In short.
Sol is made by Neonsol LLC (“we”). This policy covers the Sol app on iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch, with its widgets and extensions, and this website, solocene.com. When Sol comes to Apple TV, Apple Vision Pro and Mac, it covers those too. It was last changed on 2 October 2026.
- You don’t need an account. The app never asks for your email or phone number.
- Sol shows no ads, sells nothing about you and does not track you across other companies’ apps or websites. It never reads your device’s advertising identifier.
- Your Health data stays on your devices, your calendar is read on your device, and Sol cannot see your photos.
- To show weather, maps and buildings, the app asks the services this page names about a place, and says nothing else about you.
- The iPhone and iPad app sends usage statistics and crash reports to Google Firebase. They carry no name, no coordinates and nothing you type.
- Friends is off until you use it. Stop sharing deletes what Sol’s server keeps for you.
What stays on your device.
These are read and used on your device. Your Health data, your calendar’s events and your photos never go to Sol’s servers or to Google.
- LocationWith your permission, Sol reads your location only while it is open, never in the background. Your place is kept on your device and shared with your Apple Watch and widgets. The services that receive a place to answer a request are listed under The app, below.
- HealthSol reads Time in Daylight and sleep to show your daylight history. It never writes to Health. What it reads stays on your iPhone and, for the daylight ring, your Apple Watch.
- CalendarSol reads your calendar to find the flights and stays you have booked. It keeps only the trips and flights it finds, never an event’s title or notes, and never writes to your calendar. Those trips and flights sync to your own iCloud (see iCloud, below).
- PhotosSol can add a picture you choose to save. It cannot see your library.
- NotificationsEvery alert is scheduled on your device. Sol has no push server.
- Screen TimeIf you block apps during a focus flight, Screen Time keeps your choice on your device, and Sol never learns which apps they are.
- Everything elseYour places, rituals, journal, plans, games and settings are kept on your device, and go when you delete the app.
What the app sends, and to whom.
To show weather, maps and buildings, the app asks other services about a place. Each request carries that place and, as every internet request does, your device’s IP address. Here is each one.
Apple
- WeatherThe coordinates of each place Sol shows weather for: your place and saved places, your friends’ and your trips’ cities, and points along the sunset’s bearing for the sunset forecast. Home Screen widgets ask for their own places.
- MapsWhat you type in a search, and the coordinates of the places Sol names or draws: your place, a point you press on the Globe, a building’s address. Map pictures for the Globe, including the view over your place when Sol opens, and for the radar come from Apple Maps too.
- iCloudYour trips and flights, in your own private iCloud, and the sunset ratings you choose to share. See iCloud, below.
- App StorePurchases and restores, made through your Apple Account. Apple takes the payment; Sol never sees your payment details.
- App AttestWhen you send a postcard with its picture, Apple confirms the picture comes from Sol on a genuine device. Apple learns nothing about the postcard.
Apple handles these under Apple’s privacy policy.
Sol’s own servers
- Buildings and streetsWhile the Shadow tab is open, Sol downloads the buildings, streets and trees around the place it shows, as map squares about 2 km across. At your own place the squares are chosen around your current location. A request names a square, never a coordinate or anything about you, and squares already downloaded are kept on your device.
- SpaceThe Orbit tab downloads asteroids, comets, satellites and spacecraft. These requests carry nothing about you or your place.
- FriendsOnly if you use Friends. See Friends, below.
Other services
- Open-MeteoFor air quality in the weather room: your place’s coordinates, to about 10 m, every 15 minutes while the room is open. Open-Meteo’s terms say it keeps server logs, which can include coordinates, for 90 days.
- RainViewerFor the radar in the weather room: the map squares covering an area about 260 km across, around your place.
- OpenStreetMapOnly when Sol’s own server cannot answer: the exact coordinates of the building the Shadow tab shows, which can be where you are. They go to the Overpass servers at overpass-api.de or overpass.private.coffee.
Each of these services sees your device’s IP address, as any website you visit does. Their own privacy policies say what they keep.
Usage statistics and crash reports.
The iPhone and iPad app uses three parts of Google Firebase: Analytics, Crashlytics and Remote Config. They tell us which features people use and what breaks, so we can fix it.
What is sent
- Which tabs and features are used, as fixed choices such as “tab: sky” or “ritual kept: dawn”.
- Your answer to “What brings you to Sol?”, if you give one.
