What leaves your device, and why.

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 1 November 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 unless you turn them off. 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.
• ClipboardOn its first two launches, while you have no friends in Sol, the app checks whether your clipboard holds a web link without reading it, so it can offer to open a link a friend sent. It reads the clipboard only when you tap Paste.
• NotificationsEvery alert the app shows is scheduled on your device, with no push server. The website’s sunset and daily games alerts are under This website, below.
• 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 rituals, journal, plans, games and settings are kept on your device, and go when you delete the app. Your home and saved places sync through your own iCloud (see iCloud, below).

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 toward the sunset 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, come from Apple Maps too.
• iCloudYour home, saved places, 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.
• CloudsThe Globe and the Day tab download pictures of the whole Earth’s clouds and sunset colour. These requests carry nothing about you or your place.
• FeedbackOnly if you use Tell us what you think. What you write, your device’s language, the app’s version and the day go to Sol’s database on Google Cloud. It carries no name, address or identifier, and a person reads it.
• FriendsOnly if you use Friends. See Friends, below.

Other services

• FAAOn the day of a booked flight between US airports, the FAA’s public status file for every US airport. Nothing about your flight is sent.
• OpenStreetMapFor the map of an airport on a flight you have booked: the airport’s coordinates and its three-letter code. Only when Sol’s own server cannot answer: the exact coordinates of the building the Shadow tab shows, which can be where you are. Both 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. To turn both off, open Your light on the Day tab, scroll down to Alerts and practices, and turn off Share usage statistics and crash reports at the bottom. They stop at once, and a crash report not yet sent is deleted. Remote Config, which carries the app’s own settings, keeps working. 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, a trip card, a flight or a voyage 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: the city it is in, its time zone and a point rounded to a twentieth of a degree, within about 3 km of it. Sol asks which city you are in, and until you say, it shares the city it shows for your device’s time zone. If you chose an address or a building, friends get the city, never the address. A small town far from any large city shares no name, only its time. Never where you are right now.
• Who your friends are, and since when.
• A scrambled mark of each friend you remove, on your own record, so neither of you can add the other again from a link. It goes with your record.
• 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 can add friends for 7 days, and one that carries a game result or a postcard keeps showing it for 90 days.
• If you send your link from a sunset you rated, the rating goes with it (one word, such as Exceptional colour) with the newest picture of your sky, kept with that link for its 7 days. A newer one replaces it.
• A trip you share from its card: its city, a point rounded to a twentieth of a degree, its time zone and its first and last day, kept with that one link for its 7 days and never on your record. Never its flights or bookings, and nothing of your home.
• A trip card’s picture, when it travels as a link: the sky over the trip’s city on its first evening, with no words, deleted with the trip.
• A trip you send to a friend on your World board: the same city, point, time zone and days, for that friend alone, kept until they answer, until the trip begins, or for 7 days, whichever comes first. If they decline, Sol tells you nothing.
• If you keep a friend’s trip, they see that you’re coming until its last day, for a year at most. Your record holds only the link it came from, that friend and that day, and removing the trip or the friend takes it back.
• The months of Sol Pro waiting for you from invitations, and whether you have Sol Pro, as your app last said, so a month goes only to someone without it. To tell whether you are new to Sol, Sol’s server checks the App Store’s signed record of your download. It keeps only a scrambled form of that record’s identifier, with the day you first accepted an invitation and the days a month was given. That stays after you stop sharing, so no one is given a month twice.
• A flight you take, while Share your flights is on, as it is from the start: its airports, its take-off and landing times, when you hold it or end it early, and the friend you are flying with, if you joined one. Never what the flight is for, and never where you are.
• A voyage you take in the Orbit tab, while Share your voyages is on, as it is from the start: where it sets out from and goes to in the solar system, its times, when you pause or end it, its tour and spacecraft, and the friend you are flying with, if you joined one. Never what the voyage is for.
• 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.
• If someone reports your invitation or your name: what was reported, the reason they chose from Sol’s list and the day, never who reported it. If you report someone, how many reports you made that day, under a scrambled name, for two days.
• Daily totals of invitations, page views (those on an Android device or a computer counted apart, from what your browser says it is, which is never kept), accepts, postcards and reports, which name no one. A request is not counted when the app’s usage statistics are off, or when a browser sends Global Privacy Control.

