# 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. Apple TV is for viewing only. There is no editor, no notifications, and no way to change a birthday from the couch. To make changes, use Cakeday on iPhone, iPad, or Mac — see [Birthday Management](/docs/en/birthday-management). ## How It Syncs Cakeday for Apple TV pulls birthdays and groups from your **private iCloud database** — the same store described in [iCloud Sync](/docs/en/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. If Apple TV isn't signed into iCloud, or there are no birthdays in iCloud yet, you'll see a full-screen prompt instead of the home wall. Add people on iPhone, sign in with the matching Apple ID, and they sync over automatically. ## 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. Turn on **Auto enter on launch** (in **Settings > Today's Celebration**) so that opening Apple TV on someone's birthday brings up the celebration right away — perfect for leaving on a screen during a party. 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. Lunar birthdays, signs, and Chinese zodiac are resolved on the TV from the synced data. For how lunar dates work across Cakeday, see [Lunar Calendar](/docs/en/lunar-calendar). ## 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](/docs/en/widgets) and other surfaces. [Birthday Management](/docs/en/birthday-management) Add and edit the birthdays that appear on Apple TV. [iCloud Sync](/docs/en/icloud-sync) How your birthdays move between devices over iCloud.