LinkedIn provides the ability to view upcoming birthday notifications for your connections right on your main feed.
However, sometimes these notifications fail to show up properly. If you aren’t seeing birthday alerts on LinkedIn, there are several troubleshooting steps you can take to fix the issue.
Check Your LinkedIn Notification Settings
The first step is verifying your notification settings within LinkedIn. The platform allows granular control over what types of notifications you receive.
Access Notification Settings
On the LinkedIn website, click on the ‘Me’ icon at the top right of your feed. This will show your profile avatar and account menu. Choose ‘Settings & Privacy’ to access account settings.
On the mobile app, tap your profile photo in the top left. Then tap ‘Settings’ to navigate to account settings.
Within settings you’ll see options for managing notifications. This is where you can customize what notifications you receive and how they are delivered.
Confirm Birthday Notifications Are Enabled
Under the ‘Notifications’ tab or section, look for the setting related to birthdays. Make sure the toggle is enabled to receive birthday notifications.
If the birthday notification toggle is off, flip it on and see if your birthday alerts start appearing in your LinkedIn feed after that change.
Enabling birthday notifications should be all that’s needed to start seeing those reminders and alerts. But if you already have it turned on and still don’t see birthdays, there are a few more fixes to try.
Update the LinkedIn Mobile App
Issues with LinkedIn notifications are sometimes tied to having an outdated version of the mobile app installed.
LinkedIn frequently releases new versions of their iOS and Android apps. Each update aims to fix bugs, improve performance, and add new features.
Sometimes recent app updates end up breaking certain functionality until a new patch is rolled out. Missing notifications could signal you need to update to the latest LinkedIn mobile app.
Check Your Current App Version
On iOS, you can view the current LinkedIn app version under the App Store listing. Just search for ‘LinkedIn’ and the version number will be shown under the Open button.
On Android, go to the LinkedIn app page in the Google Play Store. Scroll down and look at the ‘Additional Information’ section to see the version number.
Compare the version you have installed against the current version available in the app store.
Download the Latest App Update
If your version is out of date, tap the ‘Update’ button to download the newest LinkedIn release. Make sure automatic app updates are also enabled on your device.
Once updated to the latest LinkedIn app, check if birthday notifications start working normally. The app update may have included a critical bug fix impacting notifications.
Re-Add Your LinkedIn Connections
A more drastic troubleshooting step is removing all of your LinkedIn connections and then adding them back. This forces a refresh of all your connections data.
On the LinkedIn website, go to your connections list under the ‘My Network’ section. Remove each connection one by one by clicking the ‘More’ button and selecting ‘Remove connection’.
After removing every connection, send new connection requests to rebuild your network. As connections accept your invites, monitor if birthday notifications begin working.
Resetting all your LinkedIn connections requires time and effort but can eliminate any corrupted data related to connections information and notifications.
Try An Alternate Email Address
LinkedIn allows you to add multiple email addresses to your account for receiving notifications. If birthday alerts aren’t coming to your primary email, try adding an alternate email and switching your notifications to that address instead.
Under account settings, go to the ‘Email’ section. Add another trusted email you own as a secondary address.
Then go back to ‘Notifications’ and change the notification email to the alternate address. Monitor that email inbox for birthday notifications going forward.
Using a fresh email inbox isolates whether the issue is with your primary email blocking or filtering LinkedIn notifications improperly.
Review LinkedIn Notification Email Settings
Along with configuration options within LinkedIn, you can also customize notification emails directly from your email inbox.
Open one of the notification emails you received from LinkedIn Notifications. At the bottom, there are preferences for managing the types of emails you want to receive.
Here you can disable specific categories of notifications like social updates, messages, mentions, etc. Verify birthday reminders are not disabled from the email preferences.
These settings are separate from the toggles within LinkedIn itself. Both need to be reviewed to ensure birthday notifications are fully enabled.
Confirm Your Contacts’ Birthdays
In some cases, birthdays may not be showing up because LinkedIn doesn’t have the birth date on file for that particular connection. Verify that the birthdays are in fact populated for those contacts.
On desktop, go to a connection’s profile who should have an upcoming birthday. Check if their birth date is included under the ‘Background’ section.
On mobile, tap into a connection’s profile and swipe down to view the ‘Background’ area. See if their birthday is listed there or shows only the year they were born.
If the full birthday is not populated on a connection’s profile, LinkedIn has no way to know when to trigger that birthday notification.
Encourage connections to add their birthday to their profile in order to receive notifications. You can also manually add birthdays to your contacts list outside of LinkedIn.
Double Check Privacy Settings
There is a specific privacy setting that determines which connections can see your own birthday. Make sure this is not blocking birthday visibility.
On desktop, go to your profile’s ‘View profile’ section then click ‘edit public profile & URL’. Select the pencil icon to edit visibility.
