Growing up, my siblings and I declared all-out war on one another every April Fools’ Day. And I do mean war. We put Saran wrap over the toilet bowl. We placed softened Tootsie Rolls on the toilet seat. We put Kool-Aid in the showerhead and, for good measure, in the toilet tank, so the water turned red every time someone flushed. (I am not recommending any of those, by the way. They are messy and got us in big trouble.)
But the prank that really cemented our family legacy was the year we snuck into my brother’s room, moved every single piece of furniture and then put it all back exactly opposite—in a perfect mirror image. His desk was where his dresser was. His bed faced the wrong wall. Everything looked just slightly, cosmically wrong, and he was so confused, he wondered if he wasn’t healed yet from the concussion he’d gotten jumping off the roof onto the trampoline.
In the end, he thought it was hilarious. We thought it was hilarious. And that’s the key—pranks for siblings only work if everyone ends up laughing, including the person being pranked. A sibling who knows you, loves you and has been in a years-long prank cold war with you is the perfect target, because you know exactly where the line is. You’ve spent your whole life finding it together. And interestingly, Cleveland Clinic psychologists note that well-executed pranks can actually reduce stress, boost immunity through laughter and strengthen empathy. In other words: Pranking your sibling is basically a wellness activity. You’re welcome.
So whether you’re a kid looking to get your big brother back for something he definitely did, a parent trying to orchestrate a little April 1st chaos your kids will talk about for years, or an adult who still has a running tally with their sibling (no one is ever too old for this), here are 20 pranks that are just as satisfying as the Kool-Aid showerhead and significantly easier to clean up. Read on for the best pranks your siblings will be talking about for years to come.
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The sticky-note blizzard
Wait until your sibling leaves their room, then cover absolutely everything in it with sticky notes. Every book, every pencil, every charging cable, every single item on their desk. Label each one with what it is—lamp, pillow, phone, charger. The more items, the better. This one takes a little prep time, but the look on their face when they open the door will be priceless. To take things up a notch, label the items improperly or with hilarious names. For example, the phone charger might become “internet IV.” Bonus: It’s completely harmless and—if you’re feeling generous—pretty easy to clean up.
Rise and scream
Borrow your sibling’s phone under some innocent pretense, then set a series of alarms to go off at three-minute intervals starting at 5 a.m. Label each one something dramatic: “WAKE UP,” “SERIOUSLY, WAKE UP,” “THIS IS ALARM NUMBER SEVEN.” For the older sibling who swears they’re a light sleeper, this one hits differently. Fair warning: They will absolutely retaliate.
Just married (surprise!)
Pick up a set of glass markers—the kind meant for car windows—and while your sibling is asleep or otherwise occupied, decorate the back windshield of their car. “Just Married” is the classic, but you can tailor it to maximum embarrassment: “Student Driver” works beautifully for a 50-year-old, “Just Divorced” lands perfectly for a 16-year-old, and “Honk If You Love Baby Shark” is always correct. Glass markers wipe off easily with a damp cloth, so there’s no lasting damage … just lasting humiliation for however long it takes them to notice, which ideally won’t be until they’ve gotten to their destination.
Everything has eyes now
Buy a bag of googly eyes and stick them on everything in the fridge. The milk jug, the condiment bottles, the leftovers, the mysterious Tupperware in the back—everything gets eyes. Now it’s less a refrigerator and more a small, staring community. This food prank works especially well if your sibling is the one who opens the fridge first thing in the morning while they’re still half asleep.
Sold out
Pick up a pack of those bright-red “SOLD” stickers from any office supply store, then quietly affix them to all of your sibling’s favorite snacks in the pantry. Their chips? Sold. The last granola bar? Sold. That specific flavor of yogurt they’ve been hoarding? Very sold. Walk away and wait for the confusion—and the accusations—to begin.
The balloon bedroom
The night before April Fools’, blow up as many balloons as you possibly can, and fill the space outside your sibling’s room from floor to near-ceiling while they sleep. This one takes a committed team effort and probably a pump, but the payoff—watching them open their door to a wall of balloons—is worth every minute. This prank works for every age, from a 5-year-old who will absolutely lose their mind with delight (once the surprise wears off) to a college student home for spring break who will respect the commitment. (If they’re a heavy sleeper, you can actually put the balloons in the room!)
