Features

Cakeday is a birthday manager for Apple platforms, built around capture, reminders, sync, and sharing. This page summarizes the core capabilities and links to the detailed guides.

Birthday Management

Each record can store a name, date, avatar, notes, group assignment, birth time, birth city, and timezone details. Cakeday automatically calculates the next birthday, age, and countdown, and keeps date presentation consistent across the app and extensions.

Lunar Calendar

Cakeday supports the traditional Chinese lunar calendar through LunarCore, including solar-lunar conversion and leap month handling.

Groups

Organize people into custom groups with independent names, colors, icons, and sort order. This makes it easy to separate family, friends, coworkers, or any structure you prefer.

Zodiac & Astrology

Cakeday shows the Western zodiac sign for any birthday and the Chinese zodiac when a birth year is available. With a birth time and birth city, AstroCore can also calculate the Ascendant (Rising Sign).

Notifications & Birthday Alarm

Cakeday supports 18 built-in reminder offsets, custom reminder times, Time Sensitive delivery, Communication Notifications, and friend-timezone reminders. On supported iOS versions, you can also enable Birthday Alarm for selected people so the day-of reminder is delivered in an alarm-style format.

Widgets, Controls & Apple Watch

Cakeday extends upcoming birthdays to Home Screen widgets, Control Center controls, Apple Watch complications, and a standalone watchOS app. Control Center can provide quick add, next birthday, and per-person countdown shortcuts.

CakeShare

Share individual records by deep link or export protected .cakeshare files for larger transfers. Optional password protection is available when you need it.

Appearance & Display

Choose from 8 accent colors and Light, Dark, or System appearance modes. Display settings also support lunar date visibility, 24-hour time, and multiple date format preferences shared with widgets and Apple Watch.

Backup & Import

Cakeday supports full .cakeday backups, portable JSON and CSV exports, and .cakeshare package import. The import workflow supports overwrite import, incremental import, duplicate detection, and visible progress during longer operations.

iCloud Sync

Sync birthday records and groups across your Apple devices using your Apple ID.

Apple Platform Integration

• Spotlight Search: CoreSpotlight indexing lets you find records by name, pinyin, or zodiac sign from system search.
• Siri & Shortcuts: App Intents and Shortcuts can query today’s birthdays, upcoming birthdays, and specific people, and can also launch search, add, or random-entry flows.
• Control Center & Quick Actions: Control Center controls surface the fastest actions, and long-press app icon shortcuts jump straight into Search, Upcoming, Add Birthday, and Random Friend.
• System Calendar Sync: EventKit can write selected birthdays into the system Calendar as recurring annual events.