How to see birthdays in Calendar app on iOS, Mac, and web

Learn how to show upcoming birthdays for family and friends in the Apple Calendar app on your iPhone, iPad, Mac, and the web so you never forget to congratulate them again.

Apple’s Calendar app is great for events and appointments, but did you know it can also display birthdays?

Provided you’ve saved people’s birth dates in the Contacts app, upcoming birthdays can optionally show up on your calendar.

You’ll also see what age someone just turned, and you can even opt to receive timely birthday notifications in advance. But first, you must enable this option by following the steps in this tutorial.

Step 1: Add birthdays in the Contacts app

The Calendar app fetches birthdays from the Contacts app.

To add a birthday, edit a contact and tap Add Birthday. Then select the day, month, and year they were born (this is used to calculate their age). You can also add a birthday when saving a contact.

Note: Updated birthdays in Contacts may not be instantly reflected in the Calendar app because it may take up to an hour to sync everywhere via iCloud.

Step 2: Set the Calendar app to show birthdays

Next, turn on the birthday option in the Calendar app.

iPhone and iPad

1. Open the iOS Calendar app.
2. Tap the calendar icon (on older iOS versions, tap “Calendar” instead).
3. Tick the box next to Birthdays.
4. Tap the checkmark icon in the top-right corner to save your changes.

Birthdays appear alongside other calendar events and appointments. Tap a birthday on the calendar to show the person’s contact card. To hide birthdays from the calendar, repeat the above steps but untick the Birthdays calendar.

Mac

1. Open the Calendar app.
2. Click the calendar icon near the window’s top-left corner.
3. Hover the pointer over the Other heading and click the downward-pointing arrow to expand the section. Then tick the box next to Birthdays to show upcoming birthdays in the Calendar app on your Mac.

If you don’t see the Birthdays calendar, click Calendar > Settings from the top menu bar. Then tick the box next to “Show Birthday calendar.”

iCloud.com

1. Visit iCloud.com/calendar in a web browser on your computer and log in with your Apple account.
2. Click the tiny calendar icon near the window’s top-left corner.
3. Tick the box next to Birthdays to turn on the birthday calendar.

Don’t see the Birthdays option? Click the three-dotted icon and choose Settings from the menu, then tick the box next to “Show Birthdays calendar.”

Step 3: Set notifications for upcoming birthdays

You can configure the Calendar app to notify you about upcoming birthdays on the day or earlier. This feature helps ensure you don’t forget to congratulate friends on birthdays and buy gifts.

iPhone and iPad

1. Open the Settings app.
2. Tap Apps at the bottom.
3. Select Calendar.
4. Tap Default Alert Times.
5. Tap Birthdays.
6. Choose one of these scheduling options: On day of event (9 AM), 1 day before (9 AM), 2 days before (9 AM), or 1 week before.
7. Also, check whether the Calendar app is allowed to send alerts in Settings > Notifications > Calendar.

Mac

1. Open the Calendar app.
2. Click Calendar > Settings from the top menu bar.
3. Go to the Alerts tab.
4. Set the notification schedule in the Birthdays menu. If you’d like to schedule alerts for events, all-day events, and birthdays separately on each device, tick the box next to “Use these default alerts on only this computer.”

There are other ways to keep track of birthdays on an iPhone, iPad, and Mac. The solution we just showed you is great if you don’t want to download any extra apps.