Birthdays, get-togethers and gift ideas, kept in one place for the whole family.
Family Holidays is a private space for one family. Everyone in it sees the same calendar of birthdays, anniversaries and get-togethers, and can add gift ideas for each other.
There are two ways in. Either you create a family — and then invite everyone else — or someone sends you an invite link or code and you join theirs.
On iPhone you sign in with Apple. On Android you sign in with
Google. They are different logins. You still join the same family
with the same FAM- invite code, then claim your name on the Family tab so you
are one person in the family, not two.
The first thing to do once you are in is tell the app which person you are. Open the Family tab, find your own name, and tap This is me. Until you do, the app cannot tell whose birthday is whose, which replies are yours, or which gift ideas to keep secret from you.
A family is a list of people. Not everyone needs the app — you can add a profile for a grandparent who will never install it, and still record their birthday and plan gifts for them. Members who do have the app are linked to their own profile.
You can give each person a relationship label (“Mother”, “Cousin”) to make a long list easier to read. Anyone can add or edit people; only an admin can delete a profile, and only one that nobody has claimed.
An admin can create an invite from Settings. You get a code like
FAM-8KQ2XZ and a link that carries it. Share either one.
An invite can be left open, limited to a number of uses, or given an expiry date. It can also be assigned to a specific person already in your list — so when Aunt Sue joins, she is linked to the “Aunt Sue” profile you already made rather than creating a second one.
Admins can see every live code and revoke any of them from Manage invite codes.
A household is the group of people who travel and reply together — the four of you under one roof. Its only real job is to let one person answer for everybody: reply once, and the app offers to apply that answer to the whole household.
Being added to a household is an invitation, not an instruction. Someone with the app has to accept before they are counted in it. People without the app are added directly, because there is nobody to ask.
You can leave a household at any time, and an admin can remove someone from one. Nothing else about their profile changes.
There are three kinds:
An occasion can name the people it is for — the birthday person, or the couple. That is what lets the app say “Mom’s Birthday” and count the years.
Recurring occasions repeat every year on their own. A gathering can repeat too, and each year is planned separately: this year’s host, this year’s menu, this year’s replies.
An admin can import a set of public holidays for the family’s region from Settings. Only the United States has a list at the moment; other regions import nothing, and the app will say so rather than pretending it worked.
Any member can volunteer to host, or assign someone else, from the occasion or straight from the card at the top of Home. Hosting is recorded per year, so whoever hosted last year is not silently signed up for this one.
An occasion has two dates, and the difference matters:
Setting or changing a gathering date or time marks everyone’s existing replies as needing confirmation, because an answer given about one date is not an answer about another. Their reply is not erased — they are just asked to confirm it still stands.
When a gathering is coming up it appears at the top of Home with Yes, No and Maybe. Answering there is the fastest way; the occasion screen shows the same thing with everyone’s replies grouped by answer.
You can always answer for yourself. You can also answer for:
You cannot answer for another app user outside your household — that is theirs to give.
A gathering can carry a menu: a description of what is being served, and a list of things people can bring. Like hosting, a menu belongs to one year — last year’s potluck list does not follow you into this one.
The menu belongs to the organiser: whoever created the occasion, or whoever is hosting it this year. They write the description and the list of what is needed.
Everyone else can claim anything on the list — “I’ll bring it” — and release it again if plans change. You do not have to reply Yes first; claiming a dish is its own way of saying you are coming.
The organiser can also switch on Let anyone add items. With that on, anybody can add what they are bringing, and it arrives already claimed by them.
From Home, the fork-and-knife button on the gathering card opens the menu without leaving the screen. It is greyed out when there is no menu yet.
Not everyone at a gathering is in the family. You can add a guest — a neighbour, a partner, a friend — by name, and once they are approved everyone in the family sees them on that gathering.
A guest is only ever on one gathering. They do not join the family, they never appear in your members list, and they cannot see anything: adding a guest writes a name down, it does not send anyone an invitation.