The invisible barrier
Stretch a single layer of plastic wrap tightly across a doorway at about shin height, securing it to the door frame with a little tape. Then wait. This one is best deployed in a hallway your sibling frequently walks through while distracted—heading to the bathroom at night, walking to the kitchen for breakfast or rushing out the door in the morning. It won’t hurt them, but it will stop them in their tracks and produce a moment of genuine confusion that is deeply satisfying to witness. Parents: You should definitely supervise this one if it’s anywhere near stairs.
Dead ringer
Pick up your sibling’s phone and change your contact name to “Mom” or “Dad.” Then, at a perfectly timed moment, send a text that says something like: “WE NEED TO TALK ABOUT LAST WEEKEND.” Watch them spend the next 10 minutes frantically composing a polite, slightly panicked response to a parent who is, in fact, you. Reveal yourself before they send anything truly incriminating—that’s what separates a good prank from a family incident. This one works especially well with adult siblings, whose relationship with parental texts involves a specific flavor of low-grade anxiety that never fully goes away.
The world’s worst parking job
While your sibling is sleeping, move their car to a completely different spot—someplace they can still see it so they don’t report it stolen but perhaps backward across the street, or right up against a wall so they have to crawl in the passenger side. This one requires access to their keys and approximately four minutes of effort for a truly spectacular return on investment.
A very unwelcome houseguest
Place a realistic fake spider—the bigger, the better—under a clear drinking glass on the bathroom counter. Leave a handwritten note next to it that reads: “There is a SPIDER under this glass. I cannot deal with it. Do NOT lift the glass. I mean it. It’s your problem now.” The fun part is that this prank involves zero actual setup work, because half the household will be too afraid to even look at it. It works on all ages, and if we’re being fully honest, that includes some significant others and parents too.
The great escape
This one is for the older-kid crowd (think: ages 8 and up) or adult siblings looking for a callback to their dramatic childhood years. Leave a carefully written note somewhere your sibling will find it—on the kitchen table, taped to the TV, folded under their bedroom door. The note announces, with great gravity, that you have finally had enough and are running away. Include a short list of grievances. Sign it formally. The beauty of this prank is in the specificity: The more detailed and petty the list of complaints (they ate the last Pop-Tart again, they used your Netflix account without asking for the last time, etc.), the funnier it is. Bonus points if you’re already sitting calmly at the kitchen table eating cereal when they find it.
The algorithm attack
Log in to your sibling’s Spotify or YouTube account and go on an absolute bender. Search Baby Shark, search Teletubbies, search every nursery rhyme and Kidz Bop song you can think of until the algorithm is thoroughly, irreversibly convinced that this is who they are now. Their “Discover Weekly” will never be the same. Their “Up Next” will be a nightmare. The beauty of this online prank is that it keeps going for weeks, long after April Fools’ Day is over, and every time a toddler song autoplays while they’re cooking dinner, they will think of you.
The gift that keeps on giving
This prank requires time, tape and approximately one full roll of wrapping paper per cubic foot of stuff on your sibling’s desk. Wrap everything. Every pencil, every book, every lamp. Every single item gets its own individual festive wrap job. Leave a bow on the desk chair. When your sibling sits down to do homework or work and discovers that literally nothing on their desk is accessible without unwrapping it first, they will be annoyed and then, eventually, impressed by the sheer scale of your commitment. Use holiday paper for added absurdity. (It’s even better if they’ve seen The Office.)
Things that go bump in the night
If you have a Bluetooth speaker, hide it under your sibling’s bed or in their closet before they go to sleep. Set a timer for the middle of the night—or just hold your phone in another room—and play a random sound effect at low volume. A distant, indistinct knocking noise works well. So does the sound of someone very slowly eating chips. And, of course, you can never go wrong with a juicy fart. The goal is not to terrify them but to make them lie awake for 10 minutes convinced they’re hearing things. Reveal the fact that this was a sibling prank in the morning. They will not thank you. You will not care.
Bumper sticker situation
Print out a fake bumper sticker—something deeply uncool, like “I Brake for Nickelback” or “My Other Car Is Also Embarrassing”—and attach it with a single small piece of removable tape so it looks real but peels off cleanly. If your sibling is the observant type, even first thing in the morning, they might catch this April Fools’ joke immediately. If they’re not, they may drive around with it all day. Either way, you win.
