Unzipping & Opening
The careful unzip walkthrough — including how to avoid the "wrong folder" trap when picking a vault to open in Obsidian.
The Celestial Vault ships as a single .zip file. Unzipping is straightforward, but there's one decision point where it's easy to pick the wrong folder when opening Obsidian. This page is dedicated to walking you past that one trap cleanly.
Step 1 — Unzip The File
Mac: Double-click Celestial Vault.zip in Finder. The zip extracts in place.
Windows: Right-click Celestial Vault.zip → "Extract All…" → choose where to extract.
Linux: Whatever your distro's default is — unzip Celestial Vault.zip in a terminal works everywhere.
Step 2 — Notice The Wrapper Folder
After unzipping, you'll see a folder called:
Celestial Vault — enter this folder/This is not the vault. It's a wrapper folder that tells you what to do next. Open it.
Why a wrapper?
Without it, macOS's Archive Utility would create a confusingly-nested Celestial Vault/Celestial Vault/ after unzipping. The wrapper folder name signals "this is the entry point — go inside", so the layout stays clean across every operating system.
Step 3 — Inside The Wrapper
Inside Celestial Vault — enter this folder/ you'll see two things:
✦ YOU WANT TO SEE ME WHEN OPENING THE VAULT — READ FIRST.txt
Celestial Vault/The .txt file is a one-page read-me explaining exactly what to do next. Open it if you want the same instructions in plain text.
The Celestial Vault/ folder is the actual vault. This is the one you open in Obsidian.
Don't open the wrapper folder in Obsidian.
If you accidentally open Celestial Vault — enter this folder/ (the outer one) instead of the inner Celestial Vault/, Obsidian sees a vault containing one weird txt file and one folder that looks like another vault. You'll see a ✦ WRONG FOLDER…txt file in your Obsidian file explorer immediately — that's the signpost telling you you picked the wrong one.
Fix: in Obsidian, choose "Open another vault" → "Open folder as vault" → pick the inner Celestial Vault/.
Step 4 — Move The Vault Somewhere Safe
Before opening the vault in Obsidian, decide where it should live on your computer.
Pick a permanent home.
The Celestial Vault includes a license tied to the vault's location on disk (see License Unification & Your 3 Devices). Moving the folder later is fine — but Obsidian will lose track of it and you'll need to re-open it.
Recommended places:
- Mac:
~/Documents/Celestial Vault/or your iCloud folder if you want sync (more in Syncing Time Garden Between Devices) - Windows:
C:\Users\<you>\Documents\Celestial Vault\ - Linux:
~/Documents/Celestial Vault/or wherever you keep notes
Drag the inner Celestial Vault/ folder there.
Step 5 — Open Obsidian
If you don't have Obsidian yet, get it from obsidian.md (free, see What is Obsidian?).
When you launch Obsidian, you'll see one of two screens:
- A vault picker with options to "Create new vault" or "Open folder as vault" → click Open folder as vault
- An already-open vault → click your vault name in the bottom-left → "Manage vaults" → "Open folder as vault"
Navigate to where you put Celestial Vault/ and select it.
Step 6 — Trust The Plugins
The first time you open the vault, Obsidian asks if you want to trust the author and enable plugins. Click Yes.
If you click No, the entire Celestial experience is disabled — no welcome, no shortcuts, no veils, no AI. You can re-enable from Settings → Community Plugins, but it's much smoother to trust on the first prompt.
Step 7 — The Welcome Flow Begins
A custom Celestial welcome overlay appears (not the standard Obsidian welcome, not the Time Garden one — Celestial owns the entire onboarding experience).
Continue to The Welcome Experience for what each step does.
Quick Sanity Checklist
After opening, you should see:
- ✅ A welcome overlay with starfield + greeting text (not yet an empty tab)
- ✅ The Celestial theme already active (deep-space, dark)
- ✅ No
✦ WRONG FOLDER…txtfile visible at the top of your file explorer (if you see it, you opened the outer wrapper — re-open with the inner folder) - ✅ A left sidebar with three panes: local graph, journal widget, calendar (this becomes visible after welcome closes)
If anything looks wrong, see Welcome and Onboarding Issues.
Up Next
- The Welcome Experience — every step of the onboarding flow
- Importing Your Old Vault — bring your existing notes
- The Empty-Tab Atmosphere — what you'll see after welcome