Turn the iPad you own into a family calendar display.

A family calendar display is an always-on screen — usually mounted in the kitchen — that shows the whole household's schedule at a glance, color-coded per person. Some are dedicated touchscreens you buy (Skylight, Hearth); others are an app running on a device you already own, like an iPad, a smart TV, or a Fire TV Stick. The job is the same: one shared screen everyone can read without unlocking a phone.

Yes, and if the iPad is already in the house it's the cheapest way to get one. Mount it in the kitchen, turn on HomeHQ's wall mode, and you have the same always-on, color-coded family calendar a dedicated display gives you. It needs iPadOS 18 or newer. Counter stand, wall mount, or magnetic fridge mount all work and cost under $120.

If you don't own an iPad and don't want to source one, a dedicated display is a reasonable, no-setup buy — and the 10" Skylight at $169.99 plus $79/yr works out to $406.99 over three years, marginally less than HomeHQ. The bigger ones don't: the 15" is $536.99 and Hearth is $958.20 over the same period. If you already have an iPad, you're buying a second screen for a job the first one can do, and mounting yours gets you there for the price of a stand.

For an iPad, HomeHQ is built for the kitchen-display job specifically. Wall mode turns the whole app into a full-screen household board; ambient mode takes over once the iPad has sat untouched for a few minutes and rotates through the family's day, each person, and the evening. The background follows the real weather and the time of day. Underneath it's your Google Calendar, per-person color-coding, chores, a parents-only insights card, and a flyer scanner that reads a paper schedule and proposes events you tick to add. Mango Display is the better pick if your screen is a smart TV or Fire TV Stick.

Ambient mode is what the kitchen iPad does when nobody is using it. After it has been idle for a few minutes — five by default, and you can change it — HomeHQ switches to full-screen panes and cycles them every twelve seconds: the family's day, then each person, then the evening. Wall mode is the other option, a fixed full-screen board that stays put. You pick one; they don't run at the same time. Both dim at night, and both hold still if you have Reduce Motion or Low Power Mode on.

Yes. Because HomeHQ is built on Google Calendar, the same shared calendar shows up on every iPhone, not just the kitchen iPad, with a native Android app coming soon. There are Home Screen widgets too — the day, what's next, chores — so most of the time nobody has to open anything. The display is the shared surface; everyone's phone is the personal one.

iPads are fine left on for years. Set brightness to around 50%, turn on wall mode (the scene shifts through the day, and dims at night once it knows it's late), and keep it plugged in — HomeHQ can tell whether it's charging. LCD iPads don't suffer OLED-style burn-in, and a scene that keeps moving stops any one element sitting static.