Support

SunsetCrew watches the sky where you are and tells you when the sunset is worth walking outside for. If something is not behaving, this page probably covers it. If it does not, write to us — a person reads every message.

Notifications

I did not get one, and the sunset was beautiful

The most likely reason is that the forecasting model decided the sunset would probably not be visible from your place. SunsetCrew checks whether there is 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 directly overhead looks clear. But clouds move, and forecasting is especially hard at that fine a scale. When the app thinks there is a good chance you will not see the sunset, it stays quiet.

It gets this wrong sometimes, and we would genuinely like to hear about it. Tell us the date and the place. Those reports are how the forecast gets better.

Other possibilities worth checking:

• You set your alerts to "only the special ones." Open Settings within the app and check "How often." That mode deliberately stays quiet on all but the best evenings.
• Notifications are off in iOS Settings, under SunsetCrew.
• The app has not been opened in a long while. Opening it refreshes the forecast.

I got one, but the sky here looked nothing like it

Check which place SunsetCrew is watching — open Settings in the app and look at the top. Every forecast and every alert is about that saved place, not wherever you happen to be standing. If you have moved, or you are travelling, the app is describing your saved place and not where you are now.

Sunsets are also startlingly local. Two towns half an hour apart can be — and often are — on opposite sides of a cloud bank, with staggeringly different evenings.

It arrived too early or too late

Settings → How much notice. The timing is counted from when the good light starts, not from sunset itself — so with "out the door" you hear about five minutes before the light turns, not five minutes before the sun touches the horizon.

I want fewer of them

Settings → How often → "Only the special ones." You will still hear from us several times a month in most places. Turning notifications off entirely, in iOS Settings, is also completely fine — the app works perfectly without them.

Location

Why does it want my location?

For the sunset, a few miles changes the whole sky, so the app cannot forecast your sunset without knowing roughly where you are. The app rounds your position to about two kilometres before doing anything with it, and our server rounds it again on arrival, so your exact position is not sent anywhere. Location is read only while the app is open — there is no background location in SunsetCrew at all. The privacy page explains this in detail, including what would happen if a future feature ever needed something finer.

I would rather not share it

Choose "Don't Allow" and type a place instead. Nothing else about the app changes.

How do I change where it watches?

Open Settings — tap the place name at the top of the Tonight screen — then tap "Change."

Your data

How do I delete what you hold?

Settings → Delete my data. Tap the place name at the top of the Tonight screen to open Settings. It removes the record on our server and every evening stored on this phone, immediately. You do not need to email anyone, and we do not need to reply. Tapping that button deletes your data as completely as anything we could do for you.

Your saved place stays, so the app keeps working. Deleting the app removes that too.

How do I stop the notifications without deleting the app?

Settings → Stop sending me notifications. That turns them off and erases what our server holds about your phone — we have no reason to keep anything once you have asked us to stop. Doing it there takes effect straight away. Turning notifications off in iOS Settings does the same thing, the next time you open the app.

What do you actually hold?

If notifications are off: nothing about you, beyond the aggregate traffic counts any web service records — and a calendar feed, if you subscribe to one, which fetches from us on its own schedule. If notifications are on: one row with a notification token, a rounded location of about two kilometres, your time zone, your place's name, your two settings, and the date we last messaged you so we never message twice about one evening. It is overwritten rather than added to, so there is no history of where you have been. If you tap one of the buttons on a notification, we add one to a count for your area that evening — a number about a square of map rather than about you, and nothing about it is stored on your phone. The privacy page is the full account.

The forecast itself

How does it decide?

Two stages. First it asks whether you will see the sunset at all: whether some piece of weather is likely to block the light on its way between the sun and where you are. If that fails, it stays quiet — if we have no sunset to tell you about, we leave you in peace.

If the light is likely to get through, the app judges how good the sky will be. Certain arrangements of cloud catch light better than others, and that is what shapes how a sunset looks. Humidity and rain play a part too.

Why does it not show me a number?

Because a number invites you to compare tonight with a number you half-remember from last week, and that is not how anybody experiences a sunset. The app is meant to lower the effort of catching a good sunset — not to add to it by putting a false number on something subjective.

How far ahead can it see?

It shows sunset times a week out, because those are astronomy and are correct years ahead. It only makes claims about sky quality inside the range where the weather forecast is considered fairly reliable. Further out, it shows the time and says nothing about the sky, on purpose.

Calendar

The times shifted by an hour

That is daylight saving, and it is correct. The feed stores absolute moments, so your calendar renders each one on the right clock, including across the changeover.

How long is each calendar event?

Fifteen minutes, with the sunset itself in the middle — so the entry starts seven and a half minutes before the sun touches the horizon. The exact sunset time is written into the title, because in a month view there is nowhere else to put it. In some places, and especially at high latitudes, the sun sits near the horizon for a long stretch at certain times of year. The calendar is not trying to describe that — it is there to tell you when the sunset is, without cluttering your week.

The events are marked free rather than busy, so subscribing never makes you look unavailable to anybody who checks your calendar. Fifteen minutes was chosen because in most calendar views it is big enough to see next to a five-thirty meeting, and little enough to ignore.

Anything else

Bugs, ideas, an evening we got badly wrong, or a sunset you think we should have told you about: hello@sunsetcrew.app.

Found a security problem? Write to the same address with SECURITY in the subject line and we will get to it before anything else. Please give us a reasonable chance to fix it before publishing.