Cakeday for Apple TV

Cakeday for Apple TV turns the birthdays you keep on iPhone, iPad, or Mac into a living-room experience. It runs on tvOS 17 or later and is a read-only iCloud replica: it reads the same private iCloud database your other devices write to, then presents your upcoming birthdays as a poster wall, a timeline, full-screen detail views, and big-screen celebrations. You never add or edit anyone on Apple TV — you do that on your other devices, and the changes appear here automatically.

How It Syncs

Cakeday for Apple TV pulls birthdays and groups from your private iCloud database — the same store described in iCloud Sync. Sign this Apple TV in with the same Apple ID as your iPhone (in Settings > Users and Accounts), and your list appears on its own.

• It refreshes on launch and again whenever the app returns to the foreground, with a short cooldown after a network failure.
• A small Syncing badge appears in the top corner while it fetches.
• If you just edited someone on iPhone and want the change now, open Settings > iCloud Sync and use Sync now.
• Profile photos sync separately. Under What syncs, the Sync profile photos toggle pulls avatars from iCloud; turn it off if your living-room network is slow.

The most recent fetch is cached locally, so your birthdays still show when iCloud is briefly unreachable. If this Apple TV signs into a different Apple ID, the cache is cleared and the new account’s data is loaded instead.

Home

The Home tab is the main wall. At the top, a hero row features the next birthdays within the coming week as large posters; selecting a poster updates the headline copy beside it with the person’s name, date, sign, and countdown. Below the hero, posters are grouped into rows:

• This Month — up to eight people with a birthday in the current month.
• One row per group, in your group order, tinted with each group’s color.

From a hero poster you can choose View Details to open the full-screen detail view, or Start Countdown to jump straight into the live countdown.

Today

The Today tab is where celebrations live. When nobody has a birthday today, it shows a calm “next up” panel listing who’s coming and how many days away they are. When someone does have a birthday today, the whole screen switches into your chosen celebration mode.

Atmosphere Modes

Pick the full-screen visual under Settings > Today’s Celebration with the Atmosphere picker. There are four modes:

• Photo Wall — the celebrant front and center over a soft wall of other upcoming friends. If more than one person shares the day, an “Also today” strip lists the rest.
• Cake — a drawn cake with flickering candles over warm bokeh; the age appears on the cake when Show age is on.
• Confetti — falling streamers and paper bursts around the person’s avatar and name.
• Cinema — a letterboxed presentation with a giant age numeral and the person’s sign, Chinese zodiac, and lunar date along the bottom.

When several people share a birthday, the first one becomes the hero and the others are shown alongside, depending on the mode.

Timeline

The Timeline tab plots upcoming birthdays along a horizontal track measured in days from today. Switch between a 30-day and 90-day range, scroll sideways through the dates, and select any person to read a summary card at the bottom — name, date, sign, Chinese zodiac, group, and days remaining. Selecting a person opens their detail view.

Detail View

Opening a person from anywhere shows a cinematic full-screen detail page over their avatar’s backdrop:

• Their name, full date, sign, Chinese zodiac, and (for lunar birthdays) the lunar date as tags.
• A large countdown card showing days until the birthday with a progress bar.
• Optional cards for Notes and the Natal Chart, when those are enabled in display settings.
• A Start Countdown button that opens the live countdown.

The live countdown fills the screen with the person’s photo, a ring, and a ticking days / hours / minutes / seconds display down to the moment of their next birthday.

Living-Room Display Settings

Because the TV is often on with guests around, Settings > Living Room Display lets you control what’s visible:

• Show age — show ages on the Today page, detail page, and cards.
• Show notes — show notes (which may contain addresses or gift plans).
• Show full birthday — when off, only the month and day are shown, never the year.
• Show full natal chart — add a planets-and-positions panel to the detail page, computed on the Apple TV from the birth date and time.

There’s also a one-tap Hide private fields action that turns off age, notes, and the full birthday together for guest situations; visit Settings again to restore them. These toggles only affect the living-room screen — the iPhone version always shows full info.

General Settings

Settings > General mirrors your tvOS language and region and lets you set the Appearance mode (System, Dark, or Light) and a Theme Palette that tints hero colors, accents, and group tints. Language and region follow your tvOS system settings.

Editing Still Happens on Your Other Devices

Everything you see on Apple TV originates elsewhere. Add a person, change a date, recolor a group, or set a photo on iPhone, iPad, or Mac, and it flows to the TV through iCloud. The same data also powers your Widgets and other surfaces.