Privacy
Last updated 30 September 2026
The short version. No account, no advertising, and nothing sold or shared. Your location is never sent to us and is never attached to anything we record. It does go to Apple when the app asks for your cloud forecast, and the elevation service sees a map tile about 20 km across. The app also sends anonymous usage data and screen recordings so confusing things can be found and fixed — with your place names and coordinates hidden before anything is sent, and a switch in Settings to turn it off.
What is collected
Anonymous usage data, through PostHog. There is no sign-up and no account, so none of it is attached to a name, an email, or an advertising identifier. It is tied to a random id PostHog generates on the device.
Two kinds of thing:
- Events. Which of the four screens you opened, whether the terrain loaded or fell back to a flat horizon, how long it took, whether a search returned anything, and whether the camera or the cloud forecast was unavailable. Never your coordinates, and never what you typed.
- Screen recordings. Screenshots of the app as you use it, so a confusing screen can be watched rather than guessed at. Your place name, the place subtitle, the search field and every saved coordinate are masked out before the recording leaves the phone.
The one thing this is really for: the app fetches elevation data to work out your skyline, and when that fails it quietly falls back to a flat horizon — the same answer every other sun app gives. Without a signal that it happened, the app would be broken in the field and look fine from here.
Turning it off
Settings → Improving the app → Share anonymous usage. Turn it off and the app stops sending immediately, in that same session — not at the next launch. Everything else in the app works exactly as before.
Your location
If you grant location access, the app reads your coordinates to work out where the sun and moon are and which ridges they have to clear. All of that arithmetic happens on the device, and your coordinates are stored nowhere but on your phone.
They are never sent to us, never attached to an event, and masked out of every recording. Two other parties do see where you are, and it is worth being exact about which:
- Apple receives your coordinates when the app asks for a cloud forecast, under Apple's privacy policy. We never see that request.
- The elevation service receives a map tile identifier, an area roughly 20 km across, rather than a point.
This is why the App Store label lists Precise Location under App Functionality: the forecast genuinely needs it. It is not linked to any identity and is not used for tracking.
You can decline location access and use the app by searching for a place instead. Nothing is lost except the "here" shortcut.
The network requests the app makes
Four, and no others:
- Elevation tiles from the public AWS Terrain Tiles dataset, so the app can work out your skyline. The request identifies a map tile, which is an area roughly 20 km across, not a point. Tiles are cached on the phone and fetched once.
- Map imagery from Apple Maps, when you open the map screen. Apple handles that request under its own privacy policy; we never see it.
- Cloud forecasts from Apple Weather, so the app can say whether there will be light worth driving for. Apple handles that request under its own privacy policy and we never see it.
- Anonymous usage and recordings to PostHog, as described above, unless you have turned it off.
Only the elevation and weather requests involve where you are, and the elevation one identifies a map tile roughly 20 km across rather than a point.
What stays on your phone
Saved places, the current place, the date you were last looking at, your settings, and the cached terrain. Deleting the app deletes all of it.
Children
The app is rated 4+, has no account, no advertising and no tracking across other apps or websites, at any age.
Changes
If a future version collects anything beyond what is on this page, this page will say so before that version ships, and the change will be listed in the App Store release notes.
Contact
Sam Harper — ericrosenbaum77@gmail.com