Two things live here: countdown calendars, where a door opens each day, and event albums, where guests send photos, videos and messages to a screen on the night. This walks through both, and every setting you will meet along the way.
Your username becomes your web address. Register as emma and everything you make lives under emma.yayday.live. It is fixed once you have chosen it, so pick something you are happy for guests to see.
Sign in with your email address, not your username. Lost the password? Forgot password? on the sign-in page emails you a link — it works once and expires after 30 minutes.
| Free | Pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Projects | 1 | 12 |
| Calendar length | 6 days | 6, 12, 24 or 30 days |
| Storage | 100 MB | 5 GB |
| Event albums | — | Yes |
| Passcode | — | Yes |
| Interactive add-ons | Limited | All |
| Background image | — | Yes |
| Custom last-day song | — | Yes |
Pro is $24.99 a year. Calendars and event albums draw on the same pool of projects — one of each uses two of your twelve. You can switch auto-renew off from Account › Membership and keep Pro until the year runs out.
Dashboard › Create asks what you are making. A countdown calendar is the advent-style one with a door a day. An event album is for a single occasion — a wedding, a birthday — where guests send things in on the day.
Both ask for a name and a web address, which is filled in from the name as you type. You can change it: lower case, numbers and hyphens only.
If any are published you will see a Start from picker. Choosing one copies a ready-made calendar into your account, with its wording and design already done. Two things to know: the template decides the length, so the Duration dropdown locks to it, and the copy always arrives with every door closed, whatever state the original was in.
The Studio has a live preview on the right and four tabs on the left. Most controls save as you touch them; Save Changes catches the rest. On a phone it stacks, with a Preview / Edit toggle.
Everything the calendar page itself looks like, in six panels:
A door shows its own picture if you have set one for that day, and the default icon if you have not. There is no switch between the two — setting a picture is the switch.
Every font menu also carries Light and Thin versions of the popular faces (Raleway Light, Montserrat Thin and so on) and a few naturally delicate families such as Cormorant Garamond — pick one anywhere a font can be chosen and it really renders that thin.
Anywhere an image can be set — the page background, a door picture, a main image — the Free Photos button opens a search across Pexels, Unsplash and Pixabay. Pick one and it is resized and saved into your own storage, so the calendar never depends on someone else’s website. Before you search, the last ten photos you used are waiting at the top.
The window that opens when someone taps a door. Gift Wrap Design is the wrapping it unwraps from — pattern, colours, bow, or your own image. Opening it tears the paper away like a real gift, complete with a paper-tearing sound; the gift settings have a switch if you would rather it tore silently. Window Style and Popup Text set the panel behind it and the fonts for the headline, message and description — the sizes live with each day’s text on the Content tab, so one long message can be smaller without shrinking the rest.
A door is one day. The Content tab shows one day at a time: pick it from the numbered strip at the top, or step through with the arrows. A day’s number turns dark once it has content, and a small dot marks days carrying an add-on. Choosing a day shows its popup in the preview so you can edit with the content in front of you — silently, and without changing the door itself: a closed door keeps its closed face and is never counted as opened. Each day takes a closed and opened emoji, a door picture, a teaser (visible while locked), a headline, a message, a description and a main image for inside the popup.
Each door can carry one interactive extra, opened from a slide-up drawer inside the popup. You give the drawer its button label. The icon only appears once the add-on has something in it.
Which add-ons a Free account can use is set per add-on. If one is not available you will be told so when you pick it, and again if you try to save it.
The 💡 Idea Hub button on the dashboard opens a bank of more than a thousand ready-made door ideas — birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas, Valentine’s, Mother’s and Father’s Day, graduations, weddings, new babies, retirements, big trips, or no reason at all. Each idea is a line you can copy straight into a door’s message, tagged with the add-on that makes it land (“Let’s go watch a movie — you choose” wants a Coupon). Search it, or filter by occasion. Inside the Studio, every day’s Message field has its own 💡 Ideas button — and there, Use drops the idea straight into that door, no copying needed.
The five games — Spin Wheel, Scratch Card, Quiz, Tic Tac Toe and the To Do List — all follow one rule: one try, and it counts. The first spin, scratch, answer or game is saved on the calendar itself, so it holds on every device and for every visitor; a finished checklist locks its boxes. Nobody can quietly reload and try again.
Only you can undo a play, from that game’s settings: Reset on the wheel, the quiz and Tic Tac Toe, Reset Checklist on the to-do list, and Cover Again on the scratch card, which lays fresh foil for everyone.
