Your Phone, Your Settings

Updated September 2026

🎯 Purpose

Use AIOS on a phone, install it, make it yours, and understand what happens when you edit the same note in two places.

📱 The phone is PAGES

Two bars at the bottom of the screen, one above the other. The page bar — Brief · Plan · Notebook · Calendar · More — sits on top of the system bar, which carries the greeting, the clock, the menu and the AIOS button. Each page is the whole screen; nothing is a squeezed version of the desktop.

Everything you press often is under one thumb. The AIOS button sits in the bottom-right corner and the menu in the bottom-left, so a phone held in your right hand reaches both the pages and the prompt without moving. The greeting and the clock sit centred between them. If you hold it in your left, AIOS BTN in the system bar menu swaps the two over — the greeting stays centred either way. It is saved to your account rather than to the device, so it follows you to the tablet.

AIOS always opens on the Brief. That is where a day starts, so a fresh start does not drop you wherever you happened to wander last time. Switching to another app and coming back is different — that is not a fresh start, so you come back exactly where you were, with every panel refetched so nothing on screen is out of date.

The back button backs out, and only closes the app as the last step. One press closes whatever is open — a drawer, a dialog, the calendar, an expanded panel, the prompt you pulled down from the logo, an article you are reading — one layer at a time. With nothing open it steps back through what you did: the note you had open before this one, the filter you had before you changed it, and the pages you visited, in order, all the way to the Brief you opened on. Only then does another press leave the app. If a press seems to do nothing, something is still open: that is deliberate, because the alternative is the app closing with a dialog on screen.

One thing it will not do: while you are typing in a note, back never swaps the note out from under you. It skips that step and takes the next one.

The note list and the Context list work while the notebook is expanded, and each covers the whole screen with its own ✕ in the corner. Back closes whichever one is open first, then the expanded notebook, then walks the pages — always one thing per press.

The AIOS logo opens the prompt box, from any page. Press the mark in the bottom corner and the prompt — with the same tool buttons the dashboard carries — opens upward from the bars as an overlay, so it lands under your thumb rather than across the screen from it. Press it again, or the ▾ on the box, to put it away. It is the same prompt box the expanded notebook uses, in a different place; there is nothing to learn twice.

On the Notebook page:

• NOTES opens your note list as a drawer. Picking a note closes it.
• CONTEXT opens the context selector as a full-screen drawer — choosing what AIOS can see belongs next to the notes you are choosing between. It is also on the prompt box the logo pulls down, so it is one press away from any page; pressing it there brings you to the Notebook page with the drawer open. It is not on the More page any more — that is the settings screen, and this is something you do while asking.
• The header keeps only what you use while writing. Browsing and filing controls live in the drawers that own them.
• The notes drawer opens on Notebook, with the category tabs, your pinned projects and the project list across the top and the find box under them. Those stay put; only the notes scroll. Pinned projects fill at most two rows there — anything past that is still in All Projects, below.
• Tapping the Notebook heading opens a short menu: Notes, Context, All Projects and your pinned projects. All Projects lists every project you have made and has a + New Project row at the end.
• The editor itself is a full screen. The notebook's own header sits above it and the prompt box below, so you scroll up or down to reach them — the writing area does not pay for the furniture around it.

💻 A tablet, or a narrow window

A tablet gets the full three-column desktop, in every browser. It used to depend on which browser you opened: two browsers report the same device's window width differently, and the old threshold ran right between them, so the same tablet showed the full product in one and a cut-down version in the other.

A window narrower than that — a half-screen browser on a laptop, a small tablet in portrait — gets the single-column scroll view: every panel full width, one under the other, the page scrolls. Nothing is hidden and nothing moves; it is the same dashboard read top to bottom.

Narrower still and you get the phone layout, with the pages and the bottom nav.

🪜 Steps — install it

1. Open AIOS in your phone's browser.
2. Use Add to Home Screen / Install.
3. It opens without browser chrome, with its own icon.

By default AIOS keeps a copy of itself on the device as well as your notes, so it opens with no connection at all. Choose Server only and it caches nothing and needs a connection to open — see "What works with no connection".

