A Shared Family Calendar App: One Month With Davie, by Its Maker

This post is written on the official blog of AiDive, the company that makes Davie. It's a first-party review — I built the app and then used it with my own family, so I've included what still doesn't work as well as what does.

I built a family calendar three times, and failed three times

Our family's plans always existed somewhere. My parents' medical appointments were buried in a group chat, my own schedule lived in my work calendar, and my sister's wedding planning lived in my sister's head. So I made a shared calendar three times. All three times the result was the same: I filled it in diligently for a week, and then nobody opened it again.

The problem wasn't the absence of a calendar. It was that writing something down made nothing happen. Only the person who typed it knew about it, nobody could tell whether anyone had seen it, and finished plans just slid past.

That's what led to Davie, and this post is a record of one month of my family actually using it after launch.

The Schedule tab in August — apricot is "Our Home", light blue is "Riverside Runners"

1. Create a Space, and the family's plans land in one place

In Davie you start by creating a Space. I made one called "Our Home" and invited my parents and my sister. It's a single invite link, so my parents got in without any help.

When you open a schedule, you can see who added it — the name sits right next to it. My mother's own check-up and my sister's venue tour show up on the same calendar, so I've stopped double-booking myself on the day of my mother's appointment.

You aren't limited to one Space. You can keep several at once for different relationships — family, partner, group. Besides "Our Home" I keep a Space for my neighborhood running group, and on the calendar each Space has its own color, so apricot means home and light blue means running at a glance. Step inside a Space and you only see that Space's plans. There's also a solo Space called "My records", so you can start before anyone else has joined.

Space tab — My records / Our Home / Riverside Runners

2. Repeating schedules and completion checks — this is where I fixed the "nobody uses it" problem

Gym on Tuesdays, utilities at the end of the month, my parents' place every other Saturday. Most family plans turn out to be repeating ones. In Davie you create a repeat once, it lays itself across the calendar, and you check off only that day's occurrence. Missing one week never marks the whole series complete. That was one of the parts I was most careful about while building it.

When you mark something done, the whole family sees the check. "Did you take your medication?" messages stopped, and more importantly it stopped being a calendar only the person who wrote in it looks at. That was exactly why the first three attempts died.

Tap a date for that day's plans — the check on the left is completion, the name is who added it

Schedule detail — "Repeat: Weekly" and "My Alarm: 1 hour before"

3. Reminders are yours, edits are everyone's

One design decision turned out to matter more than I expected. For the same schedule, each person can set their own reminder time. I use one hour before; my mother uses the evening before. Changing your own alarm never touches anyone else's. Change the time or the repeat rule, though, and it applies to the whole family. It sounds obvious, but plenty of apps don't separate those two things, and it's annoying when they don't.

4. You don't have to open the app — today is on your home screen

The screen I looked at most over the month wasn't in the app at all. It was the home screen widget. The medium widget shows only today: I unlock my phone in the morning and there's "14:00 Dress fitting, 16:00 Groceries", with an icon showing who added each one. The large widget is the full month, so a week where everyone's plans pile up is obvious immediately.

Tap a date on the widget and you land on that day in the app; you can tick something complete straight from the widget. In the end, the widget is what solved "we installed it and nobody opens it" — because you don't have to open it to see it.

Home screen — top: month calendar (large), bottom: today's plans (medium)

5. Photos and notes stay next to the plan

This is the biggest difference from other scheduling apps. After a visit to my parents' place, I upload photos to that date — and later, tapping that day on the calendar brings up the plan, the photos, and the short note together. Switch to photo mode and each calendar cell fills with that day's thumbnail, so a month becomes an album. After a month I scrolled back and could see "so what did we actually do this month" in one screen. As a group chat grows, finding an older photo again gets harder; here it stays attached to the date it belongs to.

You can upload photos and videos on the free plan. Original-quality downloads, uploads of photos older than a month, and longer video uploads are Premium features. Current pricing and terms are shown in the app's subscription screen. For schedule-keeping alone, my family was fine on the free plan.

"Our Home" Space → Photos — three uploaded on the 15th

"Our Home" Space → Diary — the note left that day

Photo mode, month view — a month turns into an album

6. Anniversaries repeat themselves — including lunar dates

Birthdays and wedding anniversaries go in as Anniversaries, repeat every year on their own, and sort by D-day. You can be reminded the day before or a week before. This month my mother's birthday reminder arrived a week out, and for the first time I had room to actually plan a present.

One detail that matters to some families more than others: anniversaries can be entered as lunar calendar dates. Enter a lunar date and Davie converts it to the solar date every year and reminds you then. If your family tracks lunar birthdays or memorial days — and a lot of families do — this is the part that stops the annual ritual of copying dates by hand off a paper calendar.

Public holidays for your country are built in, and holidays that get declared at short notice show up without waiting for an app update — they come down from the server rather than being baked into the build.

Space settings → Anniversaries — sorted by D-day

Enter a lunar date and it converts every year, with reminders a day or a week ahead

The honest gaps

I know these better than anyone, because I built them (or didn't).

• There's no import from the calendar you're already using. If you have a lot of existing events, you'll be moving them by hand at first.
• Davie is available on macOS, but the Windows app is still being prepared for release.

Both are queued for upcoming updates, and I'll keep posting progress here.

What was left after a month

Nothing dramatic. But we stopped asking "wait, is something happening that day?", and a month of family records is sitting on the calendar. The fourth family calendar is still alive.

If you're looking for a scheduling app — especially one to share with family, a partner, or a group — it's worth a try. It's free to start.

Davie is free to start. The download button below will take you to the right store for your device.

If something gets in your way, send it through "Send feedback" in the app. The people who built it actually read those.

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Disclosure: this is a first-party post — Davie is made by AiDive, and this review was written by the team that builds it.