This policy explains what happens to information when you use the app. The short version: we never collect your name, your location or anything you look at, and we do not sell any data. There is no account and no advertising, and the app does not track you across other companies’ apps or websites. The one thing it sends about itself is plain counts of which buttons are touched, with a random number and no personal details, so we can see what to improve, and only if you say yes (you can change your answer in Settings).
What stays on your phone
Everything the app works out, it works out on your phone:
- the positions of the Sun, Moon, planets and stars, meteor rates, eclipses and events;
- your location, when you allow it, to know which sky you are under;
- what you keep in the You tab: saved objects, sky memories, the night you were born, your message to Andromeda, your meteor counts and the photons you have “caught”;
- your first name, if you choose to give it, for greetings;
- the people you add (name, city and, if you choose, birthday, birth city and hour): used on your phone only, to show their sky and the things you share, and never sent anywhere;
- the flights you follow and the moments you save from them, and your walks (distance and direction, never the route);
- your settings and reminders (notifications are scheduled locally on the phone);
- the camera picture in the Sky tab, in the night photo and in First light (shown live and never sent; a finished night photo is added to your Photos; any other picture is saved or shared only when you tap Save or Share, and the picture of your eye in First light is kept only while that screen is open);
- your phone’s motion, and your head movement if you use headphones that report it;
- the steps of a walk, counted by your phone’s motion sensors.
We run no server of our own. Everything above stays on your phone, except what the next two sections describe. Deleting the app deletes what is on your phone.
When something leaves your phone
Place names (Apple). To show the name of your town, and when you search for a place, the app asks Apple’s geocoding service (Apple Maps). Apple handles that request under Apple’s Privacy Policy.
Maps (Apple). The eclipse map in the Sky calendar and the dark-sky finder’s map are drawn with Apple Maps. To draw them, your phone loads map tiles from Apple for the area they show, which is around your place. Apple handles those requests under the same policy.
Live weather & satellites (off until you turn it on). Live features only work after you turn on Live weather & satellites. The app never turns it on by itself. You can turn it on from the clouds card when you first set up the app, in Settings (You tab → Settings → Live weather & satellites, at the top), in Layers & style (the Sky tab’s ⋯ menu), or with the “Turn on” button a screen shows when it needs it; each time, the app first says what is sent and asks. You can turn it off at any time in Settings. While it is on, the app contacts these free public services directly from your phone:
| Service | What it is for | What it receives |
|---|---|---|
| Apple WeatherKit ( Weather) | Weather and cloud, and the widgets’ “clear or cloudy” | Your position, rounded to about 1 km. Apple says WeatherKit does not link it to you or use it to identify you |
| Terrain Tiles on AWS Open Data | The shape of the land on the horizon | The map tile your position falls in |
| NASA GIBS (Black Marble) | Dark-sky finder | The map tile your position falls in |
| CelesTrak | The orbits of the Space Station and other bright satellites | Nothing about you (same request for everyone) |
| NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center | Aurora, solar flares and live images of the Sun (GOES) | Nothing about you |
| LIGO–Virgo–KAGRA alerts (GraceDB) | Gravitational waves | Nothing about you |
| The Astronomer’s Telegram | New-star (Blaze Star) reports | Nothing about you |
| NASA Deep Space Network | Who Earth is talking to | Nothing about you |
| NASA SDO | Live images of the Sun | Nothing about you |
| NASA/JPL Photojournal (assets.science.nasa.gov) | Real sounds from space | Nothing about you |
| NASA/JPL Small-Body Database, CNEOS and Horizons | Asteroids, comets, close passes and fireballs (Rocks & comets layer) | Nothing about you (dates and object names only) |
| ESA/Webb (esawebb.org, cdn.esawebb.org) | Webb’s newest Picture of the Month, its credit and the picture itself (Above tab) | Nothing about you (same request for everyone) |
| adsb.lol | The planes overhead (while the Sky tab is open with the Planes layer on, and in “Planes above me” when you open it while starting to follow a flight), a plane crossing in front of what you look at, and a balloon, glider or helicopter near you, while Sky Talk is open | Your position, rounded to about 10 km. To place nearby planes exactly, the app may ask once for your precise location; that stays on your phone, in memory only, and is never stored or sent |
| adsb.lol | A flight you search for or follow | Only the flight number or registration you typed or touched; not your position |
| adsb.lol route files (vrs-standing-data.adsb.lol) | Where a plane is flying from and to, for the planes you see and the flight you follow | The plane’s flight number (call sign): one small public file per flight, nothing about you |
| Wikimedia Commons (commons.wikimedia.org, upload.wikimedia.org) | A photograph of a plane you touch in the Sky tab | The plane’s registration (nothing about you) |
Like any website, these services can see your device’s IP address when it connects. Requests to these services carry no cookies, no account and no identifier, and are not stored by us (we never receive them). Turning Live weather & satellites off stops all of them.