Playing in the editor preview or in Test Mode never uses up the real try — rehearse your own games as much as you like.
Doors count back from the celebration date. On a 12-day calendar ending 25 December, day 12 opens on the 25th and day 1 opened on the 14th — each at the Daily Door Open Time, in the calendar’s timezone.
No Celebration Date means every door is open immediately. If you are building in advance, set the date early or use the passcode.
A door, once opened, is open for everyone, permanently — it is one shared calendar, not a copy each. Use Close Main Calendar Doors in Settings if you have been testing on the live one, and Close Preview Doors on the Content tab to reset only your own preview.
Send yourname.yayday.live/your-slug. That is the whole thing — no account needed at the other end. View Page on the dashboard opens exactly what they will see.
With a passcode on, visitors meet a lock screen first. It is case sensitive, and once entered it is remembered on that device for 30 days. Changing the passcode locks everyone out again, which is the quick way to revoke access.
Calendars stay out of Google. Every calendar, event album and CheerReels page tells search engines not to index it, and the whole yourname.yayday.live address is closed to crawlers. Your link is yours to give out — it will not turn up in somebody’s search results. Treat it as private all the same: anyone you send it to can pass it on.
Video messages from friends, collected behind one door. Add CheerReels as that door’s add-on and you get a second link to share with everyone else.
Set a security question and answer — something only real friends know. The answer ignores capitals and stray spaces. A welcome note explains what you are asking for.
Your friends open the link, answer the question, give their name, add an optional written message and record or choose a video. Keep it under three minutes. They need no account and nothing to install.
There is no approval step. Anything sent appears behind the door when it opens. You can delete individual videos afterwards, so it is worth setting a question only your circle can answer.
One page, one QR code, one night. Put the code on the tables and guests send photos, videos and written messages straight to a screen. Nobody downloads anything or makes an account.
Dashboard › your event is the control room. From the top: the upload link to share and its QR code (there is a Save QR button for printing), a cover image that sits across the top of both pages guests see, and Event details.
A guest who writes a message without attaching anything gets it drawn onto a coloured card, so it appears on the screen alongside the photos. Lettering picks the typeface and Colour sets the background and text — or leave it following the event theme. The preview updates as you choose.
Changing either redraws the cards already sent, so the album never ends up in two styles. You will see how many were redrawn when you save.
Nothing is held for approval. Anything sent can appear on the screen straight away. Use the question to keep it to invited guests, and Starred only on the slideshow if you want to control exactly what goes up.
Play slideshow opens the screen for the venue: full-bleed, no chrome until you move the mouse, and new arrivals cut straight in. When nothing has been sent yet it shows the QR code instead, so an empty screen is still doing a job.
| Control | Key | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Pause | Space | Holds the screen where it is, including through new arrivals |
| ← → | Arrows | Step back and forward by hand |
| Loop / Wait | W | Loop goes round forever. Wait plays everything once, then parks on a waiting card until something new arrives |
| Starred only | S | Shows only what you have starred in the album |
| Unmute | M | Sound on videos |
| Full screen | F |
Loop is right for a party running all evening. Wait suits a quieter room where you want the screen to react as things arrive rather than repeat.
Your own view of the event lists everything sent, newest first, tagged Message, Photo or Video, with who sent it and when. Each has a star for the slideshow, a Download, and an × to remove it permanently.
Download everything gives you a zip, numbered to match the album order. Where the original file was kept, that is what you get — not a compressed copy. Downloads are yours alone, even when the album is public.
If a guest filmed inside their phone’s browser rather than the camera app, you will see a note that it was recorded at a low resolution and will look soft on a big screen. Nothing can recover detail that was never captured, which is why the upload page asks people to use their camera app.
Account › Storage shows how much you have used, and Manage Files lets you delete what you no longer need — tick several files (or Select All) and delete them together, and the list stays open and updates in place while you tidy. It is worked out live, so it says “Calculating…” for a moment when the page opens.
The allowance is the owner’s, and guests spend it. If you run out, people sending to your event or your CheerReels door are turned away with a message telling them to let you know — so it is worth a look before a big night.
At the foot of the dashboard you can commission a Custom Celebration Logo or a Custom Celebration Song — a real song with the recipient’s name and your own details in it. There is a sample to listen to first.
You fill in a short brief, pay once, and the finished file appears on your dashboard with a Download File button when it is ready.