- That a purchase happened and of what kind, such as a subscription or a free trial. Google Analytics can also record App Store purchases on its own, with the product and its price.
- Crash reports: what the app was doing when it stopped, the device model, the versions of the system and of Sol, and the device’s language.
- Two random identifiers for this installation of Sol, which change if you delete the app and install it again.
- For Remote Config, which switches features on or off: that installation identifier, your device’s region and language settings, its time zone, and the system and app versions.
Google Analytics also works out an approximate location (country, region and city) from your IP address.
What is never sent
No advertising identifier, no name, email or account, no coordinates, no names of the places you choose, no Health data, and nothing you type. Firebase’s advertising features are switched off, and this data is not used to target ads or linked to you.
How long, and how to stop it
Crash reports are kept for 90 days. Usage statistics are kept for no more than 14 months. The app has no switch to turn them off; deleting the app stops them. The Apple Watch app and the widgets send nothing to Firebase. What this website counts is under This website, below.
Friends.
Friends puts the people you invite on your World board, each with their city’s sky and time. It is off until you invite someone, accept an invitation, or share a game result or trip card with your name on it.
No account
Friends needs no sign-in. Your device makes a random key, keeps it in your keychain and syncs it through iCloud Keychain to your other devices. Sol’s server keeps only a one-way scrambled form of the key, which is how it knows a request comes from you.
What Sol’s server keeps
- The name you choose, up to 32 characters.
- Your home place: its name, its time zone and a point rounded to a twentieth of a degree, within about 3 km of it. The name is usually your city; if you chose your place by searching for an address, it is that address. Never where you are right now.
- Who your friends are, and since when.
- Your device’s language and region setting.
- Your Almanac and Gnomon results for the last three days played: the shape of your guesses, never the city or the hour. They are shared while Share your daily games is on, as it is from the start.
- Your invitation links, each good for 7 days.
- The postcards you send: the place, the moment, the sky’s light and weather, and the line you chose from Sol’s list. You can’t type free text into one. The sender can see whether and when a postcard was opened.
- A postcard’s picture, when it travels as a link: the sky over your place with its line, never your name.
- The public keys Apple’s App Attest uses to confirm those pictures, which say nothing about you.
Who sees it
Your friends see your name, your home place and its time, and your game results. Anyone you send an invitation link to can see your name, your home place and its time zone until the link expires. Invitation pages are hidden from search engines.
Removing it
Removing a friend deletes the link between you and the postcards you exchanged. Stop sharing, at the foot of the Friends sheet, deletes your record, takes you off every friend’s board, and deletes your invitations, your postcards and their pictures, and your App Attest keys. Turning off Share your daily games deletes your stored results.
Postcards and results your friends have already received can stay on their devices. If you lose the key, for example on a new phone without iCloud Keychain or a backup, write to us with the name and city you used and we will delete your record.
iCloud.
Your trips and flights
Trips and flights, including those found in your calendar, sync through your own private iCloud, so they appear on your other devices. Apple keeps them under your Apple Account, and we cannot read them. Deleting a trip or flight in Sol deletes it from iCloud too. To stop the sync, turn off iCloud for Sol in Settings.
Sunset ratings you share
If you turn on Share what you see, each sunset you rate joins a shared tally in Sol’s public iCloud database: the rating, the day and an area about 50 km across. A rating carries no name and no exact location. iCloud adds an identifier for the account that made it, which does not tell us who you are.
Anyone using Sol in that area can see the tally. Turning the switch off stops new ratings being shared. Ratings already shared stay in the tally, and because they carry no name, we cannot tell which are yours.
Links you share.
A link you share carries what it shows. A plan’s link includes its place and coordinates, an invitation shows your name and city, and a game result shows the shape of your guesses. Whoever you send it to can see that, and so can anyone they pass it on to.
This website.
Every page on solocene.com works without an account, and the site sets no cookies.
What your browser asks for
- WeatherTo forecast a sunset, a page sends Open-Meteo four points: your place, to about 100 m, and three along the sunset’s bearing. A place you type into a search box goes to Open-Meteo’s place search.
- BuildingsSun at any address downloads map squares about 2 km across around the place, from Sol’s own server.
- Your locationIf you allow it, your browser’s location sets the place on the page and is remembered in your browser for your next visit. It is not sent to us. Some pages, such as Sun at any address, put the place’s coordinates in their address, so a link you copy carries them.
