On your phone

Ontoplano is a progressive web app, which means the app on your home screen is this app — the same one, installed. There is nothing to buy and no store to go through, and it works the same on the hosted instance or on one you run yourself.

Two ways in

From the browser. Two taps, no download, and it updates itself the moment the instance does. This is the right answer for almost everybody, and the rest of this page is about it.

The Android package. A signed .apk you download once. Same app, plus the things Android reserves for real apps: the home-screen widget, and notifications that arrive as Ontoplano rather than as your browser. It does not update itself — the app inside is always current, the wrapper you replace when a release says to. The package, and how to install it is at the bottom.

Answer the three questions and the steps below narrow to yours. Nothing is sent anywhere — the answers stay in this page.

Where you are installing from

Open https://app.ontoplano.com and sign in. The rest of the steps assume you are looking at the app, signed in, in the browser you chose.

Open your own instance and sign in.

If the browser never offers to install, the address is why: browsers only install web apps from HTTPS (or http://localhost), and a self-signed certificate does not count. Everything still works in a tab either way.

No HTTPS and you still want an icon and a full screen? Build the Android package against your own instance — make android in a checkout, with ONTOPLANO_ORIGIN pointed at your box. It installs and works over plain HTTP too; the one cost is an address bar across the top until your instance serves HTTPS and the app's signing fingerprint (ANDROID_CERT_FINGERPRINTS — Running it yourself has it).

The steps

Android, Chrome

Brave, Edge, Samsung Internet, Vivaldi and Opera are all Chrome underneath and the steps are the same; the menu button may be at the bottom rather than the top.

Tap the ⋮ menu, at the top right.
Choose Add to Home screen — some versions say Install app, which is the same thing.
Confirm the name, and tap Install.

Android, Firefox

Tap the ⋮ menu.
Choose Add to Home screen.
Confirm.

Firefox on Android installs web apps properly, but it has historically been less consistent about offline behaviour than Chrome. If the app refuses to open without a network, that is the difference, and Chrome is the workaround.

Android, Safari

There is no Safari on Android. Use Chrome or Firefox — pick one above and the steps will change.

iPhone and iPad

It has to be Safari. On iOS every browser is Safari underneath, but only Safari itself may install a web app — Chrome and Firefox on an iPhone cannot, and will not offer to. This is Apple's rule, not ours.

Open your instance in Safari and sign in.
Tap Share — the square with an arrow coming out of the top, in the bar at the bottom.
Scroll the list down and tap Add to Home Screen.
Confirm the name, and tap Add.

A computer, Chrome or Edge

An install icon — a monitor with an arrow — appears at the right-hand end of the address bar once the page has loaded. Click it, then Install. You get ontoplano in its own window, with no browser chrome and its own entry in the task switcher.

If the icon is not there, it is one of the two reasons under Whose instance above.

A computer, Firefox or Safari

Neither installs web apps on the desktop. Firefox removed the feature and Safari on macOS has never had it. The site works normally in a tab, and ⌘/Ctrl plus K gets you anywhere in it.

macOS Sonoma and later have File → Add to Dock in Safari, which is close: its own window and its own icon, without the offline behaviour.

What you get once it is installed

No address bar, so the app has the whole screen.
Your own icon in the launcher, and its own window in the switcher.
It opens offline. The shell is cached, so a dead network gives you the app rather than a browser error.
Ticking the shopping list works with no signal. The ticks are kept on the phone, survive closing the tab, and go up the moment you are back on a network. That is the one write anybody makes in a supermarket basement, so it is the one that queues.

The gesture

Press and hold the round button in the middle of the bottom bar and a wheel opens under your thumb, one wedge per room. Slide onto the one you want and let go — one thumb, without looking, which is the only way anything gets captured while you are doing something else. Tapping it instead leaves the wheel open.

Which way round the wheel goes, and how to rearrange it.

If the browser never offers to install

It only offers over HTTPS, and only once it has fetched the manifest and the service worker. A self-hosted instance on plain HTTP will not be installable — that is the browser's rule, not this app's.

On iOS, check you are in Safari. The Share menu in Chrome for iOS has no Add to Home Screen, because on iOS no browser but Safari may install a web app.

Is it in the Play Store?

No, and it would be the same thing if it were: the store build is this app in a thin wrapper. Installing from the browser costs nothing and stays current by itself.

The Android package, and what it adds

A signed .apk, on the releases page: https://github.com/ontoplano/ontoplano/releases/latest. It is built for app.ontoplano.com; running your own instance, build your own with make android.

Same app, plus what Android reserves for installed apps:

The home-screen widget — today's blocks, habits and tasks without opening anything.
Notifications arrive as Ontoplano — its icon and its name, instead of a reminder dressed as your browser.

The app inside is the live one, so its features are always current; you only download a new .apk when a release says the wrapper itself changed.

Installing it

Android calls this "installing an unknown app", and it will ask you to allow it once — for the browser you downloaded it with, not for Ontoplano.

Open the releases page above on the phone and download the .apk.
Open the downloaded file. Android asks whether to allow installs from this browser; say yes, and it returns you to the install screen.
Install, and open it once so it can sign you in.

If you already have the browser-installed version on your home screen, remove that shortcut. Two icons for the same app, one of which has the widget, is confusing in exactly the way a widget is meant to prevent.

Long-press an empty part of the home screen → Widgets.
Find ontoplano and drag Today onto the screen.
Its setup screen opens. Check the address — it is filled in with the instance the app was built for — and tap Connect.
Your browser opens, mints a key for this widget and hands it back. The widget appears with today on it.

If step 4 does not come back — the page sits there, or Android asks "Continue to Ontoplano?" and lands you on the same page again — the link has been answered by the app instead of by the widget. The page also shows the key: copy it, go back to the widget's setup screen, paste it into Or paste the key, and tap Use this key. That path needs no link and cannot be intercepted.

The key can read today's plan and nothing else. Revoke it any time under Settings → Integrations; the widget goes blank rather than showing anything stale.