If you're using a Hardware Wallet then any companion application you're using in conjunction with it is operating as a "watch only" wallet.
It's called "watch only" because that is the only permission you are making available to the companion app.
If you punched in your seed words directly into the app, we call that a hot wallet because it has full permission to send Bitcoins out of all the addresses associated with the wallet.
Thank you, that makes sense, helps to clarify.
Yeah and the use case of keeping it on your phone available to you is to generate receive addresses & confirm that you received the Bitcoins you were expecting to.
Remember, if you're accepting payment from someone it's better to use a new receive address generated by your watch only wallet, that way they can't see the address with your main stack in it - yet you can still conveniently accept new Bitcoins into your possession meanwhile your SeedWords & HWW sit in a secure location.
Yes i always use a new address for receiving.
Is there a watch only wallet that communicates with my node at home or do they all use public nodes?
Some 3rd party node programs allow you to setup remote access via tor.
Otherwise, you don't need Internet/public nodes, but rather your xpub file.
If you're worried about being on the go the easiest solution is to carry some screenshots of unused addresses.
If you need to confirm if you have received on the go, then yeah tor or public nodes.
