SunsetCrew

Most evenings, the sky does something unremarkable and nobody needs to be told about it. A few evenings a month it does something worth putting your shoes on for, and almost everybody misses it, because there is no reason to look up at 7:14 on a Tuesday.

SunsetCrew watches for those evenings. It checks whether there is actually a clear path between you and the horizon to the west — a bank of low cloud twenty miles out can shut the show down while the sky overhead looks perfect — and when the odds are good, it tells you, with enough notice to get outside.

When the odds are not good, it says nothing at all. That part matters as much as the rest.

How it works

• Save the place you want watched. Home, usually.
• Choose how much notice you want — from "out the door" to a comfortable half hour.
• Choose how often you want to hear from it. "Only the special ones" is the quiet setting, and it still speaks up several times a month in most places.

There is no account, no sign-up, and no password. It never learns your name, there is no advertising, and nothing in it reports what you do. The privacy page explains exactly what leaves your phone, which is very little.

The beta

SunsetCrew is in private testing on iPhone. If you would like in, write to hello@sunsetcrew.app and say roughly where you live — spread across different skies is exactly what the testing needs.