Guide

A Skylight calendar without the subscription

A Skylight Calendar is a nice piece of kit: a touchscreen on the wall with the whole family's plans on it. But the frame costs around $250 and the features most families want (meal plans, profiles, photo screensaver) sit behind Calendar Plus, about $79 a year. If there's an old tablet in a drawer, you can build the same thing for much less.

What a wall calendar actually needs

• Everyone's calendars, synced. Ideally straight from the Google, Outlook or iCloud calendars the family already uses, so nobody types events in twice.
• One colour per person, and text big enough to read from across the kitchen.
• Always on in the day, quiet at night, and back on by itself after a power cut.
• The household bits: a chore chart, the week's dinners and a shopping list.

What the alternatives cost

Every software option we found charges monthly for the part that matters:

• Skylight Calendar: the frame, plus Calendar Plus at about $79 a year for meal planning, profiles and more.
• DAKboard: a web dashboard you run on a screen or Raspberry Pi; plans with calendar features start around $5 a month.
• Mango Display and FamDisplay: Android display apps with Pro plans from about $5–10 a month.

Two years of Calendar Plus is roughly £120. A wall app for a tablet you already own shouldn't need a subscription at all.

Daywall: our one-payment option

Daywall is our Android tablet app, built for exactly this. It reads the calendars already synced to the tablet (Google, Outlook, Exchange) or any iCal link, shows them in day, week, month and agenda views with one colour per person, and adds a chore chart, meal plan, shopping list and a photo screensaver. The screen stays on during the day, dims at night, and Daywall starts itself after a reboot. There's no account and no server: everything stays on the tablet.

It's free with one calendar in the day view, and one payment through Google Play unlocks the rest. It doesn't do two-way editing (add events from your phone's calendar and they appear on the wall) or Skylight's email-in photo sharing.

Get Daywall on Google Play

Turning an old tablet into a wall calendar

1. Pick the tablet. Any Android tablet on Android 5.1 or later works, and 8–10 inches reads best on a wall. A Fire tablet works once Google Play is installed.
2. Reset it and add the family's accounts in Settings, Accounts, so their calendars sync to the tablet.
3. Install Daywall, choose the calendars, and give each one a name and colour.
4. Make it a kiosk: turn on "Start Daywall when the tablet turns on", choose it as the home app, remove the lock-screen PIN and set the night hours.
5. Mount it with a wall bracket or adhesive tablet mount near a socket, with a right-angled USB cable.

Skylight, DAKboard, Mango Display and FamDisplay are trademarks of their owners. Daywall is independent and isn't affiliated with or endorsed by any of them. Prices checked 30 October 2026 from the makers' sites and app listings, and may change.