Anyone can put a name forward, but the host approves it. Until they do, the guest shows as “Waiting for the host”. A guest the host adds themselves needs no approval — they have already said yes by adding them.
You need a host before you can add guests. The host is who approves, so until somebody is hosting there is nobody to approve anyone, and the section says so instead of letting you add a name that would sit there forever.
Approved guests count towards the number attending, so the total on the card matches the number of people actually coming. To turn a guest down, or take one back, swipe to remove them — the host can remove anyone, and whoever added a guest can remove that guest.
Add gift ideas for anyone in the family, with a note, a price and a link if you like. You can tie an idea to a particular occasion so it turns up when you need it.
You never see ideas that are for you. Not dimmed, not hidden behind a warning — the app does not send them to your phone at all. Your own list will always look emptier than it really is, and that is the feature working.
To avoid two people buying the same thing, claim an idea. Everyone else then sees it is taken. Once you have bought it, mark it purchased. Only the person who claimed an idea can release it or mark it bought.
Any occasion can be marked a surprise. It then disappears completely for the people the occasion is for — the guests of honour. They do not see it in lists, on Home, in reminders, or anywhere else.
Two things the app will refuse, both for the same reason:
Everyone else plans it as normal.
The app can remind you before birthdays and gatherings. Reminders are scheduled on your own device, so they respect your notification settings and work without a connection. Turn them on and choose how much notice you want in Settings.
If something is already closer than the notice you asked for — you chose a week, and a party is three days away — you still get a reminder on the morning of the day. You will not be reminded about something that has already started.
On any occasion, turn off Remind me about this. That one stops reminding you and everything else carries on. It stays off for future years too, so a birthday you have muted does not quietly come back next year. The setting only appears while reminders are switched on.
A reminder about a get-together carries buttons. If nobody is hosting yet you get I'll host; if the host is sorted but you have not replied you get Yes and No. Either one is recorded without opening the app.
These need a connection, because they are answering for you in front of everyone else. If one cannot go through, the app tells you so in a second notification rather than letting you believe you replied — open the app and try again.
Family Holidays includes an iMessage app. In a conversation, tap the apps row beside the text field and choose Family Holidays to drop a gathering into the chat. Everyone in the thread sees the date and who is coming, and people in your family can reply straight from the bubble.
On a Mac, clicking a shared gathering opens it in a browser instead — Apple only allows these mini apps to run on iPhone and iPad.
The app keeps working without a connection. What you have already loaded stays readable, and anything you add or edit is queued and sent when you are back. Queued items are marked so you can tell what has not reached the family yet.
A few actions need a live connection because they depend on what everyone else has already done — claiming a gift or a dish, replying to an invitation, assigning a host, and setting a gathering date. Those will tell you plainly if they could not go through.
Settings → Delete account. It is immediate and cannot be undone.
What goes: your sign-in, your email address, and your access to every family you are in. What stays: your family's calendar, because birthdays and gift ideas belong to everyone, and your name on the family list, so their birthdays and past gifts still make sense. A family you were the only member of is deleted with everything in it.
If you cannot get into the app, see the account deletion page.
They did. Ideas meant for you are never sent to your phone. See Gift ideas.
If it is for you, it may be a surprise. Please act normally.
The gathering’s date or time changed, so everyone is asked to confirm their answer still stands. See Saying whether you are coming.
They are waiting for the host to approve them. Until that happens the guest shows only as pending, and does not count towards the number attending.
The gathering has no host yet. The host is who approves guests, so the option appears once somebody is hosting.
The menu belongs to whoever created the occasion or is hosting it this year. You can still claim anything on the list, and add your own item if they have allowed it. See Menus.
She uses the app and is not in your household, so that reply is hers to give. See Saying whether you are coming.
It is probably muted — open it and check Remind me about this. A mute stays in place for future years. See Reminders.
If it had failed you would have got a second notification saying so. If you got no such message, the reply was recorded. Open the occasion to see it. See Reminders.
Either they were already there, or your family’s region has no holiday list yet. Only the United States has one so far.