Home Assistant Anniversaries: Because Forgetting Birthdays Is a Risky Automation Strategy

Home Assistant is great at turning lights on, optimizing energy usage, and telling you that the living room temperature is exactly 21.3 °C. But sometimes, the most important automations have nothing to do with technology and everything to do with people.

Birthdays, anniversaries, and special occasions have a remarkable ability to sneak up on us. One moment you’re happily automating your heating schedule, and the next moment you’re sleeping on the couch because you forgot your wedding anniversary.

Fortunately, the Anniversaries integration can help.

What Is the Anniversaries Integration?

The Anniversaries integration lets Home Assistant track recurring dates such as:

• Birthdays
• Wedding anniversaries
• The day you moved into your house
• The date you bought your first smart bulb
• Any other date you feel deserves a yearly reminder

For each anniversary, Home Assistant creates sensors that provide information such as:

• Days remaining
• Weeks remaining
• Years since the event
• The date of the next occurrence

This information can then be used in automations, dashboards, notifications, and even to create a little bit of magic around your home.

Because honestly, if Home Assistant can calculate solar production and optimize charging based on electricity prices measured in kWh, it can certainly remind you to buy flowers.

Why Automate Anniversaries?

A reminder notification is useful, but Home Assistant can do far more than simply send a message to your phone.

Think about it.

Your house already knows:

• Who is home
• What time it is
• Whether the lights are on
• Which speakers are available
• What mood lighting looks like

So why not let your house help celebrate important occasions?

After all, remembering a birthday is nice.

Having your house remember it for you is even better.

Setting the Right Mood

Let’s imagine the following situation:

Today is your partner’s birthday.

Both of you are at home.

Instead of just sending a notification saying:

“Today is Anna’s birthday.”

Home Assistant could:

• Turn on warm lighting in the living room
• Set decorative lights to soft colours
• Start playing a favourite playlist
• Display a birthday message on a smart display
• Send a reminder to your phone to order takeaway instead of cooking

Suddenly your home feels a little more special.

And you look considerably more organised than you actually are.

Components Used

This automation uses a few common Home Assistant components.

Anniversaries Integration

Provides information about birthdays and anniversaries.

Example entity:

sensor.anniversary_anna_birthday

Attributes may include:

• current_years
• weeks_remaining
• days_remaining

Person Entities

Home Assistant’s person integration can determine whether people are home.

Example entities:

person.me
person.anna

Lights

Any light entities can be used:

light.living_room
light.led_strip

Media Players

Speakers can play music automatically:

media_player.living_room_speaker

Notification Services

A mobile notification can remind you to buy flowers before it is too late.

Because no automation exists that can instantly teleport flowers into your hand.

At least not yet.

Example Automation

This automation runs when your partner’s birthday arrives.

If both people are at home, Home Assistant creates a small celebration.

alias: Birthday Mood Lighting
description: Create a birthday atmosphere at home
trigger:
  - platform: state
    entity_id: sensor.anniversary_anna_birthday
    attribute: days_remaining
    to: "0"

condition:
  - condition: state
    entity_id: person.me
    state: home

  - condition: state
    entity_id: person.anna
    state: home

action:
  - service: light.turn_on
    target:
      entity_id:
        - light.living_room
        - light.led_strip
    data:
      brightness_pct: 70
      color_temp_kelvin: 2700

  - service: media_player.play_media
    target:
      entity_id: media_player.living_room_speaker
    data:
      media_content_id: "spotify:playlist:your_playlist_here"
      media_content_type: music

  - service: notify.mobile_app_my_phone
    data:
      title: "Birthday Reminder"
      message: >
        It is Anna's birthday today.
        Consider cake, flowers, and perhaps ordering pizza.

mode: single

Making It Even Better

The real fun starts when you combine anniversaries with other information in Home Assistant.

Morning Greeting

At 07:00, your smart speaker could announce:

“Good morning. Today is Anna’s birthday. Be extra nice.”

This could potentially improve your chances of receiving cake later.

Dashboard Cards

Display upcoming birthdays directly on your dashboard:

• Anna’s birthday in 3 days
• Wedding anniversary in 18 days
• House anniversary in 42 days

It is surprisingly satisfying to see these events counted down automatically.

Calendar Integration

You can also create calendar events from anniversary data.

This allows birthdays and anniversaries to appear alongside:

• Garbage collection
• School activities
• Vehicle charging schedules
• Holidays

Some events are simply more important than remembering to take out the recycling bin.

Although your municipality may disagree.

Different Lighting Scenes

You can personalise celebrations:

Partner birthday:

• Warm white lights
• Favourite music

Wedding anniversary:

• Candle-like lighting
• Soft jazz playlist

Children’s birthdays:

• Colourful effects
• Party music
• Lights changing colours every few seconds

Just be careful with flashing lights at 06:00 on a Saturday morning.

The children may love it.

The adults may require additional coffee.

Practical Benefits

The Anniversaries integration may seem simple compared to energy dashboards, power monitoring, or advanced EV charging automations.

Yet it solves a very human problem.

Smart homes often focus on efficiency:

• Reduce power consumption
• Track kWh usage
• Optimise heating
• Schedule charging

Those things are useful.

But smart homes can also make our homes feel more personal.

A few lights, some music, and a timely reminder can turn an ordinary day into something memorable.

And unlike forgetting a birthday, accidentally leaving the living room at 22 °C instead of 21 °C rarely causes relationship problems.

Final Thoughts

The Anniversaries integration is one of those small Home Assistant features that quietly becomes incredibly useful.

It requires almost no maintenance, consumes virtually no resources, and opens up many possibilities for automations that are genuinely meaningful.

Notifications are great.

Automated celebrations are even better.

And if your house helps you remember your anniversary, there is always the possibility that someone will call you thoughtful, organised, and romantic.

No one needs to know it was entirely automated.

Your secret is safe with Home Assistant.