How to turn an old iPad into a family calendar display.

Any iPad from 2018 onwards works. The base iPad, iPad Air, iPad Pro, and iPad mini are all fine. You want the screen to be 9.7" or larger if you can — a mini works but you'll squint at it from across the kitchen.

A newer model gets you a brighter screen and more years of updates, but it isn't required. The screen is the whole point here: big enough to read from across the kitchen while someone's cooking with wet hands.

Three options, in order of cost. (1) Kitchen-counter stand — $25–$60 on Amazon, no installation, easy to take down for video calls. Search "iPad kitchen stand" and pick anything with a 4+ star rating and an adjustable angle. (2) Under-cabinet swing-arm — $30–$50, screws into the underside of a cabinet, flips down when you want it and up when you don't. (3) Wall mount — $30–$120, looks the most permanent, requires drilling. The Belkin TabletPlus or any VESA-compatible iPad case works.

Whichever you pick, plug it in via a long Lightning or USB-C cable run along the back of the counter. An iPad displaying a calendar will burn through battery in 6–8 hours; you want it plugged in continuously.

This is the most important setting. 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.

You can also dim the brightness manually overnight or set up an Automation (Settings → Shortcuts → Personal Automation) to drop brightness to 5% between 10 PM and 7 AM. Tiny touch, makes a huge difference in a kitchen at midnight.

The app determines the experience. Three realistic choices: (1) Google Calendar — free, syncs everywhere, but the iPad app is a phone app at heart and looks wrong on a big screen. (2) Cozi — built for families, but since 2024 the free tier only shows 30 days of calendar. (3) HomeHQ — built specifically for the kitchen-iPad use case, with per-person color coding, two-way Google Calendar sync, chore rotation with points, and meal planning.

Whichever you pick, the mount and settings are the same either way; the app just decides what fills 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.

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.

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.