Most questions are answered below, the website first and then the iPhone app. For anything else, write to support@birthed.app and a person will answer.
No. The website has no accounts and no sign up. The first time you buzz something, the site keeps one random string in a cookie, so your browser gets its few buzzes a day and no more. That is all it keeps, and the privacy page says exactly what it is.
A buzz is a vote that a story mattered today. Each one makes that story's tile on the hive bigger. You get three a day, one per story. The day after a date, you get one more to spend on its hive. There is no downvote and no score.
Every date has a hive: one board holding everything with a birthday on that date, from what happened on it in history to today's news. A date's hive opens at midnight Eastern time when the date begins, takes buzzes that day and the next, and seals at the midnight that ends the next day. Sealed means permanent. Nothing on the board changes after that, and next year the same date gets a new hive beside it.
Nothing is removed when a hive seals. Hives that sealed before September 22, 2026 were cut under an older rule that put at most eight stories nobody had buzzed on the board, and a sealed board is never redrawn. Hives from then on hold many more. The line under each sealed board says how many buzzes it sealed with.
For thirty seconds after a buzz there is an Undo button beside it. Pressing it takes the buzz back completely. After thirty seconds a buzz stands.
They are not. Your buzzes stay on their hives and still count. What your browser forgets, if its cookies are cleared, is which ones were yours, so your marks and the list at birthed.app/yours start empty again. There is no account to sign in to and get them back.
From the source, in the source's own words. History comes from Wikipedia's date pages, people from Wikidata, songs from the Billboard Hot 100 as compiled by Wikipedia, and the day's news from the public feeds of news sites, read every hour. Tap any headline to see its receipt: every source, the quotation, and every check run on it.
Before anybody buzzes, the day's news fills it. The date's history and people wait off the board until somebody buzzes one, which you can do from Pick between two. After that, every tile's size is its share of the day's buzzes, so a story can grow, shrink, or lose its place to one people buzzed more. The board redraws every hour. The About page walks through it.
The other button: "this does not matter". You get one a day, and you can buzz a story or sting it, never both. Three stings put a story on trial until the next hourly redraw, and its tile goes gray with the score on it for everybody to see. At the redraw, if its stings outnumber its buzzes, the hive buries it: it leaves the board for the graveyard underneath, and stays there for good. A tie, or more buzzes, and it survives, and stings bounce off it for six hours.
The crown is on the most buzzed story. A tie does not move it, so the story in second needs one more buzz than the leader to take it. The title fight on the scoreboard names that story and how many buzzes it needs. When the hive seals, whoever holds the crown keeps it.
Not any more. Until October 18, 2026 the website could keep your birthday in a cookie in your browser to draw your own page. Nothing reads that cookie now. To clear it from this browser straight away, press this button.
The app is in beta. You can try it through TestFlight, Apple's free app for trying apps before they are on the App Store. The questions below are about the app, not the website.
Open the cog at the top of any tab, then tap the Birthday row. The wheels save as you move them; there is no Save button. You can also tap "Play the reveal again," which walks you through the opening with your saved day already set, and finishing it saves whatever the wheels say.
The song needs your birth year. If you skipped it, add it in Settings. If you gave it and there is still no song, you were born before the chart Birthed uses existed: the Billboard Hot 100 starts in August 1958 and Birthed reads it from 1959, the Billboard 200 album chart from 1964, and the United States box office from the 1940s. Birthed shows nothing rather than a guess.
Birthed shows the chart whose issue date is the first one on or after your birthday, and it prints that date next to the song so you can check it. Billboard's issue date is not the same as the week it measured, and the convention has changed several times since 1958, so a list you find elsewhere may pick a different week. Both are right about different things.
Birthed keeps February 29 as your birthday forever. In a year without one, you choose in Settings whether Birthed treats February 28 or March 1 as your day, and the app says so on screen when it is standing in.
Birthed never asks for notification permission during setup. Turn reminders on from the switch in Settings, which is when iOS asks. If the switch is on and nothing arrives, check that Birthed is allowed to notify you in the iPhone Settings app under Notifications. Reminders are scheduled on your phone at the local time, so they survive travel and clock changes.
No. Birthed never reads your device's location. The only place it has is whatever you typed into the Region field, and that field is optional.
Settings, then "Delete my account and data." That removes your profile from the Birthed account service and clears the app. Deleting the app from your phone afterwards removes the rest. There is no login, so there is nothing else to close.
Names, years and descriptions come from Wikidata. If a person is misfiled, the fix is on their Wikidata record, and every entry links to it. If a chart week looks wrong, write to us with the date and we will check it against the page it came from.