Birthday Widgets

I can’t remember birthdays all that well. They do only happen once a year, after all. But I like to reach out to some people to wish them a happy birthday.

In the Apple ecosystem, adding a birthdate to a contact will show their birthday in Apple Calendar. Personally, though, I find it can be a bit noisy. Between my own calendar, kids’ calendars, garbage pickup calendar, my mom’s calendar, and my girlfriend’s calendar, things can easily get lost in the mix.

I’ll turn a lot of these calendars off, including the birthday calendar, so that I only see the most important stuff. The default Calendar Up Next widget will mirror Apple Calendar and only show events for calendars that are visible.

I’ve set up a secondary “Up Next” calendar widget on both my iPhone and my Mac. I edit the widget and turn off “Mirror Calendar App” and then choose to only have the Birthdays calendar selected. The small widget will show any birthdays for today. The medium widget will show upcoming birthdays. The large and extra large widgets are kinda pointless because they’re meant to show hourly views. Birthdays are all-day events.

And that’s it. Now I can remember to wish people a happy birthday.