Settings

This guide describes the Pillars phone app. The website does the same calculations, but some screens and features work differently or aren't here yet.

Settings is the toolbox in the drawer. You won't need it every day, but it's good to know what's in it. Tap the gear at the top right of any main tab (with the phone sideways, in the right-hand column).

Appearance

Three options: System follows your phone, Day is always light, and Night is always dark.

General

Language: Spanish (Latin America) or English, for the whole app, the PDF report included.
Terminology: Plain shows names like Creativity or Support. Traditional shows the classical names with their characters, like 食神 Shí Shén. The meaning doesn't change, only the words.

Calculation conventions

Also under General, Calculation conventions sets the rules for working out the pillars. Most people never touch it. There are four options:

True solar time, day starts at 11 pm. This is the default.
Clock time, day starts at 11 pm.
Solar time, day at midnight, 子 hour of the next day.
Solar time, day at midnight, 子 hour of the same day.

Sun time or clock time decides the hour. The other part decides when one day ends and the next begins, around the 子 hour, from 11 pm to 1 am.

The convention applies to every chart, except one where you chose otherwise on that person's screen. When someone's hour depends on the convention, their screen shows a Compare conventions card, with a button to keep clock time for that chart only.

Notifications

They all start off. You turn them on one by one, and the first time your phone asks for permission to show notifications. They're scheduled on this phone, offline, for the next two weeks, so open the app now and then to keep them coming.

Solar term reminders: when each BaZi month begins.
Your day: every morning, the day's pillar and its themes.
Best day and Avoid: the evening before those calendar days, so you can plan.
To reflect on: in the evening, the month's question for your note. Choose When each month starts or Every day.
Birthdays and anniversaries: your people's birthdays, the anniversaries of their events, and a heads-up about three months before a new decade.

About whom picks the person that Your day, Best day and Avoid, To reflect on and the decade heads-up talk about. It stays the same while you look at other charts. Morning time and Evening time set when they arrive. Tap one and the app opens the matching screen.

A backup you import arrives with notifications off: turn them on again on this phone.

Tutorial

The first time you reach each part of the app, a short guide shows you the main things: it dims the screen, points at a button or field and says what it's for. Skip skips that part; Don't show tutorials again turns them all off.

Show tutorials: turns them back on, or off.
Each part, from Creating a chart to Learn, has its own row: tap it and it takes you to that screen to watch it again.
Start over from the beginning: shows them all again, each one when you reach its screen.

Privacy

Everything is calculated and saved on this phone. There's no account, and no server ever holds your birth details.

Export backup: makes a file with everyone in your list, their events, your notes and your settings. You choose a passphrase of at least 6 characters, and the file is encrypted with it. Keep the passphrase somewhere safe: without it the backup can't be opened.
Import backup: brings a backup back. If you already have people here, choose Add to what I have, which adds the backup's people without repeating anyone, or Replace everything, which erases what's on this phone.
Delete everything: erases all people, events, notes and settings from this phone. It asks first, because it can't be undone.

The app shows a few ads. Ad privacy, when it appears, lets you choose whether you see personalized ads. Ads never receive your birth date, time or place, and offline the app works just the same.

Sample data

Load sample people adds five fictional people (Julian, Clara, Rosa, Lucía and Elena), each with a different kind of chart. They're handy for trying things out.

About

About the reading: the note you saw before your first full reading, and where the texts and tables come from.
About the calculation: the astronomy and the time zone tables the app uses, and the credit for the city list.

At the very bottom, a small line shows the selected person's convention and their Calculation ID.