Celestial On Your Phone
The Celestial Vault runs on iOS and Android. How to set it up on mobile, what carries over, and the few things that stay desktop-only.
The Celestial Vault runs on your phone. Theme, banners, day colors, the Journal Widget, the categorical layer, Note Lock; the vault you built on your desk comes along in your pocket.
This page covers the mobile setup and the honest list of what stays desktop-only.
Setting It Up
- Sync your vault to the phone. Any method works: Obsidian Sync, iCloud Drive, Syncthing, a git-free folder sync of your choice. The Celestial Vault is just a folder; whatever moves the folder, moves the vault. (See Syncing Time Garden Between Devices for the general approaches.)
- Open the vault in Obsidian mobile (iOS / Android).
- Enable the Celestial Plugin. Open Settings → Community plugins on the phone and make sure Celestial Plugin is enabled. Mobile keeps its own enable/disable state, so a plugin running on desktop may still need one tap here.
That's it. The vault opens with the Celestial theme, your banners, and your notes.
Each activated device uses a license slot.
Your license covers 3 devices, and a phone counts as one. See License Unification & Your 3 Devices for managing slots.
What Works On Mobile
Almost everything:
- The Celestial theme with day/month/year coloring, gradient titles, animated dividers
- Banners on every note, including animated ones
- The Journal Widget with your streak and chosen imagery
- The four veils and the empty-tab atmosphere
- Note Lock, the categorical layer, bases, templates, calendar
- Settings → Celestial Plugin, including banners, updates, sharing, and polish toggles
Daily journaling on the phone is a first-class experience: tap today in the calendar, write, rate, done.
What Stays Desktop-Only
A few features depend on hardware a phone doesn't have. They disappear from the interface on mobile rather than sitting there broken:
| Feature | Why it's desktop-only |
|---|---|
The Alt+Shift shortcut layer and the Shortcut bindings settings section | Built for a physical keyboard |
| The dynamic shortcut status bar | Displays keyboard hints, which mean nothing on a touchscreen |
| The vault import folder picker | Uses the desktop OS folder dialog |
| The Open folder buttons in Banners & images | They open your system file manager; the instructions next to them still show on mobile, so you know which files to replace from desktop |
| Time Garden's local AI features | They run a local model on your machine; phones don't have the horsepower. Summaries and analyses you generated on desktop remain fully readable on mobile |
Everything else carries over.
The first-launch nudge adapts.
On desktop, the vault nudges you toward ⌥⇧D for your first daily note. On mobile, the same nudge points you at the calendar instead: tap today, start writing.
A Sensible Division Of Labor
Most Celestial users settle into a rhythm:
- Phone: capture. Quick notes during the day, photos into the daily note, reading and reviewing past entries.
- Desktop: composition. Longer reflections, monthly summaries, AI rollups, banner art swaps, settings tinkering.
The vault syncs both directions, so neither device ever feels like the "lesser" copy.
Up Next
- License Unification & Your 3 Devices — how the phone fits your 3 slots
- The Journal Widget — your streak, also in your pocket
- Keeping Your Vault Up To Date — how the vault keeps itself current on every device
Coming From Time Garden
Already journaling in the original Time Garden vault? The compatibility engine moves your notes into the Celestial Vault and converts them in one click.
The Empty-Tab Atmosphere
The Empty-Tab Atmosphere — the cosmic backdrop, twinkling stars, and personalized greeting that fills the Celestial Vault when no note is open.