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Birthday reminders are nice but not if they keep popping up each day for every contact that has a birthday filled in. I don't need a popup birthday reminder. Especially not for every contact that has a birthday. I don't want to edit all contacts that I do or don't want to be notified about. Seeing them in the calendar app will be enough for me.

For this reason I decided to just turn the birthday notifications off.

One way of doing this is to disable calendar notifications. But that sucks... now all calendar notifications are turned off...

An other option would be to disable calendar birthday events but somehow I still get the annoying reminders popping up each day. ( And with me some others according to some forms I've read ) And this also disables viewing them in the calendar app.

Then I read this:

Go to Settings/Mail, Contacts, Calendars then Calendars section: Default Alert Times/Birthdays. Switch it to None.

I will know by tomorrow if the 'trick' above worked but since I didn't find any q/a how to disable all birthday reminders easily I posted this here in hope to find a good answer that will fix this problem once and for all. Maybe I found an answer but if you could confirm it that would be great!

Originaly asked the question for iOS 6, but this still is a valid question for later iOS versions ( v10 at the moment of editing )

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  • What i would really like to know is if you can turn off alerts for specific birthdays. I dont mind being reminded a day before for someone important but for the rest, it's ok to just be in the calendar. I dont need an alert. I went to the event on the calendar app and switched the alert to none. once i exited and went back in, it goes back to "1 day before", like someone is turning it back after i turn it off. really strange. anyone tried this? this is for iOS 10. Be great to hear someone with experience or an answer to this.
    – derek
    Commented Dec 4, 2017 at 1:26

6 Answers 6

Reset to default
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Yes. This should work. As you are aware, when you (or the Facebook contact) inputs their birthday into the contact, iOS creates a new calendar called "Birthdays". On both iOS and OSX you have control over the notifications that you receive for each birthday that is on that calendar.

Like you said you could can go and turn of the notifications which should prevent notifications from actually appearing. Note, however that the birthdays should still show in Notification Center.

You can also disable the Birthday calendar on your iOS device altogether by opening the Calendar.app, tapping "Calendars" in the upper left corner, and scrolling down to and tapping on "Birthdays". You will see the check mark next to it disappear and the birthdays will no longer show in your calendar.

It, of course, would be easy to turn them back on temporarily in the future if you wanted to look up someone's birthday.

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  • Actually I did turn them of in the Calendar app but they still show up. Maybe those are different alerts then the ones from the Calendar app? Now I can't test if the birthday's show up today on my iPad ( which is where I have turned them off ) because I left it at home. So I guess I have to wait until I get home again to accept an answer.
    – FLY
    Commented Jan 22, 2013 at 8:24
  • @FLY, that sounds good. Apparently disabling the calendar just prevents the Birthday calendar from showing in the calendar. Changing the notifications, apparently are the only way to disable alerts. Let me know what you end up with.
    – bassplayer7
    Commented Jan 22, 2013 at 12:49
  • Yes switching default birthday alert to 'none' finally got rid of the alerts and I have them stil visible in my Calendar app.
    – FLY
    Commented Jan 23, 2013 at 7:53
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No, this doesn't work. Birthdays set to none in settings and Birthdays calendar unchecked and still getting those annoying facebook birthday reminders. Tried uninstalling facebook but that doesn't seem to work either. Facebook is like a persistent virus. Grr

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  • I tested this and it does work for me. Maybe your reminders that are still active are from a different calendar?
    – FLY
    Commented May 5, 2013 at 13:47
  • I have the same problem, it's set to none but I'm receiving them everyday at noon. Any suggestions?
    – Can Poyrazoğlu
    Commented Aug 27, 2016 at 9:47
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For iOS 10, go to Settings>Calendar>Default Alert Times>Birthdays. Switch it to None.

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  • Mine is set to none and I still got a notification.
    – Chad Skeeters
    Commented May 17, 2023 at 14:07
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On your iPhone, pull up your calendar. On the month view at the bottom center click Calendars. Unclick Birthdays from each of calendars you are subscribed to. Gmail, Yahoo, Facebook etc.

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I'm not sure if anyone figured it out yet, but I just had some luck and finally turned it all off from the Settings/Mail, Contacts, Calendars then Calendars section and under accounts i just clicked all of them individually and turned off the calender tab, in addition to having birthdays switched to none as previously mentioned.

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Mine is set to None there, and birthdays unchecked for a calendar, and I still get notifications on my iMac. They have to be coming from Facebook somehow...

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