Mobile & PWA

AuroraDocs ships two mobile surfaces:

1. The installable web app (PWA). Open AuroraDocs in your phone's browser and add it to the Home Screen — you get the same web app, but running in its own window with offline storage and a phone-shaped layout.
2. A dedicated React Native app for iOS and Android. This is tracked as a separate native-app surface and is not yet publicly available.

This page covers the PWA. Native-app-specific planning, implementation, and QA live separately; the main public docs currently focus on the installable web app and mobile-web shell.

Install the PWA on your phone

The web app is installable on every modern phone:

• iPhone (Safari): open AuroraDocs, tap the Share icon → Add to Home Screen. The next launch opens AuroraDocs in its own full-screen window with a branded splash instead of the white Safari flash.
• Android (Chrome): open AuroraDocs and tap Install in the address bar's overflow menu, or use the Install AuroraDocs banner that appears on phone-sized viewports.

Once installed, the app respects iPhone notches, the Dynamic Island, and the gesture-bar home indicator. Content stays out of the unsafe regions; the app background extends edge-to-edge.

The phone shell

At phone-sized viewports (≤ 640 px) the app shows a phone-specific shell distinct from desktop and tablet:

Sidebar drawer

The sidebar slides in from the left as a drawer when you tap the hamburger button in the top-left of any page. The drawer:

• Maxes out at min(80vw, 320 px) so it never covers more than 80 % of the screen.
• Is dismissed by tapping the dimmed backdrop, pressing Escape, navigating to a new page, or rotating to tablet width.
• Locks page scroll while open so swiping the drawer doesn't accidentally scroll the content underneath.
• Honours prefers-reduced-motion — the slide animation is replaced with an instant snap if you've asked the OS to minimise motion.

The same sidebar content as desktop is inside the drawer — workspace switcher, sections, pinned items, daily notes, recent pages, navigation links.

Quick Actions FAB

A circular floating action button sits in the bottom-right corner of every page (above the home indicator on devices with a gesture bar). Tap it to open an action sheet with the most common verbs:

• Quick capture — opens the same modal as ⌘⇧J on desktop. Type a thought, save it as a note. The sheet's body autofocuses, and the first line of the body becomes the note title automatically.
• New page — creates a new top-level page and navigates to it.
• Search — opens the command palette (the same surface as ⌘K on desktop) so you can type-to-find any object or run any command.
• Tasks — navigates to the /tasks route.
• Theme — a 3-button segmented control to flip between Light / System / Dark. (On desktop this lives in the top-right header; on phone there was no header room, so it lives at the bottom of the FAB sheet instead.)

The FAB is hidden when the soft keyboard is open, when a modal is active (palette, capture, drawer, etc.), or when you're in focus mode. This keeps it out of the way of the editor toolbar described next.

Editor formatting toolbar above the keyboard

When you focus the editor on a phone and the soft keyboard appears, a compact formatting toolbar pins above the keyboard chrome and tracks it as the keyboard rises and falls:

• Undo
• Bold, Italic
• Heading (cycles H2 → H3 → paragraph)
• Bullet list, Task list
• Inline code
• Link (prompts for a URL)
• Dismiss-keyboard chevron on the right

Every button is sized at 44 × 44 px so it works comfortably with thumbs. The selection bubble menu — the floating mini-toolbar near the caret you already know from desktop — still appears for selection-only formatting when text is selected.

The toolbar is gated on three conditions: phone-sized viewport, editor focused, and the keyboard meaningfully open (the visualViewport must have shrunk by more than 50 px, which filters the iOS Safari address-bar collapse). When all three are true the toolbar shows; otherwise it's hidden.

Offline use

The PWA stores a local copy of your workspace just like desktop and the native app. You can read and write pages without an internet connection — changes queue and sync when you reconnect. The same Cloud / Local folders / Offline folders / Browser-only storage modes apply; see Sync & storage for details on each.

TIP

Browser-only mode (no AuroraCloud account) is the simplest way to try the PWA on a phone. Data lives in the browser's IndexedDB. Clearing browser storage will delete it — export regularly if this is your only copy.

Camera & photos

Tap the image-block button in the editor toolbar to insert an image from your camera roll or take a new photo. The native picker on iOS Safari and Chrome Android both work the same way.

Phone-friendly surfaces

Several desktop side-panel features also have route-backed phone surfaces:

• Tasks opens as a full task page.
• Calendar opens as a full calendar page.
• Notifications opens at /notifications.
• Tags and Trash have dedicated routes.
• Workspace chat has its own route when the workspace feature is enabled.
• Shared links from other apps can land in Aurora through the share-target route when the installed PWA/browser supports it.

The right panel itself remains a compact/desktop-first workspace for Ask, comments, backlinks, and widgets. On phone, prefer the dedicated routes when available.

Touch editing

The phone editor includes a keyboard toolbar and a long-press block action sheet for common block actions. Hover-only desktop affordances, such as the left margin drag handle, are replaced with touch-specific controls where available.

Canvas and graph now support mobile viewing better than the first PWA shell, but they remain more comfortable on tablet or desktop for heavy pan/zoom and dense editing.

Known limitations on phone

The PWA is usable on phones, but a few workflows are still better on larger screens:

• dense database/table editing
• large canvas maps
• graph exploration with many nodes
• multi-panel review with Ask/comments/backlinks open at once
• advanced workspace administration

The native React Native app

A dedicated iOS/Android app is planned as a separate native surface. It will share your AuroraCloud account and workspaces, but it is not yet available on the App Store or Play Store.

Coming soon

Public TestFlight / Play Store releases of the native app are not yet scheduled. Follow auroradocs.eu for release announcements; in the meantime the PWA is the recommended way to use AuroraDocs on a phone.

Reporting mobile issues

If something doesn't render correctly on your phone, please file an issue through the public contact channel at contact@auroradocs.eu. Include your device model, OS version, browser version, and a short screen recording or screenshot if you can. The more specific the viewport size, the easier it is to repro.