A new look, a real timetable, and an assistant that shows its sources
This is the largest update FINKI LIFE has had since it launched. Almost every screen has been rebuilt, three features are new, and a number of things that were quietly wrong have been put right.
Here is what changed, and why.
The interface was rebuilt
Navigation now sits in a floating bar that stays out of the way of your content. The tab you are on shows its name; the others show their icon, and every one of them keeps its label for screen readers. Each tab opens with its own header, so you always know where you are without a title bar taking up room at the top.
Cards are softer, fields are filled rather than boxed, and everything moves with a single, consistent set of animations. You can choose the accent colour, and the whole app — in light mode and dark mode alike — takes its palette from that one choice.
Your courses, and the arithmetic behind them
Course cards are closed by default: the mark, the name, one line of detail. Tap one and it opens in place on a points calculator — every component your chosen completion path counts, each drawn as a bar of what you have earned against what is on offer, with the projected grade underneath.
Choosing electives, entering points, adding and removing subjects, setting your professors: all of it is yours, always available, and nothing the app syncs will ever take it away from you.
The calendar draws your week, it does not list it
The Calendar tab has three views. Calendar is the month, with a dot under any day that has something on it. Timetable draws your week the way a timetable should be drawn — hours down the side, days across the top, each class a block sized by how long it actually runs, with a line marking the current time. Agenda is the running list.
Swipe left or right across the calendar to change month.
The faculty's own academic year is on that calendar too — holidays, deadlines, and the dates the faculty publishes. Exam sessions get special treatment: instead of sitting in the list like a public holiday, an exam session now raises a single reminder at 08:00 on the morning it opens.
Your timetable, imported
You no longer have to type your week in by hand. FINKI LIFE can read the published schedule for your study group and bring your lectures across. Where your group's week contains electives that only some students sit, the app asks which ones are yours rather than assuming.
Lab times stay yours to enter. Lab groups are assigned separately and are not part of the published schedule, so importing them would be a guess — and a wrong lab time is worse than no lab time.
Connecting your faculty Moodle account is optional and currently in beta. When it is on, the deadlines posted there arrive on your calendar and in your reminders, so an assignment posted while you were not looking still reaches you.
The planner
Tasks move through To do, In progress and Done, each with an estimate, a priority and a due date, and the header tells you how much work is left. Delete something by accident and an Undo appears — there is no confirmation dialog interrupting everyone to catch the few who did not mean it.
The study assistant now cites the rulebook
This is the change we are most pleased with. The assistant can now answer questions about the rules of studying — credits, transfers, exam procedure, discipline — from the faculty's and the university's own acts, which ship inside the app and are searched on your device with no network.
It does not tell you what the rule is. It quotes the passage, names the act and the article, and links to the faculty's own copy so you can read it yourself. Where a document's current standing is unclear — several of them are — it says so plainly and tells you to confirm with student services. An app that states a rule as fact out of a possibly repealed act is worse than one that says nothing.
You can type in Latin letters and it will still find the article. And the assistant now tells you what it is doing while it works, and how long it has been.
By default the assistant runs entirely on your device and makes no network requests at all. A cloud mode exists for longer answers; it is off until you turn it on, and turning it on asks you first.
Smaller things you will notice
- A short guided tour the first time you open the app, and again whenever you want it from the menu.
- Rooms are tappable. A room name on a class card opens the campus map at that room.
- A focus timer with its own alarm, which keeps counting correctly even if you close the app.
- A home screen widget showing what is next.
- News, jobs and events from the faculty, with optional alerts that work even when the app is closed.
- It works at 200% font size. Every screen has been tested at Android's largest text setting, because an app you cannot read is an app you cannot use.
- Crash reports can be switched off in App settings → Privacy. They are on by default, they never contain anything about you or your studies, and the switch is yours.
Also fixed
A failed exam was being counted towards your earned credits. Спорт и здравје was arriving marked as completed on brand new profiles, claiming credits for a subject nobody had attended. Notifications were showing a blank square instead of the app's icon. Reminders were arriving a few minutes late. All of these are fixed.
FINKI LIFE is free, has no advertising, no tracking and no analytics, and keeps your studies on your device by default. If something is wrong or missing, there is a bug reporter in the menu — it goes straight to a person, and it is read.
Good luck this semester.