Things you choose to share. If you share a meteor count, a sky invitation, a poster or an image, it goes wherever you send it, through the iOS share sheet. A meteor-count report contains the times, your position rounded to about 1 km, and your counts, so that scientists can use it.
Links in what you share. A shared sky or poster can carry a link to our own pages on 617921.dev (for example 617921.dev/s/same), so that someone without the app can see it. The link holds only what its page needs: the moment and the object (the same sky), the date (the night you were born), and your first name if you gave one (left out when you choose “Without my name”). Your town is only in what you share when you turn on Say where I am in Settings. The pages are static files hosted on Cloudflare Pages: like any web host, Cloudflare sees the request, link included, when someone opens it. We run no analytics on these pages and keep no logs of them.
Links to other sites. Some screens open other websites when you tap a link (for example MicroObservatory, the Virtual Telescope Project, Las Cumbres Observatory, Globe at Night, AAVSO, the International Meteor Organization, NASA’s Sungrazer project, and the source pages of the telescope pictures at ESA/Hubble, ESA/Webb, the LOFAR surveys and Wikimedia Commons). Those sites have their own privacy policies. The telescope pictures themselves are inside the app: looking at them contacts no one.
How the app is used
Only if you say yes when asked; you can change your answer in Settings at any time. The app sends plain counts of what is touched, for example that the Tools button was opened or that a plan was opened, to Mixpanel, which stores them for us on servers in the European Union. Each count carries:
- the time;
- a random number made on your phone the first time you open the app. It is not your advertising ID or any other ID your phone already has, and it is not linked to your name, because the app has no account. A reinstall makes a new one;
- the app version, your iOS version, whether it is an iPhone or an iPad, and your phone’s language and region setting.
It never carries your name, your location or place, what you look at in the sky, your pictures, or the people you add. The app asks Mixpanel not to work out where you are from your IP address; like any service, Mixpanel can still see the address when your phone connects. We do not use these counts for advertising and we do not share them with anyone else. We use them only to see which parts of the app are used and where people give up, so we can make it better. Mixpanel acts for us under its privacy policy and data processing terms, and keeps the counts for up to two years, the default for our plan.
You can turn this off at any time in You → Settings → Share how the app is used. Turning it off stops all sending, and anything waiting to be sent is thrown away. For readers in the UK and the EU, our legal basis is your consent, which you give by saying yes and can withdraw at any time by turning it off.
Permissions the app asks for
- Location (while using the app): to compute your sky, and to measure the distance of your walks (never the route). Used on your phone; optional: you can choose any place by hand instead. Apple Maps receives it to name your town and to draw the maps (see above). Otherwise your position only leaves the phone as described above (rounded to about 1 km for weather, about 10 km for planes, or as a map tile), and only when Live weather & satellites is on. If you allowed only an approximate location, the Sky tab may ask once for your precise location to place the planes exactly; that position stays on your phone, in memory only.
- Notifications: optional, for the dusk reminder, the alerts you switch on and the moments of a flight you follow (for example when it passes under a bright star, or lands). Scheduled locally on your phone; no push server is involved.
- Live Activities: while a Space Station pass or a flight you follow is under way, if you allow them. Shown on your Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island and updated by the app on your phone; no push server is involved.
- Camera: optional: the real sky behind the star chart in the Sky tab and in your pictures of it, the night photo (forty exposures in a row), and your own eye in First light (front camera). Nothing is sent; a finished night photo is added to Photos, any other picture only when you choose Save or Share.
- Add to Photos: asked the first time a picture goes to Photos (a finished night photo, or a sky photo or poster you save). The app can add pictures to your library; it cannot see your library.
- Motion: to know where the phone points, and (with headphones that report it) to turn the sound guide with your head. It stays on the phone.
The app contains no third-party SDKs and no advertising or tracking code. Its only outside connections are Apple Maps (place names and maps), the public services listed under Live weather & satellites, and Mixpanel (usage counts, which you can turn off).
Children
The app is suitable for everyone. We do not knowingly collect any information from anyone, including children. The usage counts hold nothing that identifies a child.
Your rights
We hold very little about you: only the usage counts with their random number, if you have not turned them off. They are not linked to your name, so we can find yours only if you tell us the number. To have them deleted, copy the number from You → Settings → Share how the app is used and write to [email protected]; turning the switch off stops any more being sent. Everything else the app keeps is on your phone, and deleting the app removes it. You can stop all other online requests by turning off Live weather & satellites.
Changes
If this policy changes, the new version will be posted at this address with a new effective date.
Contact
Questions about this policy? Email [email protected].