Original Poster

Dec 7, 2024

Birthdays suddenly showing up in subscribed Google calendars

I've used Google calendar for years and there has always been a separate birthday's calendar that I keep turned off. Now, however, it is showing those birthdays in my main calendar as well. This isn't on the web app, but on subscribed calenders I view via Apple Calendar or Fantastical. The problem is everywhere suggesting it is the feed not the individual apps or their settings (though I checked those as well).

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Syncing my calendar,iOS

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Diamond Product Expert

volunteer, musician, developer

Jan 7, 2025

I very much doubt Google will be changing this. We need Apple, Outlook and any other calendar app that connects to Google Calendar using Google Login (OAuth2 + API) to update for the recent changes to Google Calendar.

To clarify: birthdays in Google Calendar are now stored on the main ('primary') calendar with a special 'birthday' flag, AND exposed by the API as a virtual read-only calendar with the following ID:

addressbook#contacts@group.v.calendar.google.com

Apple still displays the virtual "Birthday" calendar if "Sync from Contacts" is enabled in the settings for the Birthday calendar, it is enabled for syncing (https://calendar.google.com/calendar/syncselect) and it is checked in the calendar list.

Since the events are now stored on the primary calendar any software that doesn't hide events on the primary calendar with the "birthday" eventType will show duplicates if both the primary and birthday calendars are enabled.

Until Apple update the best option is to disable the birthday calendar at https://calendar.google.com/calendar/syncselect and enable "Sync from Contacts" if you want to see birthdays in Apple Calendar - on the primary calendar.

If you don't want to them in Apple Calendar, disable "Sync from Contacts".

Unfortunately this means that it's currently impossible to hide them in Apple Calendar but display them in Google Calendar without hiding the primary calendar.

Event types API:

https://developers.google.com/calendar/api/guides/event-types

Last edited Jan 7, 2025

Original Poster Luhmann marked this as an answer

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User 3112669232734887128

Dec 13, 2024

I had noticed this recently and finally dug in this morning to figure out what was wrong. I have this issue on both my Mac and my iPhone. I use Apple's native calendar app on both. I noticed I no longer get a separate "Birthdays" calendar from Google, instead my main calendar now seems to have events for everyone's birthdays.

I solved this by going into Google Calendar and turning off the "sync from contacts".

Original Poster Luhmann marked this as an answer

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All Replies (9)

Dec 8, 2024

I solved by removing on the Calendar Birthdays settings the sync with contacts (Sync from contacts)

Last edited Dec 8, 2024

Original Poster

Dec 9, 2024

Thanks. This fixes the problem, but it is a workaround, not a fix.

There is still a bug on Google's end.

That setting is only in the separate Birthday calendar, but I have that calendar disabled. The problem I have is that Birthdays are showing up in my default calendar as well. One should be able to have the Birthday's calendar working (synced with contacts) and not show up if that calendar is hidden or not synced to the desktop.

Dec 9, 2024

I'm experiencing the same thing too. I initially thought it was an issue with the calendar app I was using, but it seems to be the Google API instead given that it works just fine on the browser.

This makes it rather inconvenient as I'm now unable to filter out birthdays (they're merged into the main calendar), and visually they appear identical to my regular events and I'm unable to differentiate them at a glance. I'm surprised there are only 16 other votes on this, would be good to have an official response on this and when it can be fixed.

Dec 11, 2024

I have the same problem.

User 17134465815615705031

Jan 2, 2025

It’s really annoying!!! I have 6000 people’s birthdays on my calendar

Priya Chandra (she/her)

Diamond Product Expert

I help people with Google Workspace and Calendar.

Dec 11, 2024

hi Luhmann

There has been a change in the way Google labels birthdays at the coding level and the 3rd party apps have not taken this into account.

I recommend submitting feedback to them and providing a link to this article:

https://developers.google.com/calendar/docs/release-notes#November_19_2024

Dec 31, 2024

It's definitely not just an IOS issue. I disabled birthday sync on my desktop Chrome browser, and it's still showing birthdays on the chrome browser calendar page, in addition to on my iphone native calendar app.

User 10548278497497141495

Jan 3, 2025

I have the same issue with Outlook for web (work account)

User 3112669232734887128

Recommended Answer

Dec 13, 2024

I had noticed this recently and finally dug in this morning to figure out what was wrong. I have this issue on both my Mac and my iPhone. I use Apple's native calendar app on both. I noticed I no longer get a separate "Birthdays" calendar from Google, instead my main calendar now seems to have events for everyone's birthdays.

