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 $300–$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.
One thing to know if you're buying a Fire TV stick specifically for this: pick a Fire TV Stick 4K Plus or 4K Max. Amazon's two newest sticks, the 4K Select and the 2026 Stick HD, run a system screensaver that takes over after about five minutes, and Amazon gives apps no way to override it. Roku, LG, Google TV, and the older Fire TV sticks all stay up.
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. Works on 2022 Samsung TVs and later (Tizen 6.5+). See Samsung TV calendar app.
- 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.