Opening Time Garden on Your Phone
How to open and use Time Garden on your phone — capture on mobile, reflect on desktop.
Time Garden runs on iOS and Android — you can journal on the go, snap photos straight into a daily note, and sync everything home to your computer.
A few caveats first, then the setup.
What Works On Mobile
- ✅ Writing in daily notes
- ✅ The navbar
- ✅ The rating slider
- ✅ Quick Note buttons (Highlights, Ideas, Progress)
- ✅ Picture embedding
- ✅ Reading existing weekly / monthly / quarterly / yearly notes
- ✅ All of Obsidian's core features — search, graph, etc.
What Doesn't Work On Mobile
- ❌ The AI buttons (Eternal requires Ollama, which is desktop-only)
- ⚠️ Some chart rendering can be slow or laggy
- ⚠️ Heavy template generation (creating a fresh weekly/monthly note) can take noticeably longer than on desktop
The mobile flow most users settle on:
Capture on mobile, reflect on desktop. Drop a photo, jot a quick note, set the rating during the day. Then in the evening (or weekend) sit down at your computer to write the longer reflections, run AI summaries, and fill in the Wheel of Life.
Step 1: Install Obsidian On Your Phone
- iOS: Obsidian on the App Store
- Android: Obsidian on Google Play
Free. Same login as desktop (only matters if you're using Obsidian Sync).
Step 2: Get Your Vault Onto Your Phone
You have several options. Pick the one that matches how you sync (more detail at Syncing Time Garden Between Devices):
Option A: Obsidian Sync (Easiest)
If you have an Obsidian Sync subscription, this is plug-and-play:
- On your computer, enable Sync for your Time Garden vault (Obsidian Settings → Sync)
- On your phone, open Obsidian → "Open existing vault" → "Sign in with your Obsidian account"
- Pick your vault from the list
- Wait for the initial sync (a few minutes for smaller vaults, much longer for image-heavy ones)
Option B: iCloud (iOS only)
- On your Mac, move the Time Garden vault into
~/Library/Mobile Documents/iCloud~md~obsidian/Documents/ - iCloud uploads it
- On your iPhone/iPad, open Obsidian → "Open existing vault" → it'll appear automatically
Option C: Third-Party Sync (Dropbox, OneDrive, Syncthing)
Trickier but doable. The general idea: put the vault in a folder synced by your sync tool, point Obsidian at it on each device. Watch out for plugins that don't play well with file-system-level sync (Dropbox in particular can corrupt files mid-write).
Step 3: Trust The Plugins
The first time you open Time Garden on mobile, Obsidian asks if you trust the author and want to enable plugins. Tap Yes — same as on desktop.
Step 4: Set Up Mobile-Friendly Defaults
In Obsidian Settings on mobile:
- Set Reading view as default for new tabs off (you want Writing view, where the buttons work)
- Enable "Show ribbon on mobile" so you have quick access to the "Open daily note" command
- Optional: turn off "Strict line breaks" in Editor settings if Obsidian's word-wrapping fights your typing
A Few Mobile-Specific Tips
Add a Time Garden shortcut.
On iOS, drag the Obsidian app to your home screen. On Android, long-press → "App info" → pin. So your journal is one tap away.
Photos can be huge.
Modern phone cameras shoot 5–10 MB photos. If you embed many of them per day, your vault will grow fast — and so will your sync time. Consider compressing photos with a free app like Image Size before embedding, especially if you're on a sync plan with size limits.
Battery and CPU.
Time Garden's heavy template generation can briefly spike CPU and drain battery. If your phone is older or low on charge, create new period notes (weekly, monthly) on desktop instead.
Up Next
- Syncing Time Garden Between Devices — the deeper sync details
- Performance & Slowness — fixes if mobile feels sluggish
- Daily Notes — what you'll see on the phone