered a fair amount of weird behavior, and anything really-really complex can still be awkward and error-prone. Calca's unit-aware calculations, while really cool, have also sometimes caused bizarre results. But when it has worked — and most of the time, it has — it has been magical. I only have weird behavior to complain about because I still come back to it and use it, a decade and who knows how many smartphone generations later.
I wont deny that I'd appreciate it if the developer came back to this app to give it some love. But also... I get it. 11 years is a *long* time, and I only paid for Calca once (that was nice, by the way, to be able to pay for an app just once, and have it keep working for over a decade).
Even if it's flawed, even if it's maybe abandoned, even if I now have a full-blown Python interpreter on my phone, with a whole host of numerical computation and data analysis libraries (imagine that, college me from 11 years ago), I still keep coming back to Calca.
If I could give Calca 6 stars, or 11, or a usize::MAX, I would. If I could pay for it again, (and then maybe a third time), just to say "thank you," I would.
It doesn't have to be perfect to be one of the best.
Calca was *something else*.
Calca could do math, and Calca made it convenient to do math that involved more than just punching in two numbers to get a single result. No longer did I need to break out a spreadsheet (which are still awkward on a phone, even in 2024, even on our now massive smartphone screens). I could calculate the rent split for my college roommates. I could calculate the total cost of a trip for me and my friends, with a bunch of flight tickets, accommodations, and whatever else, with the total cost split between all of us. I could estimate fuel costs given the fuel efficiency of a car. I could calculate means, standard deviations, and other arbitrary statistics on some data I was thinking about (don't you hate not having an app on your phone for figuring out stats for some random piece of data?). I could plot things.
And I could annotate it all with Markdown, which I had then only just discovered. All on my phone.
It was probably the first app I ever got on my phone that made it very real that this thing I always have on me is actually a legit computer, and having a computer that is always on me is actually useful. (Except for when it's the opposite of useful, but that's not Calca's fault).
Calca is not perfect. Over the years, I have encountered a fair amount of weird behavior, and anything really-really complex can still be awkward and error-prone. Calca's unit-aware calculations, while really cool, have also sometimes caused bizarre results. But when it has worked — and most of the time, it has — it has been magical. I only have weird behavior to complain about because I still come back to it and use it, a decade and who knows how many smartphone generations later.
I wont deny that I'd appreciate it if the developer came back to this app to give it some love. But also... I get it. 11 years is a *long* time, and I only paid for Calca once (that was nice, by the way, to be able to pay for an app just once, and have it keep working for over a decade).
Even if it's flawed, even if it's maybe abandoned, even if I now have a full-blown Python interpreter on my phone, with a whole host of numerical computation and data analysis libraries (imagine that, college me from 11 years ago), I still keep coming back to Calca.
If I could give Calca 6 stars, or 11, or a usize::MAX, I would. If I could pay for it again, (and then maybe a third time), just to say "thank you," I would.
It doesn't have to be perfect to be one of the best.
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Smartest app I know
Everybody should know this exists, this is an incredibly useful app.
Greates calc that I know
Both on macOS and iOS a greatest calc app.
(scrolling issues fixed long time ago)
Implementation of "notepad calc" is a best in class. I'm happy to find it!
(scrolling issues fixed long time ago)
Implementation of "notepad calc" is a best in class. I'm happy to find it!
Excellent App
This app is unique and there is nothing else quite like it. I use it in place of Excel when multiple calculations are required along with extensive text.
That said, it’s been several years since it’s been updated so I’m concerned the developer may have abandoned the project. Calca is among my core apps so I’d be open to a subscription offering to compensate the developer and ensure it remains sustainable.
That said, it’s been several years since it’s been updated so I’m concerned the developer may have abandoned the project. Calca is among my core apps so I’d be open to a subscription offering to compensate the developer and ensure it remains sustainable.
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Absolute genius but abandoned
Genius of an app and still well worth using even though the last update is 3 years ago. Some weird quirks when editing and incomplete support for standard units takes getting used to, but so powerful it’s worth it.
Text selection no longer works
Used to be a dope app. I’m guessing something on the iOS API side broke the old behaviour…. or else the text selection behaviour is just stupid. I have been trying to select BEFORE a number and it keeps incrementing/decrementing the values instead of allowing normal text selection to work.
Wonderful program!