👤 What is on the More page

It is the phone's settings screen in everything but name, and it holds three cards:

• This Device — NOTE STORAGE and EVENT ALERTS. Both are settings for this phone or browser, not for your account, so changing one here changes nothing on your other devices.
• Your Plan — your allowance, and CLOSE ACCOUNT, which deletes your account and everything in it. See Your Plan and Your AI Allowance.
• Quick Links — the links and the web search box.

💾 Where this device keeps your notes

NOTE STORAGE, on the More page under This Device — and in the ☰ system-bar menu, which is the same control reached from the other end. It is a setting for this device; your account is unchanged, and anything already on the server stays there.

The default keeps a copy here and syncs it. That is what lets AIOS open and keep working when the connection does not, and it is what you get if you never open this dialog. Server only is the choice to make on a shared or borrowed machine, where you would rather nothing of yours stayed behind.

Choosing either device mode asks your browser to make the storage persistent, so it will not be cleared to free space. Some browsers grant that silently, some ask, some refuse — and the dialog tells you which happened rather than implying your work is safe on the device when it may not be.

It only sends what changed. Notes you have not touched are not re-uploaded, and notes that have not changed on the server are not re-downloaded.

It cannot overwrite another device's work. That guard is the same one described below and applies exactly as it does to any other save — more so, in fact, because an edit made offline can be hours old by the time it is sent. If a note changed elsewhere while you were offline, the send is refused, nothing is lost on either side, and opening the note puts the choice in front of you.

Sync off is reversible and loses nothing. Turn it back on and everything waiting on this device is sent. Switching back to Server only sends what is waiting first, and if anything still cannot be sent, the device copy is kept rather than cleared.

📴 What works with no connection

Device-first is the default, so AIOS keeps a copy of the app itself and opens with no connection — not just survives losing one.

A bar appears along the bottom saying you are offline. Almost everything keeps working:

The panels keep their last answer and say how old it is. Above the plan and the brief you will see a line like "Worked out at 09:41 — this is the last version AIOS worked out." That line is the point: the plan and the brief are worked out on the server from your whole vault, so what you are looking at is the last one it managed to work out, not a fresh one.

And if you have been writing, it says that too. The line changes to "— your latest edits are still on this device and are not in it yet", because the plan you are reading was worked out from a version of your note the server has not seen. That is the half worth knowing: the notes are yours and current, the panel above them is honest about being behind.

Only a brand-new device says nothing at all. Before AIOS has ever managed to work a plan out for you, there is genuinely nothing to show, and the panel says so plainly rather than pretending.

The weather stamp says which kind of old it is. "will sync when you are back online" means this device cannot reach the server; "the forecast service is not answering" means the server is fine and the weather provider is not. Different problems, and only one of them is anything to do with you.

Private notes are not kept on the device, on purpose, so they are not available offline.

When the connection comes back the bar disappears by itself, anything you wrote is sent, the panels refresh, and a scenery you picked offline is saved without you pressing anything again. There is a RETRY button on the bar if you want to prod it.

🔄 When two devices disagree

This is the one thing worth reading twice.

Edit a note on your desktop, pick up your phone, and your phone's editor is still holding what it loaded an hour ago. If it simply saved, it would write that old text over your desktop's work.

It cannot. AIOS remembers which version your editor is based on and refuses a save built on a stale one. You get a bar saying so, and nothing is overwritten in either direction — the server keeps its version, your typing stays in the editor, and you choose:

• KEEP MINE (OVERWRITE) — save yours over the other version.
• DISCARD MINE, LOAD LATEST — throw yours away and load theirs. Confirmed first.

Doing nothing loses nothing. Your text stays where you typed it.

Coming back to the app also refreshes everything — every panel refetches when the app is resumed. That shrinks the window in which anything is stale; the save check is what closes it.

