Widgets, the tile & shortcuts

Four ways into the Journal from outside it: two home-screen widgets, a tile in the phone's quick settings, and two shortcuts on the app's icon. Each is placed in the phone's own editors.

#The Journal widget

A small black widget: one quiet line, and a ✎ that goes straight to a new entry. Add it from your launcher's widget list, where it is called "Zenith Journal" — "a year ago today, and a way straight in". It starts three cells wide and one tall, and stretches.

The line — what it says, and where a tap goes:

✎ — "a new entry": opens compose on a new entry.

A hidden entry, or an entry in a locked journal, is never shown or counted. An entry in a locked journal opens the journal's passphrase page instead; one that has gone says "that entry isn't in this journal any more".

The widget reads the journal's files itself, so it is right whether or not the app is open. It looks again two seconds after the last of a run of saves, after something goes to the burn pile, after a backup is brought back, and every half hour.

#A journal's constellation widget

A widget for one journal: its constellation, drawn as its signature ends — the home sky zoomed out to fit, each star on the day it is filed on, at its height, in its own shape — with the lines you drew, the titles when there are few enough to read, and its name. It is the same drawing as the journal's page and its signature. It's free.

1. Place it from the widget list. It asks "which journal?" — every journal with its count of entries. A locked journal and one put away are never offered. Backing out places nothing.
2. Tap a star to read that entry in a small window over the home screen: its title, its day, its first lines, then "open in the journal" and "close". Nothing in the window changes the entry.
3. Tap anywhere else to open the journal's own page.

• Up to sixteen stars can be tapped one by one, on Android 12 and later; past that, and on older phones, a tap opens the journal's page, which has them all.
• Before a journal is chosen it reads "tap to choose a journal"; if the journal is deleted, "that journal is gone · tap to choose another". Pick it again on the home screen to change the journal.
• A locked journal shows only "<name> is locked". An entry hidden since, or in a journal locked since, shows "this entry can't be shown here."
• It looks again two seconds after you stop saving, and every half hour.

#The quick-settings tile

A tile named "write" for the phone's quick-settings panel — the one you pull down from the top of the screen. Add it with the phone's own edit-tiles screen; it wears the system's pencil icon.

Tap "write": the panel closes and the journal opens on a new entry in compose, exactly as ✛ does inside the app — or, if the journal is already open, it takes you there and opens the new entry. With the app lock on, the lock asks first.

#The app's shortcuts

Hold the Zenith Journal icon on your home screen:

• "write" ("write something") — opens a new entry in compose.
• "the sky" ("open the sky") — opens the journal as its icon would.

#See also.

Write a new entry · A year ago today · A journal's page & its menu · The app lock