The screen that loads forever
Cut a tiny square of clear tape and press it over the infrared sensor on the TV remote. Not enough to be visible, just enough to block the signal. Hand the remote to your sibling, settle in and watch them spend the next five minutes pointing the remote at increasingly extreme angles, switching batteries, shaking it, holding it closer to the TV, holding it farther from the TV and ultimately questioning their own sanity.
The reveal time is your call, but waiting until the batteries are actually checked is peak prank excellence. (My siblings and I used to just hide the remote, but we did that one too many times and it was lost forever. My parents refused to replace it. Don’t be us.)
Signed, sealed, can’t rinse
This one is a classic for a reason. Stretch a rubber band around the handle of the kitchen sink sprayer so it holds the button down. Aim it directly forward. The next person who turns on the tap gets an immediate, face-level blast of water with no warning. For best results, do this in the morning before your sibling gets to the kitchen. Have a towel ready because they will need one and they will absolutely throw it at you.
The name game
If you and your sibling share the same type of phone, sneak into their autocorrect settings and swap out a few common words for unexpected ones. Classic moves: Change “the” to “tHe,” change your own name to something like “the incredibly handsome/beautiful one” or swap “OK” for “AS YOU WISH.” Subtle enough that they won’t notice immediately, annoying enough that they’ll notice eventually and harmless enough that this is entirely defensible. If they send a work email in the meantime, that’s on them for texting without proofreading.
The moving furniture trick
While your sibling is out, move every single piece of furniture in the living room exactly six inches to the left. Not enough to look different. Just enough that everything is slightly, imperceptibly off. The beauty of this prank is that they may not identify the source of their unease for hours. They’ll just walk around all day feeling vaguely out of sorts, unsure if they’re tired or if something is wrong, while you watch and say nothing. This is a long-game prank. It rewards patience.
The “I have a confession” voicemail
Call your sibling’s phone when you know they won’t pick up, and leave a carefully crafted voicemail that begins like this: “Hey, so I have to tell you something. I kind of did something, and I need you to call me back when you get this. It’s about [pause] … the thing. You’ll know what I mean. Call me.” Then do not pick up when they call back. This one is particularly effective on siblings who grew up in households where “we need to talk” was never followed by anything fun.
The mirror message
Use a dry-erase marker—or, if you’re feeling bold, a bar of soap—to write a message on your sibling’s bathroom mirror that they’ll only see when steam from the shower reveals it. Options range from warm and wholesome (“You’re my favorite sibling”—especially devastating if you only have one) to mildly alarming (“I know what you did”) to genuinely funny (“Happy April Fools’. The soap is not soap.”). Even if the soap actually is soap, they will absolutely not use it for the rest of the day.
The endless scroll
Wait until your sibling walks away from their laptop, then go to their Amazon, Target or grocery delivery account and fill the cart with the most aggressively random assortment of items you can think of—industrial quantities of a condiment they hate, a single spool of ribbon, 17 cans of sardines. Don’t check out; just fill it. They’ll open their cart later expecting nothing and find what appears to be the shopping list of someone having a very specific kind of breakdown. If you’ve been making a list of the best April Fools’ pranks to play on your parents too, this one transfers beautifully.
All jokes aside, a final note
Before you go full chaos agent on your household, remember that the best pranks are the ones where everyone—yes, including the person being pranked, like I said earlier—ends up laughing. If you know your sibling well enough to prank them (and after years of sharing a bathroom and a back seat, you absolutely do), you know where the line is. Keep it there. April Fools’ Day should produce stories you’re still telling at Thanksgiving, not ones that require an apology. The goal is a sibling who’s simultaneously annoyed with you and impressed by you—which, come to think of it, is basically the whole job description anyway.
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Reader’s Digest has been telling jokes for more than 100 years, curated and reviewed over the last 20 years by Senior Features Editor Andy Simmons, a humor editor formerly of National Lampoon and the author of Now That’s Funny. We’ve earned prestigious ASME awards for our humor—including comical quips, pranks, puns, cartoons, one-liners, knock-knock jokes, riddles, memes, tweets and stories in laugh-out-loud magazine columns such as “Life in These United States,” “All in a Day’s Work,” “Laughter, the Best Medicine” and “Humor in Uniform,” as well as online collections such as short jokes, dad jokes and bad jokes so bad, they’re great. You can find a century of humor in our 2022 compendium, Reader’s Digest: Laughter, the Best Medicine. Read more about our team, our contributors and our editorial policies.
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