Private notes on birthdays

What it's about

Every birthday, anniversary and celebration has two note fields. They look similar but do different things:

• Visible to everyone – the shared note. It's attached to the event, and everyone in the household who can see the event can read it too.
• Only for you – with a lock icon. This note belongs to you alone.

Why it's here

The shared note is exactly right for anything you're coordinating: who's baking the cake, who's picking up the gateau, when you're meeting up.

For gifts, it's exactly the wrong tool. A gift idea for Dad shouldn't be something Dad can read – and in a shared calendar, he'd otherwise be the first to see it. Until now, the only option was a note tucked away in a drawer. The private field closes exactly that gap.

How to use it

Open an entry in the birthday list (tap it on your phone; on a computer, the detail sits on the right). Under “Gift ideas & notes”, you'll find the separate Only for you field. Write down whatever you want to remember – gift ideas, clothing sizes, favourite colours, where you've already looked. It saves automatically as soon as you leave the field.

If you clear the field again, the note is gone.

Who sees what

The private note is technically invisible to everyone else, not just hidden: the database only ever returns it to your account. It's included in your own data export (Profile → Export data) – after all, it's your data.

Good to know

• The private note belongs to your account, not the household. If another family shares a contact with you, you see the same note in both households. A family member, on the other hand, has a separate entry in each household and therefore a separate note.
• It also works for contacts another family has shared with you, and for entries that don't have a calendar event yet.
• It deliberately doesn't appear on the printout. A printout tends to end up on the fridge – the surprise should stay a surprise.