How to Put a Family Calendar on Your TV (Any Brand)
The TV is the one screen the whole family walks past every day, so it's the obvious place to put a shared calendar. The catch: almost no smart TV ships with a family calendar app. Here are the three real ways to get one on your screen — the DIY route, a dedicated device, and a purpose-built TV app — and the honest trade-offs of each.
Why your TV doesn't already do this
Roku, Fire TV, Google TV, LG, and Samsung are all built around streaming. None of them include a built-in family calendar, and their app stores are stocked with video services, not household organizers. So if you want your Google or Apple calendar up on the living-room TV, you have to add something. Your options fall into three buckets.
Option 1: The DIY route (free-ish, fiddly)
If you're technical and patient, you can rig something up:
- Cast or mirror from a phone or laptop. You can throw a Google Calendar tab onto a Chromecast/Google TV, or screen-mirror to many Roku and Samsung sets. The problem: it ties up the device you cast from, and it isn't always-on — the moment you need your phone back, the calendar disappears.
- A dashboard tool like DAKboard on a stick or Raspberry Pi. These can display a calendar nicely, but getting one to stay on a TV is where it gets fiddly. DAKboard's own documentation notes that running it on a Fire TV is unofficial and you have to work around the device's built-in screen timeout. Expect to spend an evening with a kiosk app and some trial and error.
- A retired tablet on a stand. A popular hack: load a calendar app on an old iPad or Fire tablet and prop it up. It works, but it's small, the screen sleeps, and it's a second gadget to keep charged.
The DIY route can be genuinely free if you already own the parts. It is rarely easy, and it tends to break — a screen timeout you can't disable, an app that logs out, a cast that drops.
Option 2: A dedicated device (polished, pricey)
Products like the Skylight Calendar and Hearth Display are purpose-built family calendar screens, and they're nicely done. The trade-off is cost: a Skylight Calendar runs roughly $280–$600 depending on size, and Hearth's wall display is around $699 — and both charge a subscription on top of the hardware to unlock features like chore rewards and photo slideshows. If you want a beautiful screen and don't mind buying one, they deliver. If you already have a perfectly good TV, you're paying for a second screen you don't strictly need.
Option 3: A TV calendar app for the screen you already own
The middle path is an app built specifically to turn an existing smart TV into a digital family calendar. That's what Luana does. You install it from your TV's app store, pair it to your account, and your TV becomes an always-on family screen: a shared calendar, kids' morning and evening routines they check off from the remote, a chore-and-reward system, and a family photo screensaver when the room goes quiet. There's no extra hardware — it runs on the Roku, Fire TV, LG, or Google TV you already own — and it's $7.99/mo with a 14-day free trial.
Luana syncs your Google, Apple, and Outlook calendars read-only, so it shows your events but never edits or deletes anything.
Quick notes by TV brand
- Roku: No built-in family calendar; the Roku Channel Store has very few options. See Roku calendar app.
- Fire TV: No native calendar app, and recent Fire OS versions lock down the screensaver, which breaks a lot of DIY setups. See Fire TV calendar app.
- Google TV / Android TV: A few commodity calendar apps exist, but nothing built for families. See Google TV calendar app.
- LG (webOS): Works on 2022 LG TVs and later (webOS 22+). See LG TV calendar app.
- Samsung: Samsung's own "family" features are on its fridges, not its TVs. Luana's Samsung support is currently in beta.
- An older TV with no app store? A ~$30 Fire TV stick turns any HDMI TV into a smart TV that can run a calendar app.
Which should you pick?
If you love tinkering and have spare parts, the DIY route is a fun weekend project. If you want a gorgeous dedicated screen and the budget is no issue, a Skylight or Hearth is a fine buy. But if you just want your family's day on the big screen without buying anything new or fighting a screen timeout, a TV app like Luana is the simplest path — you're using the screen that's already on the wall.
Prices for third-party products are accurate to the best of our knowledge as of June 2026 and may change — check each company's site for current pricing.