Birthday Management | Cakeday Docs

Cakeday provides comprehensive functionality to track and manage birthdays. In the app, birthdays are treated as friends. This guide covers adding and editing friends, the available fields, countdown mechanics, age calculation, and the profile detail view.

Adding a Friend

To add a new birthday reminder, tap the + button on the Home screen. This will initialize a new profile.

You can also create friends in bulk by tapping Import from Apple Contacts, which reads the names, birthdays, and avatars of the contacts you allow and turns them into birthday reminders. See Backup & Import for details.

Profile Fields

Every birthday profile supports the following fields to create a comprehensive astrological and temporal tracking record:

Name: The display name of the friend.
Date: Supports either the Gregorian (Solar) or traditional Chinese (Lunar) calendar date.
Year: Optional. Providing a birth year unlocks age calculations, the Chinese Zodiac animal, and the Sexagenary (Stem-Branch) cycle.
Calendar Type: Toggles seamlessly between Solar and Lunar modes.
Notes: A free-text field for storing associated metadata (e.g., gift ideas).
Avatar: Select an image from your Photo Library. Avatars are bundled when sharing files.
Birth Time: Optional. Combined with the birth city, it enables the calculation of the Ascendant (Rising Sign).
Birth City: Optional. Searchable from a built-in database of about 31,000 cities across 244 countries and regions. Search is multilingual — type in any language or script (e.g. 上海, 東京, São Paulo), and it ignores accents and full-width characters. The selected city provides exact coordinates for astrological derivations and determines the local timezone.

More Info Fields

Beyond the core fields, the edit screen has a More Info section. Tap Add Field to attach optional profile details from the Add More Info picker. Fields are grouped into four categories:

Personality: MBTI (a dedicated picker with all 16 types grouped by role — Analysts, Diplomats, Sentinels, Explorers — plus an optional A/T variant) and Enneagram (types 1–9, with wings and named profiles).
Astrology: 16 manual chart placements (Moon through Lilith, including the Midheaven, Descendant, Imum Coeli, and the lunar nodes). See Zodiac & Astrology for how the chart axes auto-fill.
Identity: Pronouns, Gender, and Sexual Orientation. Each offers preset options plus a Custom entry to self-describe.
East Asian Metaphysics: Chinese Zodiac, Five Elements, and BaZi Day Master.

Each field can be added once and starts as Not Selected; empty fields are dropped when you save. A friend can hold up to 32 extra fields.

Group, Reminders, and Calendar

Beyond the profile fields, the edit screen also lets you configure how each friend is organized and reminded:

Group: Assign the friend to one of your groups with a tap. See Groups.
Notifications: Toggle App Notification and set per-friend Reminder Times. Turn on Notify at Friend’s Timezone and pick a Friend’s Timezone to fire reminders at the friend’s local time — see Friend Time Zone Reminders. On iOS you can also enable a Birthday Alarm; see Birthday Alarm.
Sync to System Calendar: Mirror the birthday into your system calendar for this friend. See System Calendar Sync.

Finding a Friend

The Friends tab has a search field at the top with a Search anything… prompt. Type to filter your list instantly.

A short query matches each friend’s name, its pinyin spelling, and their birthday date or year. With two or more characters — or any Chinese, Japanese, or Korean text — Cakeday also searches birth time, the Western and Chinese zodiac, the lunar date, and your notes, so you can find someone by “leo”, “dragon”, or a detail you jotted down. If nothing matches, Cakeday shows a No results state.

Editing a Profile

Tap any friend in your list to open their Detail View, then tap the Edit button to modify their information. All fields can be adjusted on the fly. If you switch between Solar and Lunar calendar types, Cakeday will automatically reconstruct and adjust the date.

Countdown Mechanics

Cakeday automatically calculates the exact number of days remaining until each friend’s next birthday. If the birthday is today, the indicator changes to a celebratory display. The countdown chronometer refreshes at midnight daily.

Age Calculation

If the birth year is supplied, Cakeday will display the person’s current age.

Detail View

The core display for a friend provides a complete summary:

Avatar and Name
Large countdown display to the next occurrence
Current or upcoming Age (if birth year is provided)
Both Solar and Lunar dates, shown as separate rows
Western Zodiac Sign (Sun Sign)
Chinese Zodiac Animal
Ascendant (Rising Sign), automatically formulated via AstroCore or manually set
Any saved More Info fields, listed in the Information card in this order: East Asian metaphysics first, then the chart’s Zodiac and Ascendant, then the astrology placements, and finally the personality and identity fields