Themes, colours & the sky's look
settings › "the sky" sets how the sky — the home view of stars — looks. A live preview sits at the top, drawn the same way as the home sky, so you see each change as you make it.
The page, top to bottom
- the live preview
- the theme chips
- "halo", "nebula", "vignette"
- "starfield", and "star density" while it is on
- "my sky — the real stars overhead" (Gold)
- "background picture"
- "show journals for"
- "the reliquary in the sky"
The last two are on Journals on the sky.
Themes
A theme sets the whole sky's look — the colour of the night, the ink, the dust of the starfield — and how your colours are filtered. Tap a chip to switch at once.
| theme | what it is |
|---|---|
| "clean" | a near-black night; your colours exactly as chosen. Where it starts |
| "mono" | greys everything, keeping how bright each colour was |
| "pastel" | soft, pale colours |
| "rainbow" | every colour at full strength (Gold) |
| "daytime" | a cream page; marks go darker to be seen (Gold) |
| "ink" | a pale page in greys, dark where mono is bright (Gold) |
| "iridescent" | a living sky whose hues drift right round the wheel every forty seconds (Gold) |
| "neon" | electric; nothing muted (Gold) |
| "ember" | warm reds and ambers (Gold) |
| "abyss" | deep blues (Gold) |
"clean", "mono" and "pastel" are free; the other seven are journal gold. Without Gold a locked chip shows ✦ and opens the Gold sheet, with "✦ locked by gold" under the chips. A Gold theme you already chose keeps drawing if Gold is ever lost.
A theme filters your colours as they are drawn; it never changes the colour you chose. A journal's own page keeps its dark night on "daytime" and "ink", so its light words stay readable.
The sliders
| setting | what it does | range | starts at |
|---|---|---|---|
| "halo" | the soft glow round each of your stars, in the star's own colour | 0 to 2.5 | 1 |
| "nebula" | six huge, very faint patches of colour drifting behind the sky | 0 to 1 | 0.6 |
| "vignette" | darkens the sky toward its edges | 0 to 0.8 | 0.45 |
| "star density" | how many background stars — about 180 at the start | 0.3 to 2 | 1 |
settings › "ease" › "remove glows" turns every halo and the nebula off, whatever the sliders say.
Starfield
"starfield" — the scatter of faint, twinkling background stars behind your own; not entries, just night. They are always in the same places, so the sky never flickers. It starts on.
My sky (Gold)
"my sky — the real stars overhead" draws the real stars above you, right now, in place of the invented starfield: about thirty-six bright stars, with faint lines for the Big Dipper, Orion, Cassiopeia and the Summer Triangle. North is up. It is marked "✦ gold" until you own Gold, and a tap opens the Gold sheet. It starts off. Turning it on needs your rough location; if it isn't allowed yet, the phone asks. Until a place is known the page says "my sky needs to know roughly where you are. allow approximate location and the real stars appear."
Background picture
A picture of your own, behind the home sky and under your stars.
- Tap "choose image" and pick a picture.
- "clear image" and "image dimming" appear. "image dimming" darkens the picture so your stars stand out — 0 to 0.9, starting at 0.45.
The picture is cropped to fill the screen, never stretched. The journal keeps its own copy, "so it stays if the original goes". A file the phone can't draw is refused, and the old picture stays: "that picture could not be read". It shows on the home sky only — not a journal's page, the list or the orbits. "clear image" takes it away, and the sky goes back to plain.
Colours
An entry can wear a colour of its own, its journal's colour, or none — then it is drawn in the sky's plain ink.
- Which wins — the entry's own; else the first journal holding it that has one, in desk order; else none.
- Two sets — soft colours, free; and eighteen vivid colours, marked ✦ (Gold).
- Where it shows — the star, its halo, and a journal's constellation lines. The sky, the list and the orbits always agree.
Choose an entry's colour in compose — see Tags, ties, star & colour — and a journal's on its menu — see Make & name a journal.
Colour is never the only way to tell things apart: stars have shapes and names for that. settings › "ease" › "colour strength" makes the same colours louder, never different. See Ease.
See also.
The sky · Ease · Journals on the sky · Journal Gold