Guides

Questions people actually send me, answered properly. Each one is written from how Android and the app really behave, not from how it would be nice if they behaved.

• Why Android birthday reminders don’t arriveAlmost always it is Android, not the app. From Android 13 the “Alarms & reminders” permission is off by default, and Android removes permissions from apps you have not opened in months, which describes every birthday app. Four settings fix it, and checking all four takes about two minutes.
• Importing birthdays from your contactsBDays reads the name, the birthday, the preferred phone number and the photo, and nothing else. Access is read only, so nothing is ever written back to your contacts. Every match is listed for you to confirm before anything is saved, and contacts whose birthday has no year import fine.
• The CSV format BDays readsFour columns in this order: Name, Birthday, Tag, Notes. Keep the header row. Dates are day first, so 03/04/1990 is 3 April, never 4 March. A row with an unreadable date still imports, just without the birthday, and the app tells you which rows those were.
• Backing up, and moving to a new phoneBack up to your own Google Drive or to a file on the phone, then restore on the new one. A restore merges rather than wipes: birthdays already there are updated, new ones added, and the app tells you how many of each. Reminder times are the one exception, and they are replaced outright.