A birthday countdown that gives away what competitors charge for: every Home Screen and Lock Screen widget size is unlocked on day one, and the countdown, reminders and age arithmetic all run on the device with no account and nothing collected. Leap-day handling and time-zone-aware alerts are done properly rather than approximated. The weakness is its age — version 1.0 from August 2026, with no ratings and no sync — so anyone who values a long track record over privacy should look at an established alternative instead.
Birthday Counter: Days Until is a free iPhone app that counts down the days to every birthday you save, on the Home Screen, on the Lock Screen and in a single upcoming list. It runs entirely offline, needs iOS 15.0 or later, ships in 44 languages, and collects no data at all.
Birthday Counter: Days Until turns a list of people and birth dates into three things: a live countdown, a set of reminders, and an age readout. The countdown can be shown in days, weeks or hours, and the upcoming list is sorted so the nearest celebration sits on top.
Several alerts per person are allowed, each at a local time you choose, so a message at 07:00 on the day and a nudge three days earlier are separate entries. The age readout gives exact age down to the day, total days lived, the half-birthday, the weekday of birth and the zodiac sign, with milestone alerts for turning 18, 21 or 50 and for reaching 10,000 days lived. Month and year views show every celebration ahead, and groups keep family, friends and colleagues apart.
The App Store listing puts the download at 34.8 MB and the release date at 20 August 2026. The Android build, published under the different store name
A birthday list is an address book in disguise: full names, dates of birth, often photographs and private notes — the combination identity checks ask for. Both stores force developers to say what happens to that data. Apple requires privacy information to be filed in App Store Connect, including the practices of third-party code the app integrates, per the
Birthday Counter: Days Until answers both the same way. The Google Play Data safety card for the Android build reads "No data collected" and "No data shared with third parties", and the App Store privacy section matches. Its own App Store description states the position plainly:
Birthday Counter collects no data at all. Permissions are opt-in: it works fully before you grant anything, and asks for contacts or notifications only at the moment you use those features.
In practice, contact import runs only when you press the button, and sharing means exporting a file you hand over yourself. The import merges instead of overwriting, shows what is new before saving, and can be undone in one tap. There is no server copy to leak and no account to close.
Counting days sounds trivial and is not. The civil calendar inserts a leap day under a rule stated by the
People born on 29 February are the visible test. Birthday Counter: Days Until keeps the stored date intact and counts to the next real occurrence, so it is not silently rewritten to 1 March. The 10,000-day milestone uses the same calculation rather than a fixed 365-day year.
Time zones are the second trap. A reminder promised "at the exact local time you pick" depends on the device's copy of the
Widgets are where most birthday apps put their paywall, and where this one does not. On iPhone there are Home Screen widgets in small, medium and large plus a Lock Screen widget, all included from the first launch. Apple's
The Android build uses the platform's own app widgets, described in the
Free from Celebrate Labs Inc., version 10.6.3 dated 15 July 2026, with 17,736 ratings.
A 124.0 MB download, iOS 14.0 or later, 23 languages.
Ten major versions is a fair proxy for longevity. See the
Free from Christopher Wolf, version 2.3.97 dated 25 May 2026, with 1,305 ratings.
50.9 MB, iOS 13.0 or later, 53 interface languages — nine more than Birthday Counter: Days Until.
The lower iOS floor helps on older hardware. See the
Free from Joseph Merrill, version 3.0.8 dated 19 August 2026, with 215,024 ratings.
57.5 MB, 17 languages, iOS 17.0 or later, so older hardware is excluded.
A general countdown tool: holidays, deadlines and trips sit beside birthdays. See the
Free, no ads or subscription, every widget size unlocked on day one.
34.8 MB, iOS 15.0 or later, 44 languages, no data collected on either store.
Exact age, days lived, half-birthdays and milestones are built in, not sold separately.
It is version 1.0, released on 20 August 2026, with no user ratings and no multi-year update record. If that is disqualifying, each of the three apps above has thousands of ratings. It is also not a social product: no gift ordering, no greetings, no friend network.
There is no cross-device sync, by design: backups are ordinary files you export yourself, so moving to a new phone is a deliberate step. The iOS floor of 15.0 rules out older hardware, and the store names differ by platform, so search Google Play for Birthday Countdown, Age and Days on the
Yes. Both store listings show a price of Free, with no ads, no subscription and no account. Every widget size is available from the first launch rather than behind an in-app purchase, which is the usual place this category charges.
Yes. Countdowns, reminders and age calculations run on the device, so the app behaves the same on a plane as at home. No network request is needed for an alert to fire, and the only online step is the initial store download.
None, according to both stores. The Google Play Data safety card declares no data collected and none shared with third parties, and the App Store privacy section matches. Contacts and notification permissions are requested only when you use those features, and the app works before you grant either.
The stored date stays 29 February and the countdown targets the next real occurrence. Under the Gregorian rule cited by the US Naval Observatory that is normally four years away, but centurial years such as 2100 are skipped, so the gap is occasionally eight. Days-lived totals use the same calculation.
On iPhone there are Home Screen widgets in small, medium and large plus a Lock Screen widget. Apple's WidgetKit documentation warns that exact dimensions vary between devices, so the medium widget shows a few names on one phone and slightly more on a larger screen. Android uses standard app widgets.
Yes, and only when you ask. Contact import is a button, not a background process, and the app runs normally if you never grant access. That is the difference between reading an address book once on request and holding the permission permanently.
Yes. A chosen list exports as a single file, and you decide whether photos, notes and reminders travel with it. On the receiving device the import merges rather than overwrites, shows what is new before saving, and can be undone in one tap. Nothing passes through a server.
They should, provided the phone is updated. Alerts are scheduled against the system time zone, which follows the IANA time zone database. Release 2026c, dated 8 July 2026, already carries Morocco's move to permanent +00 on 20 September 2026, so the device applies it automatically.
It is the same product under a different store name: Birthday Countdown, Age and Days on Google Play, Birthday Counter: Days Until on the App Store. Feature lists match, including widgets, milestones and the export file. The Android listing was updated on 21 August 2026.
Every widget size unlocked from the first launch, with no paywall
Countdowns, reminders and age maths run entirely on the device
Both stores declare no data collected and no data shared
Exact age, days lived, half-birthdays and 10,000-day milestones built in
Contact import and sharing happen only when you press the button
Free with no ads, no subscription and no account
Version 1.0 with no user ratings and no long update history
No cross-device sync — backups are files you move yourself
Not a social or gifting app: no greetings, no friend network
Requires iOS 15.0 or later
Store names differ between the App Store and Google Play
A birthday countdown that gives away what competitors charge for: every Home Screen and Lock Screen widget size is unlocked on day one, and the countdown, reminders and age arithmetic all run on the device with no account and nothing collected. Leap-day handling and time-zone-aware alerts are done properly rather than approximated. The weakness is its age — version 1.0 from August 2026, with no ratings and no sync — so anyone who values a long track record over privacy should look at an established alternative instead.