The Journal Widget
The Journal Widget tracks your streak in a perfect square in the sidebar. Configurable images, counter modes, six streak-completion rules, an editable history file, and a celebratory burst.
In the left sidebar of the Celestial Vault sits a perfect square — your Journal Widget. It's a quiet, custom-built piece of UX that tracks your journaling consistency and gives you a small visual identity for your vault.
What It Shows
By default, the widget displays:
- A looping image as the widget's background (an animated ocean-planet AVIF by default)
- A counter in gradient text — your current streak, in days
- A streak overlay image that swaps in when your streak is active
Click the widget and the streak calendar opens: a month-by-month view of every day you've completed. (Hover the widget and a small "Streak calendar" hint appears.)
Counter Modes
The number on the widget can show one of two things:
| Mode | What it means |
|---|---|
| Streak (default) | Number of consecutive days with a daily note |
| Total | Total number of days you've ever journaled |
Choose your mode in Settings → Celestial Plugin → Journal Widget → Counter mode. The widget updates live — no reload needed.
Why streak vs total matters.
Streak is great when you're trying to build the habit and want the reward of not breaking the chain. Total is great when you're past the habit-building phase and want to see how much you've actually written over the years.
Switching from streak → total when you eventually break a streak (life happens) is a healthier move than starting over from zero. The widget supports both for that reason.
What Completes A Day
By default, a day counts toward your streak when you name your day: giving today's daily note its alias. But not everyone journals the same way, so the rule is yours to pick.
Settings → Celestial Plugin → Journal Widget → Streak completes when offers six modes:
| Mode | The day completes when... |
|---|---|
| Naming your day (default) | you give today's daily note its name / alias |
| Writing anything | you write anything at all in today's daily note |
| Reaching a word goal | today's daily note reaches your word goal |
| Creating any note | you create any new note, anywhere in the vault |
| Creating a unique note | you create a unique note (⌥⇧N) |
| Manual | you press Complete today in the streak calendar |
Two companions:
- Word goal: the word count that completes the day when the word-goal mode is selected. Set it to whatever "a real entry" means to you.
- Manual mode puts a Complete today button inside the streak calendar (click the widget to open it). Nothing completes without your say-so.
Pick the rule that matches your practice.
If naming your day is your ritual, keep the default. If you just want to write without ceremony, "writing anything" removes all friction. If you're building a serious writing habit, a word goal keeps you honest. And manual mode is for people who want the streak to mean exactly what they decide it means.
Counter Icon
The small icon next to the streak number is configurable. By default it's a star (star).
You can swap it for any Lucide icon name — flame, sparkles, trophy, feather, moon, cloud-rain, whatever fits your vibe. Set it in Settings → Celestial Plugin → Journal Widget → Counter icon, type the icon name, hit Enter.
The widget updates live.
Customizing The Widget Image
The widget background is a regular image file (an .avif, .webp, .gif, .png, or .jpg). You can swap it for anything you like.
Swap the vault-mode image (no active streak):
Settings → Celestial Plugin → Journal Widget → Vault mode image
A dropdown lists every image in the Widget Images folder. Pick one; the widget updates live. Recommended: square or near-square images, animated GIFs / WebPs work great.
Swap the streak overlay image (active streak):
Same section, Streak background overlay.
The streak overlay is what shows when your streak is active — a way to give your widget a visual reward when you're on a roll.
Add your own images:
Drop any AVIF, GIF, PNG, JPG, or WEBP into the Widget Images folder and it appears in both dropdowns. The folder is one click away: Settings → Celestial Plugin → Banners & images → Widget images → Open folder.
The bundled image is a starting point.
Celestial ships with one widget image in Time Garden/06 Templates/Images/Widget Images/: the animated ocean planet you see by default. The folder is yours to fill; anything you drop in becomes selectable in both dropdowns.
The Burst Animation
When your streak increments (i.e., today completes under your chosen rule and extends your streak), the widget plays a brief burst animation — a small celebratory pulse + sparkle effect.
This is gated by the master Animations toggle in settings. If you've disabled animations globally, the burst doesn't play. (See Atmosphere & Polish Toggles.)
Resetting Onboarding (Hidden Feature)
The widget area in settings has a Reset onboarding button. Click it and the welcome experience runs again on the next reload. Your license stays untouched.
Useful if you want to demo the welcome flow to someone, or walk through onboarding a second time. (The golden first-daily-note shimmer is strictly one-shot and doesn't re-fire.)
The Streak Logic (And The History File)
Streaks count consecutive completed days, and the record lives in a plain, human-readable note:
Time Garden/Streak History.mdOne checkbox line per completed day:
- [x] 2026-07-01
- [x] 2026-07-02
- [x] 2026-07-03The widget reads this file to compute everything it shows. If yesterday's line exists and today completes, the streak grows by one. Skip a day, and the next completion starts a new run at 1.
Because it's just a note, you can edit it by hand and the widget follows. Add a line for a day the widget missed, remove one you don't want counted, or reconstruct your history entirely. There's an Open history file button in Settings → Celestial Plugin → Journal Widget that jumps straight to it.
Backfilling with notes won't restore a streak. The file can.
If you skipped Tuesday and create a Tuesday daily note on Wednesday, the streak treats Wednesday as a new run starting at 1, not a 2-day streak. This is intentional: streaks reward real-time consistency, not retroactive bookkeeping.
That said, the history file is yours. If a day genuinely happened (you journaled on paper, or the widget missed it), add its - [x] line by hand and the streak follows.
When The Widget Doesn't Appear
If the Journal Widget isn't visible in your sidebar:
- Check the sidebar layout. It lives in the left sidebar. Make sure the left sidebar is open (
Cmd/Ctrl + B). - Check the workspace. The shipping vault layout gives the widget roughly a third of the left sidebar height. If you've rearranged the sidebar, the widget might be hidden behind another pane.
- Reload Obsidian. Sometimes the widget doesn't render on initial mount; a quick
Cmd/Ctrl + P→ "Reload app without saving" fixes it.
If it's still missing, see Welcome and Onboarding Issues.
Up Next
- The Shortcut Bar — the context-aware bar at the bottom
- The Four Veils — animated transitions between notes
- Identity & Greeting — where the nickname for your widget comes from
The Empty-Tab Atmosphere
The black-hole scene that fills the Celestial Vault when no note is open: animated wallpaper, infalling stardust, constellations, a personalized greeting, action pills, and the per-launch intro.
The Shortcut Bar
A context-aware status bar that shows you exactly which shortcuts apply to whatever note you’re currently inside.