LinkedIn automatically adds your connections’ birthdays to your calendar on Mac. While this can be a nice feature to remember birthdays, it can also clutter your calendar with events you don’t necessarily want or need. If you want to remove LinkedIn birthdays from your Mac calendar, there are a few simple steps you can take.
Why You Might Want to Remove LinkedIn Birthdays
Here are some common reasons for removing LinkedIn birthdays from your calendar:
- Too many events – If you have a lot of LinkedIn connections, birthdays can quickly fill up your calendar.
- Irrelevant events – You may not care about the birthdays of connections you don’t interact with regularly.
- Privacy concerns – You may not want to expose your whole connections list via your calendar.
- Syncing issues – Syncing LinkedIn across devices can create duplicate birthday events.
Overall, while LinkedIn birthday reminders can be useful in some cases, they aren’t for everyone. Fortunately, it’s easy to remove them.
How to Stop LinkedIn Birthdays Syncing on Mac
There are two main methods to stop LinkedIn birthday reminders from appearing in your Mac’s Calendar app:
Method 1: Disable Sync in LinkedIn
Here is how to prevent LinkedIn birthday events from syncing to your Mac calendar:
- Open LinkedIn and click on your profile image in the top right.
- Select “Settings & Privacy” from the dropdown menu.
- Click on “Preferences” in the left sidebar.
- Under “Calendar,” disable “Share your network’s Events & Birthdays.”
- Click “Save” to apply the changes.
With sync disabled in your LinkedIn settings, no new birthday reminders will be added to your Calendar app on Mac.
Method 2: Remove Access to Your Calendar
You can also stop LinkedIn importing birthdays by removing its access to your calendars:
- Open the Apple System Preferences app on your Mac.
- Click on “Internet Accounts.”
- Select your LinkedIn account and click on the “Details…” button.
- Uncheck Calendars in the list of account details.
This will prevent LinkedIn from syncing any further birthday reminders from your connections.
How to Delete Existing LinkedIn Birthdays from Your Calendar
If you already have many LinkedIn birthday events cluttering up your calendar, you’ll also want to delete those. Here are two ways to do it:
Delete Birthdays Individually
Open the Calendar app and delete any birthday reminders one by one:
- Click on a birthday event to view the event details.
- Under “Alert” check it says “LinkedIn” to confirm it’s from LinkedIn.
- Click “Delete Event” to remove it.
- Repeat for each birthday reminder.
This can be tedious with many events but ensures other calendar entries aren’t deleted.
Delete All Events from LinkedIn
A quicker way is to delete all events imported from LinkedIn:
- Open Calendar and click “Calendars” in the left sidebar.
- Uncheck any calendar called “LinkedIn.”
- Right-click on the LinkedIn calendar and select “Delete.”
- Confirm the deletion in the popup box.
This will remove every LinkedIn birthday reminder in one go. Just be certain you don’t have any other important LinkedIn events saved in that calendar.
How to Prevent LinkedIn Birthdays Reappearing
Once you’ve removed all the LinkedIn birthday clutter from your calendar, you likely don’t want it coming back. Here are two tips to prevent LinkedIn re-syncing birthdays:
Keep Sync Disabled in LinkedIn
As covered above, disabling event/birthday sharing in your LinkedIn settings will stop new reminders being imported. Check periodically that this setting remains disabled.
Monitor Calendar Access
Also revisit the Internet Accounts section of your Mac System Preferences regularly. If LinkedIn calendar access has been re-enabled, disable it again.
As long as you stay on top of these two settings, LinkedIn birthday reminders should stay gone for good.
Other Tips for Managing LinkedIn Birthdays
If you find LinkedIn birthdays useful for some connections, but not others, there are a few additional tips worth mentioning:
Create a Separate Birthday Calendar
You can have LinkedIn sync birthdays to their own dedicated calendar. To do this:
- In the Calendar app, create a new calendar called “LinkedIn Birthdays.”
- Enable sharing in LinkedIn so birthdays sync to your Mac.
- In System Preferences > Internet Accounts, assign LinkedIn calendar access only to the birthdays calendar.
Now LinkedIn birthdays will sync to the separate calendar without cluttering up your main calendar.
Selectively Add Individuals
Another option is to manually add birthday reminders just for your closest connections:
- Open LinkedIn and go to a connection’s profile.
- Click “Add birthday to calendar.”
- Repeat for any connections you want to track.
While more time consuming, this ensures you only get reminders for key individuals.
Use Contact Groups
If you connect your LinkedIn to Mac contacts, you can create custom contact groups with just certain connections. You can then display just that group’s birthdays in your calendar.
Troubleshooting Tips
Here are some troubleshooting suggestions if you still see LinkedIn birthdays appearing after trying to remove them:
- Check if the birthdays are coming from a secondary LinkedIn calendar and delete it.
- Look for a contacts group importing LinkedIn birthdays and remove it.
- Unlink LinkedIn entirely from your Internet Accounts as a last resort.
- Restart your Mac in case the changes didn’t sync properly.
With some detective work, you should be able to track down any stray LinkedIn birthdays.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here are answers to some common questions about managing LinkedIn and calendar integration on Mac:
Does disabling sharing in LinkedIn delete existing birthdays from my calendar?
No, disabling sharing will only stop new birthdays from being added. To remove existing LinkedIn birthdays, you need to manually delete each one or remove the LinkedIn calendar.
What’s the easiest way to delete all LinkedIn birthdays at once?
The quickest way is to uncheck and delete the LinkedIn calendar in the Calendar app. That will remove every LinkedIn birthday reminder in one step.
Do I need to unlink LinkedIn from Internet Accounts to stop birthday syncing?
No, you can disable birthday sharing in LinkedIn settings without fully unlinking the account. Just be sure to remove calendar access in System Preferences as well.
Will turning off birthday sharing also stop other LinkedIn calendar events?
Yes, disabling the sharing option in LinkedIn will prevent all LinkedIn events from syncing, including birthdays. Use this if you only want to remove birthdays.
Can I still get LinkedIn birthday alerts without cluttering my main calendar?
Yes, create a separate LinkedIn Birthdays calendar and assign it as the sync destination. You can view it separately without affecting your main calendar.
Conclusion
While LinkedIn integration with Calendar can be helpful for some, a flood of birthdays for irrelevant connections is annoying. Thankfully, Mac users can easily control birthday syncing and remove existing reminders.
The key steps are disabling event sharing in LinkedIn itself and revoking calendar access in System Preferences. Staying on top of these two settings will prevent LinkedIn birthdays reappearing if you choose to delete them.
With the right settings applied, you can smoothly manage which LinkedIn birthdays do or don’t appear in your calendar. Just be careful when deleting all LinkedIn events at once to avoid losing any non-birthday items. With a bit of care, you’ll have your ideal birthday calendar setup in no time.