On your phone

Ontoplano on a phone is the Android app. It carries the whole thing: install it, and the first screen asks where your Ontoplano lives — app.ontoplano.com, an instance you run yourself, or this phone and nothing else. The answer can be changed later, so trying one and moving to another is a choice, not a reinstall.

Getting the app

It is on Google Play. It is not in F-Droid or the App Store yet. Beside Play there are four ways onto an Android phone, and the first of them is the one that also keeps it updated.

Obtainium, which updates it for you

Obtainium installs Android apps from wherever their releases are published and checks for new ones itself, so it does for a GitHub release what a store does for a listing. Nothing has to be set up for it: every Ontoplano release carries one .apk, signed with the same key each time, so an update installs over the last one rather than asking you to uninstall anything.

With Obtainium on the phone, open this on the phone:

Add Ontoplano to Obtainium

It opens Obtainium with the app already filled in; press Add, then Install. By hand it is the same thing: Add App, paste https://github.com/ontoplano/ontoplano, and Obtainium works out the rest.

Obtainium is itself not in Google Play — get it from its releases or from F-Droid.

The APK from a release

Releases are at https://github.com/ontoplano/ontoplano/releases. One that carries the app lists ontoplano-v<version>.apk among its files, beside SHA256SUMS.

1. Open that page on the phone and download the newest .apk.
2. Open the downloaded file. Android asks once whether to allow installs from this browser; say yes.
3. Install, open it, and answer the one question it asks.

To check a download on a computer, put it beside that release's SHA256SUMS and run sha256sum -c SHA256SUMS --ignore-missing.

The APK is signed with the project's release key, so each one updates the last in place. A build from a store is signed with a different key: switching between the two means uninstalling first.

Building it from source

You need Node and yarn, JDK 21 and an Android SDK.

git clone https://github.com/ontoplano/ontoplano
cd ontoplano
yarn install
make android            # the isolated build, then the APK
make android-install    # onto a phone with USB debugging on, over adb

The APK is written to capacitor/android/app/build/outputs/apk/official/debug/app-official-debug.apk. The SDK is looked for in ANDROID_HOME, ANDROID_SDK_ROOT, ~/android-sdk, ~/Android/Sdk and beside adb; pass ANDROID_HOME=/path/to/sdk otherwise. The rest is in docs/ANDROID.md.

From the browser

The web app installs as a PWA. Open your instance in Chrome, sign in, and pick Install app (or Add to Home screen) from the menu. Browsers only install from HTTPS.

That is the web app, not the Android app: it needs an instance to point at and cannot be isolated.

What the app adds

• Reminders that arrive as Ontoplano, through Android's own alarms, with the app closed.
• It can be its own instance — the next section.

The isolated instance

Choose On device on the first screen and the app is the instance, isolated: the same rooms and the same data, against a database in the phone's own storage. Nothing is signed into because there is nothing to sign into.

What it costs, in the app's own words on that screen:

• Fully offline. No network, ever, for anything.
• Cannot be reached from another device. This copy is this phone's.
• No AI assistants. The MCP server is a server; there is not one.
• No backups. A lost phone is lost data — export from Settings → Account and keep the file somewhere.

The way out is the way in: export, point the app at an instance, import there. Your data is one JSON file wherever it lives.

The widget

1. Long-press an empty part of the home screen → Widgets.
2. Drag ontoplano's Today onto the screen.
3. Check the address on its setup screen and tap Connect — your browser mints a key for the widget and hands it back.

If the browser does not come back, the page shows the key: copy it and paste it into Or paste the key on the setup screen. The key can read today's plan and nothing else; revoke it under Settings → AI & Integrations.

On an iPhone

There is no iOS app yet. Safari installs the web app — and on iOS it has to be Safari; Apple lets no other browser do this:

1. Open your instance in Safari and sign in.
2. Tap Share, then Add to Home Screen.

You get the icon, the whole screen, and it opens offline. What an installed web app cannot do is be its own instance — it needs an instance to point at.

On a computer

Nothing to install: the app is the site, and ⌘/Ctrl plus K gets you anywhere in it. Chrome and Edge offer an install icon at the right of the address bar if you want a window of its own; Firefox and Safari work in a tab.

A self-hosted instance on plain HTTP works in any tab, but browsers only install from HTTPS — that is their rule. The Android app has no such rule: point it at your box and it works over HTTP too.