Setup · 7 min read

Turn the iPad in your drawer into a family calendar display.

If you already own an iPad, you have a screen sitting in a drawer that does the same job as a $300 dedicated display. Here's the 10-minute setup, and the three settings that make it behave like an always-on family screen.

Tej Tandon

Founder, HomeHQ

The short answer

Any iPad from 2018 or later can run as an always-on family calendar display, base model or mini included.

Nobody tells you the three settings that make it behave like a dedicated display: Auto-Lock off, a brightness automation, and a single app pinned to the screen. Set those and it does the job a $299 display does, for the cost of a $25 stand.

HomeHQ running as an always-on family calendar display on a wall-mounted iPad

The finished setup — a real capture, not a mockup.

Step by step

How to do it.

1
Pick the iPad.
Any iPad from 2018 onwards works. 9.7" or larger is best — a mini works but you'll squint at it from across the kitchen.
No iPad? A used 2020 iPad (8th gen) runs about $130 on Back Market, Swappa, or eBay. Buy one with a stated battery-health figure and a return window.
2
Mount it somewhere visible.
Kitchen-counter stand — $25–$60, no installation, easy to move for video calls. Search "iPad kitchen stand" for anything with a 4+ star rating.
Under-cabinet swing-arm — $30–$50, screws into the cabinet, flips down when you want it.
Wall mount — $30–$120, most permanent, requires drilling. Any VESA-compatible iPad case works.
Whichever you pick, run the charging cable along the back of the counter. A calendar burns through battery in 6–8 hours, so keep it plugged in continuously.
3
Set Auto-Lock to Never.
Open Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock → Never. The iPad will now stay awake as long as it has power. Without this, every time someone walks past the kitchen the screen is dark.
For a kitchen at midnight, set up an Automation too (Settings → Shortcuts → Personal Automation) to drop brightness to 5% between 10 PM and 7 AM.
4
Choose the calendar app.
Google Calendar — free, syncs everywhere, but the iPad app is a phone app at heart and looks wrong on a big screen.
Cozi — built for families, but since 2024 the free tier only shows 30 days of calendar.
HomeHQ — built for the kitchen-iPad use case: per-person color coding, events read and written straight to Google Calendar, chore rotation with points, and a wall mode that turns the whole iPad into a household board.
The mount and settings are the same either way; the app just decides what fills the screen.
5
Pin a single app to the screen.
You don't want family members accidentally swiping into Safari or seeing your work emails. Use Guided Access (Settings → Accessibility → Guided Access → On) to lock the iPad to a single app. Triple-click the side button while the calendar app is open to start a session.
For an even stronger lock, set Screen Time → Always Allowed and restrict everything except your chosen family-calendar app. That way the iPad reboots back into the calendar even after an update.
Guided Access arrived with iOS 6 in 2012, so it's on every iPad you'd realistically use for this. It's the closest thing iPadOS has to a kiosk mode, and Apple has never made much of it.
6
Add family members and color-code them.
The biggest upgrade from "a calendar on a screen" to a display the family really uses is per-person color coding. Once events inherit their owner's color automatically, anyone can read the week from across the kitchen without stopping to squint.
In Google Calendar you do this by creating one calendar per person and assigning each its own color. In HomeHQ it happens automatically when you add a family member. If you want to go deeper on picking the palette, we wrote a full guide.
Read the full color-coding guide →
7
Run the 6 PM test.
The real test of a family calendar display: at 6 PM on a Tuesday, can anyone walk past it and answer "what's happening tomorrow?" in under five seconds? If yes, the system works. If no — usually the issue is that the week view isn't pinned by default, or the text is too small to read from 4 feet away.
Most family calendar apps let you set a default view. Pick the week view (5 or 7 days), font size large, weekend included. Then leave the iPad alone for a week and see whether people start using it on their own.

Tips and gotchas

A few things that'll save you time.

!Skip a 2017-or-older iPad — they're slow for always-on use and long past their last iPadOS update.
!If an old device you're reviving has a case that no longer sits flat or a screen lifting at the edge, get the battery looked at before leaving it plugged in on a counter.
!Turn on a Focus (Settings → Focus → Do Not Disturb, scheduled around the clock) so notification banners from other apps don't sit on top of the calendar.
!Run iPadOS Stage Manager if you have an M-series iPad — you can pin the family calendar in one window and a small clock/weather widget in another. Looks great, no extra app needed.
!Because everything runs on Google Calendar, anyone with an Apple Watch still sees the day's events on their wrist through the built-in Calendar app. The kitchen iPad is the shared board; the Watch is the personal mirror.
!For privacy, don't mount the iPad facing a window or front door. Calendar events show full text by default — anyone walking past from outside can read your kids' schedules.
!A 5W or 10W USB charger is enough — you don't need a fast charger. Slower charging runs cooler and extends battery health, which matters when the iPad is plugged in 24/7.

The kitchen-iPad family hub

HomeHQ is built specifically for this setup.

Per-person color coding, chores with due times and streaks, and events read and written straight to your Google Calendar. A wall-mode pill turns the iPad into a full-screen household board that dims itself at night, and after a few idle minutes it drifts into rotating panes — the family's day, then each person, then the evening. Hold the button and tell Casa to move soccer to Thursday, or photograph a school flyer and tick off the dates it finds. $12/month billed annually for the whole family, 30-day free trial, no hardware to buy.

See HomeHQ →

Common questions

Questions families ask.

Any iPad from 2018 onwards works fine. A newer iPad gets you a brighter screen and more years of OS updates, but it isn't required for a great always-on family display. A used or refurbished iPad starts around $130.

Open Settings → Display & Brightness → Auto-Lock → Never, then plug it into a charger continuously. The iPad will stay on indefinitely. Optionally, set up a Shortcuts automation to dim the brightness overnight so it's not glaring at 2 AM.

Use Guided Access. Settings → Accessibility → Guided Access → On. Open the family calendar app, then triple-click the side button. The iPad will refuse to leave that app until you triple-click again and enter a passcode. It has shipped with iPadOS since 2012, so any iPad worth using as a display has it.

Functionally, yes — a sharper screen, any app you like, and longer software support. The trade-off is mounting: a Skylight ships ready to drop on a counter, an iPad needs a $25–$120 stand or wall mount. If you already own an iPad, it's a clear upgrade over paying $299 for a Skylight.

It depends on your household. For families that want per-person color coding, chore tracking with points, a wall-mounted display mode, and an assistant they can talk to — all on the Google Calendar they already use — HomeHQ is built specifically for this. For households that want the most established name, Cozi has been around the longest, though its free tier now only shows a 30-day window. For minimalist setups, Google Calendar is free and serviceable, but it holds events and nothing else.

Modern iPads (2018+) are designed to run safely for years plugged in. The main precautions: use a 5W or 10W charger (not a fast charger — slower charging runs cooler), keep the iPad in a ventilated stand (not enclosed in a case with no airflow), and don't mount it next to a heat source like a stove. Battery health degrades faster on always-on iPads — expect to replace the battery or the iPad after 3–5 years.