How to Turn Off iOS Calendar Birthday Notifications

There's a common issue that many iOS users face: their calendar app automatically inserts their birthday, which can be quite annoying. This article provides a step-by-step guide on how to disable these notifications and manage your calendar settings effectively, ensuring that you no longer receive unwanted birthday reminders.

1. Understanding the Source of Your Birthday Reminders

Birthday reminders in the iOS Calendar app are inserted by the Contacts app. Each contact with a specified birthday in your address book will generate a reminder in a special Birthdays calendar. This automatic feature can be quite useful if you want to stay organized, but if it interferes with your notifications, you can easily disable it.

2. Disable Birthday Calendar in Calendar App

If you want to completely remove all birthday reminders, you can turn off the 'Birthday' calendar in your 'Calendar' app. Here's how you can do it:

Open the Calendar app on your iOS device. Tap on the Calendars button, which is located in the top left corner. On the next screen, check which calendars are available for display. Uncheck the 'Birthdays' calendar to ensure it is no longer included in your reminders. After making the changes, the 'Birthdays' calendar will be removed from your calendar view.

If you only want to remove your own birthday from reminders but keep the calendar display, proceed with the following steps:

Go to the Contacts app and find your contact information. Here, you'll be able to modify your personal birthday field. Simply remove the date or delete your birthday entry from this app. Remember that this change will only affect your own birthday and won't disable the Birthdays calendar in the Calendar app for other contacts.

3. Customizing Birthday Alerts

For additional customization, you can set alert times for birthdays without fully disabling the Birthdays calendar. Here’s how to adjust the alert times:

Go to Settings. Tap on Calendar. Scroll down and tap on Default Alert Times. Under the 'Birthdays' section, you can set the time before a birthday that you want to be reminded. For instance, you can set it to 24 hours or any other interval that suits you best.

4. Disabling Birthday Notifications Only

If you only want to disable birthday notifications without making changes to your calendar display, follow these steps:

Go to Settings. Tap on Mail, Contacts, Calendars. Navigate to the Calendars section. At the bottom, find the Default Alert Times, then select Birthdays. Change the setting to None. This will turn off notifications for birthday reminders while keeping the Birthdays calendar visible in your Calendar app.

Alternatively, if you want to disable all calendar notifications including birthday reminders, you can do so by accessing the Notifications settings. However, this will eliminate all calendar notifications, not just the birthday ones.

5. Addressing iOS Notification Panel Issues

Some users have reported that even after disabling the 'Birthdays' calendar in the Calendar app, birthday reminders still appear in the iOS notification panel. In iOS 5, the developers might not have sufficiently addressed this issue, causing calendar notifications to persist. Here is a workaround for this issue:

Upon enabling notifications in the Calendar app by navigating to Settings > Notifications > Calendar, select the option to turn off all calendar notifications.

This method should effectively remove all calendar-related notifications, including those for birthdays, from the notification panel.