How to set birthday reminders on iPhone

You don’t need to install anything to get a birthday alert on an iPhone. Contacts holds the date, Calendar shows it, and Settings decides when the alert comes. Once the three are connected, every birthday you save gets an alert on its own, every year.

The steps below follow Apple’s own guide for recent versions of iOS. If a menu looks a little different on your phone, your iOS version is probably older.

Step 1: add the birthday to the contact

Calendar can only show birthdays that are saved in Contacts, so this is where it starts. Open the Contacts app, find the person, edit their card and add the birthday. You don’t need the year if you don’t know it.

It’s worth doing a few at once. Open your messages and go through the people you actually talk to, then add the dates you already know. For the rest, there’s no shame in asking. “When’s your birthday again? I’m putting it in my phone” is a nice message to get.

Step 2: show the Birthdays calendar

Next, tell Calendar to show those dates. Open the Calendar app and open the list of your calendars. Then tap Birthdays, so that it’s selected. Apple describes this in its guide to using multiple calendars.

Go to a day you know is someone’s birthday and check that it’s there. If it isn’t, the date is probably missing from that person’s card, so go back to step 1.

Step 3: choose when the alert comes

This is the step most people miss. Showing a birthday on the calendar is one thing, and getting an alert for it is another.

Open the Settings app, tap Apps, then tap Calendar. Tap Default Alert Times, tap Birthdays, then choose an option. That’s the path in Apple’s guide to Calendar settings. On older versions of iOS, Calendar sits directly in Settings, without the Apps step.

Think about what the alert is for. If you only want to send a message, an alert on the day is enough. If you’d like to post a card or buy something, pick an earlier one, if your phone offers it.

One more check: the alert only reaches you if Calendar is allowed to send notifications. If you turned those off once to get some peace, the birthday alerts went with them.

Birthdays for people who aren’t in your contacts

Maybe you have a friend’s child, a colleague or a neighbour whose birthday you want to remember, without adding them to your contacts. In that case, make your own event in Calendar. Create an all-day event on the date, name it clearly, and set it to repeat every year. Give it an alert of its own, because the Birthdays setting from step 3 is for the Birthdays calendar.

The name matters more than you’d think. “Luca’s birthday (Anna’s son)” will still make sense to you in eleven months. “Luca” won’t.

Why you can still miss them

All of this works, and for a lot of people it’s enough. But it helps to know where it falls short.

An alert is easy to swipe away. It comes while you’re in a meeting or on the bus, you think “I’ll write later”, and later doesn’t happen. A calendar event doesn’t come back and ask if you did it.

A birthday alert also knows nothing about the friendship. It looks the same for your sister as for someone you haven’t spoken to in four years. It won’t tell you that this is the first time you’ve thought of them since spring, and it won’t remember that they just started a new job, which is the thing you’d want to mention.

And it comes once a year. If a birthday is the only thing that gets you in touch, you can easily end up with friends you only hear from on one day. That’s a common sign of two people drifting apart, even when nobody wants it. A repeating reminder for everything else has the same problem: it rings on a date whether or not you already talked.

When an app helps: birthdays plus keeping in touch

If alerts are working for you, keep them. There’s no need for another app just to get a date right. An app starts to make sense when birthdays are only part of what you want to keep up with.

Ciao! is the app I make for that. You add a birthday once. That morning you get a note, and that person is the first card in your stack. On every other day, Ciao! counts from the last time you talked. You choose how often you’d like to hear from each person, and it tells you when it’s been a while. You can also keep short notes on each friend, so you know what to ask when you write. Adding people is quick too, because you can pick them from your contacts.

To be clear about what it doesn’t do: the note comes on the morning of the birthday, not days ahead, and Ciao! doesn’t do gift ideas or cards. If that’s what you need, step 3 above or one of the other apps we compare may suit you better.

Questions

Why don’t birthday reminders show on my iPhone?

There are three usual reasons. The date isn’t saved on that person’s card in Contacts. The Birthdays calendar isn’t selected in the Calendar app. Or the alert time for birthdays, or Calendar’s notifications, are turned off. Check them in that order.

Can I get a reminder a week before?

That’s up to Calendar, not Ciao!. Open Settings, tap Apps, then Calendar, Default Alert Times and Birthdays, and look at the options your phone offers. Ciao! itself only sends its note on the morning of the birthday.

Is there an app to remember birthdays?

Yes, plenty, and your iPhone can do it without one. Ciao! is a good fit if you also want to keep in touch through the rest of the year, because it tells you when it’s been a while with someone as well as when it’s their birthday.

Does Ciao! cost anything?

Yes. It starts with a 7-day free trial, then it’s €3.99 a year. Outside the euro countries, the App Store shows your local price before you confirm. The FAQ has the rest.