Groups

Groups help you organize birthdays into meaningful categories. Cakeday comes with default groups and lets you create as many custom groups as you need.

Default Groups

When you first use Cakeday, three default groups are created, each with its own icon and color:

• Default — tray icon, purple
• Family — heart icon, coral
• Friends — two-people icon, blue

You can rename, recolor, re-icon, or delete the default groups (as long as at least one group remains).

Creating a Group

Go to the groups management screen and tap the add button. Each group has three properties:

• Name: A text label for the group (e.g., “Colleagues”, “School”).
• Color: A color used as the visual indicator for the group. Pick from the curated palette (organized into Bright, Fresh, and Deep pages), or choose any color you like with the Custom Color option, which opens the system color picker (including the eyedropper).
• Icon: An SF Symbol icon displayed alongside the group name.

Editing and Deleting Groups

Tap a group to open it, then use the toolbar to edit its name, color, or icon. To delete a group, swipe left on it (or use the context menu) and confirm. If the group contains any birthdays, they are automatically reassigned to the adjacent group — the confirmation message tells you exactly where they will go (for example, Friends in this group will be moved to “Family”). There is no destination picker, so if you want the members to land somewhere specific, move them first. You cannot delete the last remaining group.

Managing a Group’s Members

Tapping a group opens its detail screen, which lists every member of that group. From here you can:

• Search the member list by name.
• Sort the list by Upcoming, Name, or Birth Month.
• Filter the list by one or more conditions: App Notification Off, No Reminder Time, No Friend Timezone, Next 30 Days, No Avatar, and No Birth Year.

Batch Actions

Enter multi-select mode to act on many friends at once. Use Smart Select to select everyone, the current (filtered) list, or just the friends matching a condition. With friends selected, tap Actions to apply a batch change:

• Move to Group — move the selected friends to another group, or to Ungrouped.
• App Notification — turn in-app birthday notifications on or off.
• Notification Reminder Times… — set the reminder times for the selected friends.
• Birthday Alarm and Birthday Alarm Time… — turn the alarm on or off and set its time (shown only when Birthday Alarm is available on your device).
• Notify at Friend’s Timezone — turn timezone-aware notifications on or off.
• System Calendar — turn calendar events on or off.
• Delete Friends — remove the selected birthday records.

Reordering Groups

Long-press and drag a group to change its position in the list. The sort order is preserved across app launches and synced via iCloud.

Minimum Group Constraint

Cakeday requires at least one group to exist at all times. Every birthday must belong to exactly one group. When creating a new birthday, the default group is pre-selected, but you can change it in the editor.

Group Color and Icon Consistency

A group’s color and icon are stored on the group itself, not on individual people. They are set in the group editor, and every member shares them. Because the value lives in one place, editing a group’s color or icon once instantly updates how all of its members are shown — you never need to update each person individually.

Dark Mode Color Adaptation

Group colors automatically adapt to Dark Mode. In light appearance, colors appear at their standard brightness. In dark appearance, Cakeday adjusts the color lightness to maintain readability and visual contrast against dark backgrounds.