Travel & the phone's own calendars

An almanac — one of your calendars, a named, coloured layer of commitments — can travel: its commitments are moved into a Google calendar in your own account, so your other devices have them too. An almanac can also be shown to the other apps on this phone, and it follows changes made in the phone's own calendars.

#Start an almanac travelling

You need calendar access for this — the same permission as step 1 of "make zenith your calendar". It is separate from connecting a Google account.

1. On the almanac's page, open "what comes in" and tap "my other devices". If something already feeds it, tap "⇄ carry it between my own devices instead". The sheet "TRAVEL · ‹name›" opens.
2. Under "the account it travels through", tap the account to use. Only accounts on the phone that hold a calendar Zenith may write to are shown.
3. Under "the calendar inside it", pick a calendar, or tap "⊕ make “‹name›” its own calendar" to have Zenith make one. An existing calendar works too; Zenith only ever touches what it put there.
4. Tap "start travelling" (or "move N commitment(s) and travel"). You see "“‹name›” travels now · N moved".

When you ask Zenith to make a calendar, Google asks at that tap for a narrow permission to make calendars in that account. Google shows its consent sheet the first time and answers silently after. The permission is asked fresh each time and never kept. Zenith can make a calendar only in a Google account; for any other account, make the calendar yourself and pick it.

Your almanac's material — files attached to it — does not travel. Those files stay on this phone and move by .zen file. The sheet also says that Black Syntax never receives any of it, and has no way to.

Good to know.

• One calendar feeds one almanac. A calendar already feeding another almanac is refused.
• Making the calendar is the only step that talks to Google's web service. Reading, writing and deleting go through the phone's own calendar store, and Google's own sync carries them to your other devices. Zenith never asks Google for a list of your calendars and never removes one.
• A travelling almanac always carries Zenith's detail. Without it, its commitments could not find their way home.
• People on a commitment never travel. A Google entry gets only the title, notes, place and times — never guests, whom Google could email invitations to. The people stay on this phone.
• Without calendar access, the sheet explains and offers Drive instead, which needs no calendar access at all. With no writable account, it asks you to add a Google account in the phone's settings first.

#Stop an almanac travelling

1. On the travelling almanac's page, tap "stop travelling". It asks "stop “‹name›” travelling?"
2. Choose what happens to its commitments, from the options below.

• "bring them home" keeps the commitments in Zenith and clears them from Google.
• "leave them" leaves them in Google as ordinary entries that Zenith no longer manages.
• "cancel" changes nothing.

Starting and stopping travel are both refused on an almanac under the lock — a locked almanac refuses every change until you unlock it.

#Show an almanac to the rest of this phone

1. On the almanac's page, open "what comes in".
2. Under "where else it reaches", tap "○ show it to the rest of this phone".

The row turns to "◉ shown to the rest of this phone". Other apps on this phone can now see the almanac, in a local calendar called "Zenith". Google cannot see it, and it never leaves the phone. Each entry carries the title, notes, place, times and the almanac's colour — never who joins. Tap the row again to make the almanac Zenith-only again.

This needs calendar access. It is refused for a locked almanac, one already travelling, or one fed by a phone calendar. The binder's panel counts how many almanacs are shown.

#How the calendar follows the phone's calendars

While the app is on screen, and only if some almanac is fed by or travels through a phone calendar, Zenith watches the phone's calendars for changes — most often an edit from another device arriving through Google's sync. It waits for things to go quiet, then reads them again once.

The calendars are also read again each time the app returns to the front. If something changed outside Zenith and has not arrived yet, tap "re-read this phone's calendars" in the binder's panel. Only calendars that feed an almanac are ever read, and watching stops while "nothing is coming in" is on.

See also. What comes in, what goes out · Your Google account & Drive · Install & make it your calendar · The lock · Privacy across the suite