Turn the iPad in your drawer into a family wall calendar
It already has a better screen than most wall calendars do. Fridgeside turns it into an always-on family board — the week, each child's chores, and tonight's dinner — and the children tap their own jobs off as they go.
Everything that used to be on the fridge.
Works on any iPad from 2014 onwards. 7 days free.
You've probably already got the hardware
A wall calendar screen costs $180 to $600, plus a plan of around $79 a year. Browser-based family dashboards skip the hardware but still run about $60 a year and leave you managing a kiosk browser.
The iPad in the drawer costs nothing, has a sharper screen than most of the dedicated ones, and is probably not being used for anything else — especially if it has stopped getting iPadOS updates. That makes it a poor daily driver and a very good single-purpose wall display.
What goes on the board
The week
Seven days at a glance, reading the calendars already on the iPad — iCloud, Google, Outlook, Yahoo or a subscribed link. Add them once and they show up. Fridgeside only ever reads your calendars; it never edits them.
Chores the children tap themselves
Each child gets a colour and a column. Jobs rotate automatically — every time, or a week each — and a streak builds when they keep it up. No accounts, no logins: children never sign in to anything.
Tonight's dinner
What you're eating, who's cooking, and the recipe steps behind a tap so whoever's at the stove doesn't need their phone. After eight in the evening the board moves on to tomorrow.
Set up once, from your phone
The iPhone side is where the family lives: add the children, assign the jobs, plan the week's dinners. Or describe your family in a sentence or two and let Fridgeside draft the whole week for you — then change anything you like before it's saved.
Both parents can share the same household through iCloud, so a change made on one phone shows up on the wall and on the other.
Questions people actually ask
Will it work on a really old iPad?
Any iPad from 2014 onwards, including the iPad Air 2 and iPad mini 4. If it turns on and joins Wi-Fi, it can be a board.
Won't the screen keep turning off?
Set Auto-Lock to Never and turn off Auto-Brightness, and Fridgeside keeps the screen awake itself. It also dims the board down to a soft night view in the evening, so it isn't glaring into a dark kitchen.
What stops the kids swiping over to YouTube?
Guided Access locks the iPad to one app in about a minute. If it's going on the wall permanently, Single App Mode is the sturdier option — it survives a restart. Both are covered in the setup guide.
Is it safe to leave an old iPad plugged in all the time?
Generally yes, and there's a short section in the guide on being kind to an ageing battery — including the one thing to check before you mount anything.
What happens if I stop paying?
The board keeps working as a clock and today's events, and nothing you've set up is deleted. We'd rather the iPad stayed on your wall.
Pricing
Free for 7 days. Then $39.99 a year — or $79.99 once, if you'd rather not have another subscription.
One purchase covers the whole household, on the phone and the wall.