I have been using this for dinner time as a math scratchpad. It is really useful for doing rapid calculations while stock trading. The product would be greatly enhanced if it could handle date calculations. For example of I wanted to know the number of days between two dates or the third Monday of June in 2020 etc.
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Amazing mathematical companion tool
It’s like a mini-Mathematica! Very well designed, integrated in Apple envs and as far as I use it (weekly), it is bug free. Congratulations!
Love this app, just wish there were more frequent updates
I really dig the approach this app takes to text + free-form calculations. I use Markdown all the time, so that's a bonus, but the app really shines in the way it interprets text and functions in-place. It has far more power under the hood than I could ever use so I only have a few surface-level nitpicks:
* Document management on iOS/iPadOs is clunky.
* I still hit occasional crasher bugs.
* I wish the iOS/iPadOS versions were updated more frequently. I don't think it needs to roll in all the latest platform features, but some bug fixes and polish would be nice.
* Document management on iOS/iPadOs is clunky.
* I still hit occasional crasher bugs.
* I wish the iOS/iPadOS versions were updated more frequently. I don't think it needs to roll in all the latest platform features, but some bug fixes and polish would be nice.
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No longer usable on iPad
When you're using the Magic Keyboard, you can't type in numbers anymore. Once you type a number, it switches into this weird overwrite mode, where every number you type overwrites the current number. For example, let's say you want to type 1234. You'll type 1, which will appear. Then 2 overwrites 1. And then 3 overwrites 2. And then 4 overwrites 3. So instead of 1234, you just get 4. Useless.
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Response from developer
I am sorry for the trouble but v1.5.1 has been released and I think that it fixes these problems. Please let me know if not!
Really a fun calculator, spreadsheet and document in one
This is such a useful app, with text documents coming alive as computational documents. Like a spreadsheet in a way, but in a different medium.
Truly wonderful
Truly wonderful
Much more useful than calculator or spreadsheet
This is easily within my top five favorite utilitarian - ie to do stuff - apps on any platform. I hope the author, at a minimum maintains its currency with now iOS, but preferably continues to revise and expand it.
The design of Calca allows one to do quick one-offs and structured analysis with equal ease. I find it a fine balance between calculator, spreadsheet and a Matlab clone like Simo. Its syntax id straight forward and the WYSIWYG structure of the document lets one explain/notate calculations in place.
For Python programmers, Pyto has an API to access Calca's engine from within a Python program running on an iDevice which has Calca installed.
The design of Calca allows one to do quick one-offs and structured analysis with equal ease. I find it a fine balance between calculator, spreadsheet and a Matlab clone like Simo. Its syntax id straight forward and the WYSIWYG structure of the document lets one explain/notate calculations in place.
For Python programmers, Pyto has an API to access Calca's engine from within a Python program running on an iDevice which has Calca installed.
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Prima Hilfe für Geocaching aber ungepflegt
Von Soulver (RIP) auf Calca umgestiegen.
Koordinatenberechnungen mit Variablen könnte nicht einfacher sein.
Aber leider funktioniert weder Google noch Währungsupdate derzeit.
Koordinatenberechnungen mit Variablen könnte nicht einfacher sein.
Aber leider funktioniert weder Google noch Währungsupdate derzeit.
Breaking bug on iPad Pro 12.9 with keyboard
Calca is one of my favorite apps. I use it regularly on my phone, laptop, etc. I desperately wish I could use it on the iPad Pro with Magic Keyboard folio.
Unfortunately, in that context, I'm usually trying to total line items under a 'total +=' line. For every line item, when I start typing digits, the app highlights the entry as though I'm cutting / pasting and does not permit me to enter amount normally. I can work around it -- to a degree -- by separating each digit with a non-numeric character, but I usually just give up and go to a different machine.
Hoping the developer will see this and determine what causes / resolves the problem. Huge fan, otherwise, and leaving 5 star review because it works on every other device perfectly.
Unfortunately, in that context, I'm usually trying to total line items under a 'total +=' line. For every line item, when I start typing digits, the app highlights the entry as though I'm cutting / pasting and does not permit me to enter amount normally. I can work around it -- to a degree -- by separating each digit with a non-numeric character, but I usually just give up and go to a different machine.
Hoping the developer will see this and determine what causes / resolves the problem. Huge fan, otherwise, and leaving 5 star review because it works on every other device perfectly.
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