On mobile, go to your profile, tap ‘View profile’, then tap the ‘Edit public profile & URL’ button. Select ‘Customize your public profile’.
Under privacy, toggle ‘Share your birth date with connections’ to the on position. This allows connections to view your birthday.
Saving this privacy change may trigger LinkedIn to start showing birthday notifications again following the adjustment.
Reconnect With Key Contacts
If there are a few specific connections whose birthdays always showed up but now don’t, try removing and re-adding those individuals.
Delete the connection from your network and then send them a new connection invitation. Once they accept, see if their birthday notifications resume as expected.
Reconnecting resets LinkedIn’s data for that relationship which may resolve any issues causing their birthday to not appear.
Review Profile Due Diligence Settings
LinkedIn has a feature called profile due diligence that applies automatic restrictions around viewing certain profiles. This is intended to reduce harassment and maintain professional integrity on the platform.
However, the algorithms for due diligence restrictions can sometimes be overzealous and limit visibility in unintended ways. Restricted profiles may not show birthday notifications.
As a premium account holder, you can adjust these settings under your account’s ‘Visibility’ tab. The options include:
- Profile viewing options – Strict, Moderate, Relaxed
- Customizing restrictions – School, employer, geography etc.
Experiment with relaxing the due diligence settings to see if it enables birthday notifications to start flowing again. But keep in mind these restrictions are in place to uphold appropriate conduct.
Check for Blocked Accounts
If a specific connection’s birthday never shows up, you may be blocked from viewing their profile. Blocking prevents seeing updates related to that account.
On desktop, try visiting the profile directly. If blocked, you’ll see an alert that access is restricted.
On mobile, visit the profile and look for a dialog stating the member limits access to their profile. This indicates you are blocked.
Being blocked means you also lose access to notifications involving that account. Unfortunately the only recourse is to contact the user and request they unblock you.
Use an Alternate LinkedIn Account
To isolate if the issue is correlated to something with your particular account, attempt viewing birthday notifications from an alternate LinkedIn profile.
Either create a new throwaway account or have a trusted connection log into their LinkedIn on your device. Observe if birthday reminders show up properly via that account.
If notifications work fine on an alternate profile, something related specifically to your LinkedIn account is disrupting birthday visibility.
Contact LinkedIn Support
If you’ve tried all troubleshooting steps and birthday notifications still don’t appear, reach out directly to LinkedIn customer support for additional help.
On desktop, click your profile image at the top right and choose ‘Get help’. Review support options and submit a notification issue ticket.
On mobile, tap your profile picture and look for ‘Help’. Browse support articles or submit a request detailing the notifications problem.
LinkedIn support can investigate server-side logs and account settings deeper to spot any configuration issues. They may identify and fix problematic account or data corruption not visible client-side.
Provide as much detail as possible including steps taken already. Support responses may take several business days depending on severity and complexity of the issue.
Consider Switching to Third-Party Apps
While waiting on an official fix from LinkedIn, utilizing third-party services is a workaround to get birthday alerts. Browser extensions like ‘Nutshell’ display LinkedIn birthday reminders.
Alternatively, sync your LinkedIn contacts with a dedicated contacts manager app. Apps like ‘HiHello’ will show upcoming birthdays for LinkedIn connections.
These third-party utilities access profile data then apply their own notification logic separate from LinkedIn’s lacking birthday alerts. So you get notifications without relying on LinkedIn’s flawed system.
The downside is having to install additional software and manage contacts outside of LinkedIn. But as a temporary workaround, external notification tools are an option while pursuing an official fix.
Be Proactive With Important Connections
Rather than depend on LinkedIn notifications, you can take matters into your own hands by manually tracking key connections’ birthdays.
For your most important clients, colleagues, friends and family, add their birthdate to your calendar or contacts app. Set a yearly recurring reminder to proactively receive a notification separate from LinkedIn.
Though more time consuming, this guarantees you won’t forget top priority birthdays even if LinkedIn drops the ball on notifications.
Wait Patiently for a Fix from LinkedIn
With over 740 million members, LinkedIn has its share of bugs and quirks. While frustrating, try to be patient as LinkedIn works to improve features and fix issues.
Hopefully these tips help resolve the missing birthday notifications. But if not, take comfort knowing this is likely a top priority issue that LinkedIn wants resolved ASAP to maintain user trust and satisfaction on their platform.
Keep an eye out for LinkedIn app updates that may contain a critical bug fix for the notification problem. And reach out to their support team who can escalate urgent defects to engineering.
Over time, LinkedIn will get to the root cause and deploy a permanent solution to any systemic glitches around birthday reminders. Until then, leverage workarounds when needed so you never miss saying happy birthday to your cherished connections!
