1. Add the birthday to the contact
- Open Contacts (or Phone → Contacts) and pick a person.
- Tap Edit, scroll down and tap add birthday.
- Choose the date. If you don’t know the year, you can leave it out.
- Tap Done.
Do this for everyone whose birthday you want to remember. It is the only step that takes time.
2. Show birthdays in Calendar
- Open Calendar and tap Calendars at the bottom.
- Make sure Birthdays is checked.
Birthdays from Contacts now appear in Calendar every year, on their own.
3. Turn on the alert
This is the step most people miss: by default, birthdays show up in Calendar without any notification.
- Open Settings → Apps → Calendar (on older iOS: Settings → Calendar).
- Tap Default Alert Times → Birthdays.
- Choose when to be reminded: on the day, 1 or 2 days before, or a week before.
A week before is the most useful if you send a card or a gift; the day itself is enough for a message.
Where the built-in reminders fall short
This works well for the people who are in your contacts. It works badly for the people around them:
- Your friends’ kids and partners usually aren’t contacts. You can add them as a “related name” on your friend’s card, but a related name has no birthday and no reminder.
- One alert time for everyone. You can’t get a week’s notice for your mom and a same-day nudge for a coworker.
- The reminder doesn’t say whom to message. When your friend’s daughter turns 9, you text your friend, not her — Calendar only shows her name.
That gap is why we built Circles: each friend has a circle of the people in their life, with birthdays, and the morning reminder says “Alex’s daughter Emily turns 9 today” with a ready message to Alex. Birthdays you already have in Contacts can be imported in one tap.