- MapsOnly if you choose Open in Maps: the place goes to Apple Maps or Google Maps.
What we count
Each page counts what happens on it, such as a view, a share or a tap on a tool, in Sol’s own database. A row holds the day, the page’s address without its query, the name of the website that sent you, the size of your screen as phone, tablet or desktop, and whether you have been here before. It carries no identifier and no time finer than the day, so rows can’t be joined into a visit or a person.
The same events go to Google Analytics, without cookies: the page’s address without its query, the website that sent you, and each event as one short word. Google also sees your IP address, from which it works out an approximate location. Google signals and advertising features are off.
If your browser sends Global Privacy Control or Do Not Track, nothing is counted at all. Sunsets and moons embedded on other websites are counted only in Sol’s own database, never by Google.
The launch list and the beta list
The launch list keeps the address you type, when you typed it, the page you left it on and your language. We use it for one email, when the app ships.
The beta list keeps the same, the kind of link that brought you (a search engine or a social site, never the page it was on), and the answers you choose to give: the devices you would test on, what you are here for, and one line on what you use today. We use it to send TestFlight invitations and, afterwards, a question or two.
No page can read either list. To leave one, reply to any email from us or write to support@initial.app.
Accounts
An account is your address and a password, kept by Firebase Authentication, which also sends its confirmation and password reset emails. Its record keeps your two email choices, the page and language you signed up from, and what you save on it: sunset outings, city lists, rooms, teams and observations. A team keeps each person’s name, place and hours, never their email address.
Pages show an account to its owner alone; we can see it in Firebase’s console to run the service. Each saved thing can be removed on its own page. Delete account, in the account panel, deletes all of it and the sign-in, and takes a confirmed address off the launch and beta lists.
Questions on a page
A few tools ask what you were trying to find out. Your answer is kept with the day, the page, your language and the size of your screen, and nothing that identifies you. A person reads every one.
In your browser
Your place, your account’s session, your games’ history and what you save on a tool without an account are kept in your browser’s own storage. Clearing this site’s data in your browser removes them. Friends’ invitation pages (solocene.com/f/…) are hidden from search engines and count nothing.
How long things are kept.
- On your deviceUntil you delete it, or delete the app.
- Trips and flightsIn your iCloud until you delete them.
- FriendsYour record until you stop sharing. Invitations are deleted within 14 days of being made, postcards 30 days after they are sent, and a postcard’s picture 7 days after its link expires.
- Sunset ratingsFor as long as the shared tally is offered.
- Website listsUntil you leave them: reply to any email from us, or write to support@initial.app.
- Website accountsUntil you delete the account.
- Usage statisticsNo more than 14 months in Google Analytics. The website’s own counting rows, and the answers to its questions, carry nothing that identifies you.
- Crash reports90 days.
- Server logsSol’s servers run on Google Cloud, which logs each request, with the IP address it came from, to keep the service working. Google Cloud keeps those logs for a limited time.
Your choices and rights.
Most of it is in your hands. You can turn any permission off in Settings, stop sharing in Friends, delete trips and flights, delete your account on this site, or delete the app.
Wherever you live, you can ask us for a copy of the personal data we hold about you, or ask us to correct or delete it, or to stop using it. Write to support@initial.app. We answer within 30 days, and may ask you to show the request comes from you.
If you are in the European Economic Area, the UK or Switzerland: location, Health and calendar access rest on your consent, which you can withdraw in Settings at any time. Friends and iCloud sync rest on providing the features you ask for. Usage statistics and crash reports rest on our legitimate interest in keeping Sol working and making it better. You can also complain to your data protection authority.
If you are in California: we do not sell your personal information or share it for advertising, and we use none of it to infer things about you.
Children.
Sol is not directed at children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal data from them. If you believe a child has shared their name through Friends, write to us and we will delete it.
Where data is kept, and how.
Sol’s servers and Firebase run on Google Cloud. What they keep may be stored and processed outside your country.
Google and Apple process this data on our behalf to provide their services. Everything Sol sends travels encrypted. The Friends data can be read only by Sol’s server code, never directly by an app or a web page.
Changes to this policy.
When this policy changes, this page shows the new date. If a change affects what we do with data we already hold, we will say so here before it takes effect.
Contact.
Sol is made and published by Neonsol LLC. For anything about privacy, write to support@initial.app. The support page answers common questions.
Your use of the app is governed by Apple’s standard licensed application end user licence agreement.
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