🎨 Make AIOS yours

• AIOS Settings — how AIOS should talk to you, how much detail, what to call you, anything it should always keep in mind. Read on every message.
• TEXT SIZE — beside the text it resizes, in the note toolbar and the review panel. It is a scale, not a size: it multiplies a per-screen default, so "larger" means larger on whichever device you are on. 100% moved in v5.06: the default on every screen is a tenth smaller than it was, because that is where people kept setting it by hand. If you had already chosen a size, nothing on your screen changed — the number in the control moved instead, so what used to read 90% now reads 100%.
• AIOS BTN — in the system bar menu on a phone. Puts the AIOS button in the bottom-right corner (the default) or the bottom-left, for whichever hand holds the phone. Saved to your account, so it is set once rather than once per device.
• The forecast gets out of the way while you read. On a phone, scrolling the Daily Brief collapses the seven-day strip and hands that space to the brief; scrolling back to the top brings it back. Nothing is saved either way — ▾ is still the switch if you want it collapsed for good.
• Weather — pick your location with 📍. Choose one of eight sceneries; the scene is drawn from the real reading, so the picture cannot disagree with the numbers beside it. Collapse the panel with ▾ if you want the room. It shows feels-like, humidity, wind and chance of rain, and it refreshes itself once an hour and whenever you come back to the app — the sun and moon ride a real arc, so a dashboard left open all day keeps up rather than freezing at the hour you opened it. Last Refreshed sits at the right-hand end of the feels-like row, so you can always tell how current the numbers are. The Daily Brief's ⟳ button refreshes the weather too — on a phone the two share the Brief page, so it is the refresh button for what is on screen rather than for one panel. If a refresh cannot reach the network the panel keeps what it was showing rather than blanking, and the stamp does not move — it says when something really was refreshed, not when you last looked.
• SHOW ME AROUND — in the system bar menu (More on a phone). Six steps that point at the real controls on the real page, not at pictures of them. It runs once on your first sign-in and never again uninvited; this is how you get it back. RESTORE DEFAULT NOTES also brings it back — that button's job is to put back what ships with a new account, and being shown round once is part of what ships, so the walkthrough runs again the next time you sign in.
• Quick links — your own links, renameable and reorderable. A new account starts with Caligo Arts, the Developer's Notebook, Email, AI Studio, Claude Code and ChatGPT Codex; edit them and yours are kept from then on.

🔎 A quick web search, from the dashboard

At the top of Quick Links there is a search box. It is there because AIOS cannot answer a question about right now — it reads your notes and asks a model, and neither of those knows what happened this morning. Opening hours, today's news, a score, a price: a search is still the right tool, and the box says so.

• It opens a new tab, so whatever note you have open stays open.
• Google is the default. DuckDuckGo, Startpage and Brave are one dropdown away, and the choice is remembered on this device — pick it once per browser, not once per account.

📘 Where these guides live

They are on the web, at caligoarts.com/pages/guide/, free to read with or without an account — and the HOW TO'S button in the prompt box's tools row opens them in a new tab.

They are deliberately not notes in your notebook. They used to be, and thirteen of somebody else's notes sitting in a notebook that is supposed to be yours is the opposite of what this product is for. Your notebook holds your notes.

🧰 The tools row

The prompt box has tools on both ends of its top and bottom rows, with AIOS: Hey [your name] centred between them.

• Top: CREATE ARTICLE and GENERATE SOP on the left, CALENDAR on the right.
• Bottom: your note buttons in the middle, CLAUDE CODE on the right, directly under CALENDAR — the two controls that take you somewhere else line up in the same column.

🔑 If you forget your password

You reset it yourself. Nobody has to be asked, and nobody ever sees your password — not even the owner.

1. On the sign-in page, press Forgot Key.
2. Type the address on your account and press SEND RESET LINK.
3. Open the mail and follow the link. It lasts one hour and works once.
4. Choose a new password. You can sign in with it straight away.

The page says the same thing whether or not that address has an account, and that is on purpose: an answer that told the two apart would be a way for anyone to find out which addresses are registered here. If no mail arrives, check the spam folder, then check you used the address you enrolled with.

