How-To

Facebook Not Announcing My Birthday: How to Fix

By Adam Davidson

Updated September 24, 2023

Not received your usual avalanche of birthday messages? Here’s what to do if you’re having problems with Facebook not announcing your birthday.

Love it or loathe it, there’s one thing that Facebook is perfect for: you never have to remember any of your friends’ birthdays ever again. That’s because Facebook will tell you when it’s the birthday of one of your Facebook friends. Thanks to Facebook, you’ll know to wish them a happy birthday like a good friend should.

When it’s your birthday, it’s lovely to receive all those happy birthday posts from friends, family, or people you vaguely remember to going to school with. Which makes it even harder to take when those birthday wishes don’t appear.

If you’ve not received your usual mountain of birthday messages on Facebook, then it may be that your birthday didn’t get announced to your friends.

Here’s what to do if you’re having issues with Facebook not announcing your birthday.

How to Change Your Birthday Audience on Facebook

Unless there is a problem with Facebook itself, provided you have the correct settings, your birthday should be announced on the date that you have set as your birthday on your Facebook profile. If Facebook isn’t announcing your birthday, then the reason is almost certainly due to the audience settings for your birthday.

Facebook makes it possible to let anyone see your birthday announcement. You can limit it to your friends or a custom group of people, or set it so that only you can see it. If you have your birthday audience set to Only Me then no one else will be able to see your birthday announcement.

To change your birthday audience on Facebook:

1. Open the Facebook website and select your profile page.
2. Beneath your profile picture, click About.
   
3. Under About, select Contact and Basic Info.
   
4. Under Basic Info, you should see your Birth Date.
   
5. Click the icon to the left of the Edit. This icon will change depending on the settings you select.
   
6. Select one of the audience options. In order for other people to see your birthday announcement, you’ll need to select something other than Only Me.
   
7. You can also select Custom to choose specific friends who will be the only people who can see your birthday announcement.
8. When you’ve made your selection, click Done.
9. Your birthday announcement should now appear on the appropriate date for the audience that you’ve selected.

How to Enable Birthday Notifications on Facebook

If your birthday audience settings are correct, but people who you have allowed to see your birthday announcement still aren’t getting notifications about it, then the probable cause is that they have birthday notifications turned off on their own account settings.

Facebook allows you to choose which notifications you receive, and there is the option to turn off birthday notifications so that you don’t see any notifications about your friends’ birthdays. Turning this setting back on should fix the problem.

To turn on birthday notifications on Facebook:

1. Open Facebook and click your profile icon in the top-right corner of the screen.
2. Select Settings & Privacy.
   
3. Click Settings.
   
4. Select Notifications.
   
5. Click Birthdays.
   
6. Under These are the Notifications About Your Friends’ Birthdays, toggle the Allow Notifications on Facebook switch to the On position.
   
7. You can also choose how to receive these notifications by turning on Push, Email, and SMS.
   
8. You should now receive birthday notifications for any friends that have you in their birthday audience.

If you decide that you don’t want to receive birthday notifications, you can easily disable birthday notifications again.

Managing Your Facebook Settings

If you were having issues with Facebook not announcing your birthday, then hopefully the steps above will ensure that your timeline is full of messages on your birthday.

There are plenty of other useful Facebook tips and tricks that you should know. You can learn how to hide likes on Facebook or how to mute someone on Facebook if you’re tired of reading the same old posts from that friend who won’t stop posting. And if you decide that helping you remember people’s birthdays isn’t a good enough reason to keep Facebook, you can learn how to delete your Facebook account.