For most of us, Apple’s Calendar app does a perfectly fine job of keeping our important dates in order. But those of you looking for a little extra oomph from your digital day planner might want to take a look at Calevents. Unlike the 17,000 other calendar apps overflowing the App Store, Calevents works as a sort of standalone plugin for Calendar, adding functionality without upsetting Apple’s traditional user experience.

Now you can see all those birthdays you otherwise might forget.

Oddly enough, there’s no actual calendar in Calevents; insead, it presents a chronological list of your scheduled events, each affixed with a handy icon (several are supplied, but you can use your own photos, too) that are infinitely more useful than Calendar’s tiny black dots. Events and alerts can be scheduled and edited right in Calevents, which then syncs those changes with Calendar.

Deadlines look much more ominous with an hourglass next to them.

A series of user-defined keywords tells the events how to behave; for example, Calevents can be trained to recognize the keyword “meeting” or “conference call” to automatically assign a specific icon and send it to the “Work” calendar. The main events list is customizable, too, so “This Week” can be renamed “Imminent” for added urgency.

The bottom line. Besides that -- and adding a countdown timer to events -- Calevents doesn’t bring a whole lot of functionality that isn’t already built into Calendar. Unless, of course, you’re tired of looking at all those little dots.