"A calendar you have to look up is a calendar you do not live by. Solaris Focus puts the Calendarium Solaris where the day is actually spent, in the clock, the notes, the photographs, the appointments and the messages."
What Solaris Focus Is
Solaris Focus is a tool made to make the Calendarium Solaris and Solaris Time easy to adopt. A new calendar and a new clock take hold when you can use them for the ordinary things of a day, not when you have to look them up beside the calendar you already have. So Focus gives them that work: the appointment, the alarm, the note, the photograph and the message all happen on the Solaris day and in the hour of the sun, and the Gregorian date stands small beside them for as long as you need it.
It is a single Android application built around the Calendarium Solaris. It is not a calendar with extras attached; it is a set of everyday tools that all share one calendar and one clock. The day you are in is the same day in your notes, your journal, your photographs, your appointments and your messages, and it is a Solaris day everywhere.
The earlier Solaris applications, a calendar, a clock, a launcher and a messenger, each carried the calendar separately. Focus replaces that arrangement. One account, one encrypted store, one reckoning of what day and what hour it is, and modules that can see each other's work.
One Day, Everywhere
Every timestamp in the app is a Solaris date. During the trial period the Gregorian date follows small and in brackets, so nothing becomes unreadable.
Hours of the Sun
The clock can count twelve day hours from sunrise and twelve night hours from sunset, at your own location. See Solaris Time.
Modules That Connect
Open a day in the calendar and it shows what lies on it, then takes you straight to the note, the photograph or the recording itself.
Yours, Encrypted
Notes, journal, appointments and files are end to end encrypted. You choose where they live: on the device alone, on the Solaris server, or on a server of your own.
Privacy First, Your Data Your Own
We believe in privacy first, and in being the owner of your own data. What you write, photograph, plan and say belongs to you, and it should stay where you decide it stays.
That is why the modules are brought together in one app. Every tool you would otherwise find in a separate app, each with its own account, its own servers and its own copy of your day, works here inside one secure and encrypted ecosystem. Your notes, journal, appointments, files and conversations are encrypted on your own device before they go anywhere, and whether they are kept on the device, on the Solaris server or on a server of your own is your choice. Nothing passes any of them in readable form.
And you decide what the app holds. Every module can be switched on and off, apart from the calendar and the clock that Focus is built around, so the app contains what you use and nothing more. Chat, calling and video share one switch: off, they leave the home screen, three spots for apps of your own take their place, and no notices come in over them. What was made in a module you switch off is kept, and comes back when you switch it on again.
The Idea Behind It
A new calendar fails not because people disagree with it but because nothing around them uses it. As long as the Solaris date lives on a website and every practical act of the day, an alarm, a photograph, an appointment, happens in another system, the calendar stays a curiosity. It is looked up, admired and forgotten.
Solaris Focus takes the opposite route. It gives the calendar the ordinary work of a day and lets it do that work well. A reminder is set on a Solaris date. A photograph is filed under the Solaris day it was taken. An alarm can be set on the third hour after sunrise rather than on half past seven. Nothing has to be converted, because nothing was ever in the other system to begin with.
And when you do need the Gregorian date, to make an appointment with someone who lives by it, the app has already worked it out. It stands behind the Solaris date, small and in brackets. One look and you know.
The measure of a calendar is not whether it is elegant on paper. It is whether you can live an ordinary week by it without translating anything.
The Modules
Each part of Focus is a module. They share one account, one calendar and one clock, and each one can be switched on and off, apart from the calendar and the clock that the app is built around. Chat, calling and video share one switch.
The full Calendarium Solaris: months of thirty days, five day weeks, the days that stand outside the months, month, week, day and year views, and a converter both ways. Appointments are encrypted and can be imported and exported as .ics for the world that still runs on Gregorian dates.
The hours of the sun on one of four faces, three rings and a digital one, with the ordinary clock time small and in brackets. Alarms, a timer, a stopwatch, meditation, breathwork, and the hour of the sun in other locations.
Notes, ideas, shopping lists and reminders, each filed on a Solaris day, with a voice message, a photograph or a film beside them. A reminder can carry an alarm on its own Solaris date and its own hour.
A page a day, for one reader, with room for voice, photograph and film. Can be locked behind a fingerprint separately from the rest of the app.
Programmes of short practices, reflections and guided meditations, followed at your own pace. The parts open one after another, so there is room between them.
End to end encrypted conversations over the open Matrix protocol, with every timestamp in Solaris notation and translation while you type, between English, Dutch, Portuguese, French and German. We have made it easier to bring your WhatsApp conversations in: link WhatsApp once and they stand beside the others. Calling and video calling over WhatsApp are not possible in Focus.
Calls over the internet to other Solaris accounts, video the same way, and the telephone of the device itself with its own call list and blocked numbers. Text messages of the phone network stand beside the other conversations. Calling and video calling over WhatsApp are not possible in Focus.
A camera of the app itself, with the night, HDR and soft background modes the device offers and the Solaris date stamped in the picture, and a gallery that groups what was made by Solaris month and day. What is made can be kept in your own encrypted storage instead of in the camera roll, and behind a lock in the vault.
