Beorg for iOS works a bit differently. It's an Org-mode tool designed for working with org files—especially calendars, appointments, and tasks. What makes it interesting is that it also syncs your org-mode calendar entries and tasks with the iOS system calendar and reminders. So if you schedule an appointment in your org file, Beorg can publish it to your calendar. That’s pretty neat.

Even better, this isn’t one-way sync. Beorg can pull in existing calendar data and create a new org file with the relevant information, which you can then include in your Org agenda view.

While this doesn’t entirely solve the problem of sending calendar invites from Emacs via Org, it does smooth out some of the rough edges that made calendar management in Emacs a bit clunky. I'm honestly surprised there isn’t a full-blown connector app that runs on your phone, watches your org files, and updates the calendar or sends invites using native system tools. I would have loved that back when I was managing email with notmuch and limping along with diary and appt, juggling items between Emacs and my online calendar.

Beyond calendar support, I’ve recently come across two additional macOS tools that make working with Org-mode more enjoyable: Captee and Scrim.

I often find myself collecting links—articles to read, tools to try, ideas to revisit. Usually this involves copying the URL from the address bar or using the share menu, but those methods feel lacking. They don’t capture the page title, and certainly not my thoughts at the time.

Captee helps here. It gathers the key metadata (like the page title), allows you to add notes, and exports the result in either Markdown or Org-mode format. You can copy that data to the clipboard or, with the help of Scrim, send it directly into Emacs using org-protocol://, triggering an Org-mode capture template and storing it automatically.

In an ideal world, we wouldn’t need workarounds like this. But given the sandboxing on macOS, I appreciate that these tools exist—and honestly, I’d rather deal with a little friction in exchange for stronger app isolation.

That said, I’ve run into a few issues with Beorg.

First, syncing via iCloud is inconsistent—it doesn’t update as frequently as I’d like. Second, Emacs on macOS can be finicky when editing files inside the iCloud folder. The latter is probably solvable with some configuration or symbolic links, but the syncing delay is trickier.

Still, these are relatively small trade-offs if your goal is to keep using Emacs and Org-mode for your calendar, while remaining compatible with the rest of the world’s scheduling tools.

While I think I prefer BBEdit for doing edits to files on macOS, Emacs is always going to be my home. It's so much more extensible and functional. With these tools, though, I can say that being an Emacs user on macOS is miles better than it is on Windows or, in some cases, Linux.