I solved this by going into Google Calendar and turning off the "sync from contacts".

Original Poster Luhmann marked this as an answer

Dec 14, 2024

This removes birthdays entirely and doesn't split them into a separate calendar like it should be. Not sure why this was marked as the recommended answer in the end though.

Dec 23, 2024

I rely on Business Calendar (on Android) and this issue has occurred for me... Very frustrating. Has anyone found a solution? Would be much appreciated!

Dec 17, 2024

Seems to be fixed for me with Business Calendar on Android.

Dec 21, 2024

Still not fixed on iOS, even on the Apple calendar.

Dec 31, 2024

I have this same issue, though the birthdays are also showing on the Google Chrome web browser, my phone calendar, and anywhere else I view my Google calendar. The birthday calendar setting is set not to sync, and it's cluttering up my calendar in a very dysfunctional way.

Jan 7, 2025

I found that there is nothing you can change on the phone, but in your actual Google account. I think they made some changes, but what you do is go into your calendar.google.com - then go into settings. Under "Settings for my calendars" you'll find "Birthdays" from there, choose "Calendar settings". Then at the bottom of that page under "Sync from contacts" uncheck "Sync from (your email)".

Close out of the calendar app on your phone, go back into it, then go into the menu for calendar. At the very bottom tap "Sync now" and it should all go away. Stupid changes (this is not a workaround, this is what we have to do as they completely removed the birthday feature in the app itself) without notice, but that's the resolution until they change it again.

User 13447818830776508273

Jan 9, 2025

In Apple-Calendar, Outlook-Calendar and Thunderbird-Calendar (and probably more) there is no separate Birthday-Calendar anymore. So you cannot check/uncheck or change color. The Google birthdays are now merged as recurring events in the Main calendar. Which is quite annoying.

Aaron Boydston 4121

Jan 11, 2025

Google Calendar settings > Birthdays > Sync from contacts = off: does indeed remove the birthdays from the iPhone calendar. But now the Birthdays calendar in Google Calendar is blank--no way to check birthdays in Google calendar.

Considering the settings, this makes sense. But it's a ridiculous solution.

Jan 10, 2025

I use Thunderbird on all my desktops, and Google Calendar on Android. Glad to have an explanation as to why this is happening, but it's extremely annoying. On the web google calendar, Birthday calendar still shows up as a separate calendar from my "primary" account calendar, but yet as we've all discovered, every other application that interacts with a primary calendar that has birthdays in it, is getting birthdays shoveled into the primary calendar with no way to turn it off.

It seems that our only hope is that this 'birthday' flag is something that perhaps calendar developers will be able to detect while interacting with google, and then potentially expose a setting to users of their respective calendar applications that allows this to be turned on and off.

But obviously, Google will ignore all requests from users to return this back to how it used to be, and we're dependent on calendar application developers to fix Google's messes for them.

It's irritating that now on my Android phone, in order to not have my Thunderbird calendar polluted with Birthdays that are the same color as all my other 'primary' events (really throws me off), I have to uncheck the 'sync from contacts' buttons - and now I have no birthdays at all appearing on my android phone either.

Why the heck did Google think this was something that needed to be changed for no reason?

Aaron Boydston 4121

Jan 11, 2025

Yeah, this is a problem.

To be clear, this is how I see it. In Google Contacts Web, I enter birthdays. In Google Calendar Web, the birthdays are on their own calendar called "Birthdays." Perfect--I can show/hide the hundreds of birthdays as needed.

In Google iPhone sync settings (https://calendar.google.com/calendar/u/0/syncselect), I have "Birthdays" disabled. Obviously, the primary calendar is enabled (it has to be enabled--not an option).

Oh iPhone, all the birthdays are showing up in the primary Google calendar. They greatly clutter up the calendar and there is not way to hide them. This simply does not make sense.

Diamond Product Expert

volunteer, musician, developer

Jan 11, 2025

That's exactly what's going on. Unfortunately the only way this can be resolved is by Apple/Outlook updating their apps to filter out birthday events from the primary calendar. We've already brought this up with the Google Calendar team, so I recommend everyone contact Apple/Outlook support to help prioritise the problem.

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