A reader for pdf and epub that remembers where you stopped, with the book about the calendar on the shelf, and a paper: your own feeds, the Solaris pieces, and the weather told in parts of the Solaris day and per hour of the sun.
Games you play on your own, in your own time. No clock counting down, no score to beat, nobody waiting for your turn.
Focus can take the place of the Android home screen: the Solaris date and the hour of the sun at the top, an app drawer behind a swipe, and the notification bar behind the other one. Switched off by default, and reversible at any time.
How the Modules Connect
The connections are the point of the app. A calendar that only holds appointments knows almost nothing about your day. A calendar that knows what you wrote, photographed, recorded and agreed on a given day is a record of that day.
- The day is the spine. Every module writes what it makes under the Solaris day it belongs to. The calendar reads that back: a day tile shows what lies on it, and one tap opens the note, the photograph or the reflection itself.
- The clock feeds the alarms. An alarm set on an hour of the sun is worked out again each day from sunrise at your location, so it moves with the season instead of standing still while the sun moves.
- Notes carry appointments. A reminder gets a Solaris date and an hour of the sun, and rings through the same alarm chain as a calendar appointment.
- The camera fills the archive. What you photograph or film goes into Media, filed on the Solaris day it was made, and from the calendar you jump straight back to it.
- The journal gathers the day. A note made from a module is attached to that day's reflection, so an evening's writing has the day's material already beside it.
- The paper counts in sun hours. The weather is not given per clock hour but per part of the Solaris day, and per hour of the sun for two Solaris weeks ahead.
- Conversations share the same time. An appointment or an alarm can be sent into a chat, and the other side reads it in the same Solaris notation.
- One store underneath. All of it lies in one encrypted store under your own account, so a second device sees the same days. Whether that store sits on the device, on the Solaris server or on a server of your own is your choice, and nothing passes any of them in readable form.
Options
Focus is meant to be adjusted. The settings that matter most:
| Hours of the sun | On or off. Off, the app simply uses hours of sixty minutes, and nothing is called a sun hour that is not one. |
| Your location | The clock follows the location of the device, or you pick a city from a list that ships with the app. Without a location there is no sunrise, and then no sun hour is invented. |
| Clock face | One ring of twenty-four, day and night as two half rings, one ring of twelve, or digital. |
| Hemisphere and outside days | Asked once and changeable afterwards. It settles which way round the turning points of the year fall where you are, so that on an anchor day, the Yearday or the Intercalary Day the app tells the story that belongs to your half of the world. Can be switched off. |
| Where your data lives | On the device alone, on the Solaris server, or on a server of your own. Wherever it goes, it is encrypted before it leaves. |
| Locks | The journal, the notes and the media vault can each be locked behind a fingerprint, independently of the app itself. |
| Language | The app itself in English, Dutch, German, French and European Portuguese, following the language of the device. Conversations translate between those same five. |
| Gregorian dates | Shown small and in brackets behind the Solaris date, so you never lose your footing. Which of the two leads is a switch, and the other one may stand small behind it either way round. |
| Solaris on or off | The Solaris calendar and the Solaris clock each have a switch of their own. Off, the app shows the ordinary date and the ordinary time everywhere and the rest works exactly as it did. |
| Parts on or off | Every part has a switch, except the calendar and the clock. Off means its tile disappears from the home screen; what was made in it is kept and comes back when it is switched on. Chat, calling and video share one switch; with them off, the home screen gets three spots for apps of your own instead. |
What It Gives You
Nothing to Convert
You do not read a Solaris date and translate it. You set the alarm, take the photograph and write the note in the Solaris day, and the Gregorian date is the footnote instead of the other way round.
A Day With a Shape
Twelve hours of light and twelve of dark give a day a middle and an end that you can feel. Noon is the sixth hour, not an accident of your position in a time zone.
A Day You Can Find Again
Because everything is filed on the same day, a day in the calendar is a way back into what happened on it, and not only into what was planned.
Nothing Leaves in the Clear
Content is encrypted before it goes anywhere, whether it stays on the device, goes to the Solaris server or to one of your own. Where an outside service has to be asked something, it is asked along the server, and location is rounded first.
Living the Calendar, Not Consulting It
Adopting a calendar is a habit problem before it is a technical one. Focus is built around that. The trial period runs alongside the Gregorian calendar, and so does the app: the Solaris date leads and stands larger, the Gregorian date follows small and in brackets. You keep your footing while the new form becomes the familiar one.
The same holds for the clock. The hours of the sun can be turned off entirely, or read alongside ordinary clock time, which stays visible in brackets. Nobody is asked to give up the system their work runs on. The point is that the Solaris day and the Solaris hour are the ones you act in, and that the other reckoning is there when the outside world needs it.
And a calendar anchored to the sun asks for a clock anchored to the sun. That is a separate story, with its own history and its own evidence: Solaris Time.
Availability
In beta
Solaris Focus runs on Android and is being tested. There is no iPhone version; that line is served by the web application. Testers get every new build as it is made; sign up below and you are told when the next one is ready.
For questions about Solaris Focus, contact [email protected].