Create your planner from scratch: pages, covers, layout
A focused walkthrough of building the planner itself - naming, pages, cover design, layout grid, and the small structural decisions that decide whether you actually open it tomorrow.
A planner is more than a stack of widgets - it is the surface those widgets live on. The tone of the cover, the way pages are split, the rhythm of the layout grid all decide whether the planner feels like a tool you reach for or a half-finished project that lives in a tab. This guide is about the planner itself, before any widget shows up. We will create a fresh planner, give it a structure that holds, and dress it in a way that makes you want to open it again.
Decide what this planner is for
Before clicking anything, finish this sentence in one breath: "This planner is the surface I open when I want to ___." If you cannot finish it, you are about to build a generic dashboard you will not use. If you can - daily routine, monthly finance review, reading log - name the planner after that intent and the rest of the choices fall into place.
- One planner per intent. Daily routine and finance review do not belong on the same surface.
- A clear name beats a clever one - "Mornings", "Money this month", "Reading 2026" all win over "Life OS".
- You can always rename later. The first name only needs to mean something today.
Build the planner step by step
Open a new planner
From the dashboard, click "New planner". You start on a single empty page; everything else is opt-in. Resist the urge to drop widgets immediately - the structure comes first.
Name and describe it
Give the planner the intent-based name you wrote down. Add a one-line description ("Morning ritual + day plan") so future-you knows what this surface is for in three seconds.
Choose a cover that sets the tone
The cover is the first thing you see on every visit. Pick a pastel that matches the planner's mood - calm mint for routines, warm peach for review pages, soft cream for journaling. You can swap it later, but the first choice usually sticks.
Sketch the page structure
Decide whether this planner is one page or several. Most planners need one or two: an "active" page where today's widgets live, and an optional "review" page for weekly reflection. Add pages from the side rail; rename each one with the question it answers ("What today?", "How did the week go?").
Frame the canvas with note and image widgets
Before the data widgets, drop one or two structural ones: a note with the page's purpose at the top, an image widget for a small banner, maybe a divider. These are not productive widgets - they are wayfinding. They keep the page legible when it fills up.
Decide on sharing - now, not later
Open Share and decide whether this planner is private, has a read-only link for someone, or is fully personal. Doing it before you add data forces the question; doing it after means you might paste data first and ask later.
Three structural widgets to know
These are not "data" widgets - they shape how the page reads. Use them as scaffolding for the productive widgets that come later.
Where to go next
Once the planner has a name, a cover and a clear page structure, it is ready to be filled with widgets that actually do work. The "Use widgets together inside a planner" guide picks up exactly here - choosing a small set of data widgets and arranging them so they reinforce each other instead of competing for attention.
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