Resetting a password is not a way in. If your account is awaiting approval or has been suspended, a reset changes the password and sign-in is still refused — for exactly the reason it was refused before.

📣 Updates from Caligo Arts

Product news and new articles, by email, and it is entirely separate from your account. Having an AIOS account does not put you on the list, and joining the list does not need an account.

• Join from the bottom of the AIOS page, the homepage, the AI Services page, or any article in the notebook.
• You will get a confirmation link first. Nothing is ever sent to an address that has not clicked it.
• After you confirm you are asked two things, and you can ignore both — you are already subscribed by then. How often you want to hear from us (major announcements only, about monthly, or weekly), and whether you would like to be considered for a Claude Code guest pass. The frequency you pick is honoured: ask for major announcements only and the ordinary updates do not reach you.
• Leave in one click. Every message carries an unsubscribe link at the bottom, and your mail app's own unsubscribe button works too. Neither asks you to sign in and neither asks whether you are sure.
• Nobody can see who else is on the list. Each message is addressed to one person and sent on its own — the list is never in a header where a mistake could expose it.

🎨 The colour

On a phone it is under This Device on the More page. On a desktop it is in the ☰ menu at the right-hand end of the system bar, under THEME. Either way it is one row of colours and a picker; choose one and AIOS changes colour immediately.

It is the same setting in both places — it belongs to your account, not to the device — so a colour you choose on the laptop is the colour on your phone.

The picker is the full range, not just the swatches — it opens your system's colour wheel, with an eyedropper on most machines and a box you can paste a hex value into. The swatches are there because picking from six good ones is quicker when you do not care which.

One colour moves everything — borders, headings, buttons, the focus ring. They are meant to look like a set, and choosing eight colours separately is how a screen ends up with text you cannot read.

It belongs to YOU, not to this device. Set it on your laptop and your phone matches. It also changes AIOS Receipts and Memories Journal, because they are the same account.

🔍 How to verify

1. On a phone, move through all five pages; each fills the screen.
2. Open the Notebook page, press CONTEXT, and click a note name — the drawer closes and that note opens.
3. Open the same note on two devices, edit and save on one, then type and save on the other. The second says NOT SAVED — THIS NOTE CHANGED ELSEWHERE, and your typing is still on screen.
4. Change TEXT SIZE; both controls move together.
5. Open More → This Device → NOTE STORAGE (or ☰ → NOTE STORAGE), choose This device first, then sync, and wait for it to say how many notes are stored here. Turn off your connection, type in a note, and the status bar says SAVED ON THIS DEVICE — WILL SYNC WHEN ONLINE. Switch notes and back: your text is still there. Reconnect, and the dialog says everything has reached the server.
6. Still with the connection off, close AIOS and open it again. It opens. The offline bar is along the bottom, your notes are all there, and the plan, the brief and Next Action are all showing, each with a line above saying when AIOS last worked it out. That last part is the feature working: you are reading a real plan with its age attached, not an error where a plan should be.

• Press Forgot Key on the sign-in page and send yourself a link. It should arrive within a minute or two and open a page asking for a new password.
• Subscribe with your own address from any article. A confirmation mail should arrive; until you click it, you are not on the list.

🚨 When it does not work

| The reset link says it expired | It is older than an hour, or it has already been used | Ask for a new one from the sign-in page | | Reset worked but sign-in still refuses | The account is awaiting approval, or suspended | That is separate from the password — the owner has to approve or restore it | | No confirmation mail for the newsletter | It went to spam, or the address was mistyped | Check spam, then subscribe again — re-subscribing sends a fresh link | | Still getting mail after unsubscribing | The last one was already in flight when you left | Nothing further will be sent; a message already sent cannot be recalled | | An email about your account when you never subscribed | An account notice, not the newsletter — it says so at the bottom | It is one-off. The link at the bottom stops all email if you want that | | You picked "major only" but got an ordinary update | It was marked as a major announcement | Nothing — that setting is a ceiling, and major announcements sit above it |

📖 Related

What AIOS Can See, Notes, the Notebook and Search, Scheduling and the Calendar

See what AIOS is All guides