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 while the link lasts: 7 days, or 90 for one that carries a game result, a postcard or a trip card. While you fly, your friends see your flight until 30 minutes after it lands or you end it, and a hold keeps it showing at least 3 hours from the hold’s start. They see who you are flying with only if that person is their friend too. A fly-with-me link carries your flight’s airports and times while it is in the air, and after that only that it has landed. While you are on a voyage, your friends see it until 30 minutes after it arrives or you end it, and a pause keeps it showing at least 3 hours from the pause’s start. A link from a voyage carries its places and times while it is under way, and after that only that it is over. 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, your App Attest keys and any reports about you. If Sol has not been in touch for you in 12 months, your record is deleted the same way. Turning off Share your daily games deletes your stored results, turning off Share your flights deletes your flight, and turning off Share your voyages deletes your voyage.

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

Your home, your saved places, your trips and flights (including those found in your calendar), the friends on your World board and the last flight you took 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 one 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, a game result shows the shape of your guesses, and a fly-with-me link shows your name, your city and your flight’s airports and times, or your voyage’s places and times. Whoever you send it to can see that, and so can anyone they pass it on to. Once Sol is on the App Store, an invitation page’s Get Sol button tells the App Store what kind of link it was, such as a postcard or a game, never who sent it.

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 asks Sol’s own server for the forecast at your place and at three more points toward the sunset, each rounded to about 5 km. The server reads MET Norway’s forecast, which sees Sol’s server and never your IP address. A place you type into a search box goes to Sol’s own server, which finds it in GeoNames’ list of places.
• 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.

When a page compares two versions of itself, your browser keeps which one it showed you so the page stays the same for you, and its counts carry only that version’s letter, which identifies no one.

When a link to this site names where it was posted, such as via=bsky, the counts of the pages you open from it in the next half hour carry that word. It names the place, which everyone who came that way shares, and never you.

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.

Both lists also keep a random code for your invite link, and the code of a friend’s invite link if one brought you, so that people whose friends join get their TestFlight invitations first.

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.

The sunset alert

The sunset alert is off until you turn it on, on a city’s sunset page. Your browser then gives Sol a push address: a link at its maker’s push service (Apple, Google, Mozilla or Microsoft) that lets Sol’s server send this browser a notification, with two keys that keep what it says private. Sol’s database keeps that address and its keys, the city and its time zone, when you turned the alert on, and when an alert was last sent. It keeps no name, email or location, it is used for nothing but the alert, and no page can read it. Your browser also remembers which city the alert is for.

About an hour before sunset, on evenings when the forecast for that city is some colour or better, Sol’s server sends one notification through the push service. To stop it, choose Stop alerts on the same page, which deletes the record at once. If you block notifications for this site or clear its data instead, the push service stops delivering, and Sol deletes the record the next time it tries to send, or after a year with no alert.

The daily games alert

The daily games alert is off until you turn it on, under a finished Gnomon or Almanac. Your browser gives Sol a push address, as it does for the sunset alert. Sol’s database keeps that address and its keys, the nearest of the site’s cities (never your place) with its time zone, your language, when you turned the alert on, and when an alert was last sent. It keeps no name or email, it is used for nothing but the alert, and no page can read it.

Each morning, about an hour after sunrise in that city, Sol’s server sends one notification through the push service to say the day’s games are ready. To stop it, choose Stop under a finished game, which deletes the record at once. If you block notifications for this site or clear its data instead, the push service stops delivering, and Sol deletes the record the next time it tries to send.

In your browser

Your place, your account’s session, your games’ history, the address you joined a list with and its invite code, a friend’s invite code for 30 days, 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.
• Places, trips and flightsIn your iCloud until you delete them.
• FriendsYour record until you stop sharing, or until Sol has not been in touch for you in 12 months, whichever comes first. Sol is in touch when your World board, Friends or a daily game opens, and when it sends something for you, such as an invitation, a postcard, a flight or a voyage. A flight or a voyage until your next one replaces it, or a day after your friends stop seeing it. Invitations are deleted within 14 days of being made, or 97 days for one that carries a game result, a postcard or a trip card. Postcards are deleted 30 days after they are sent, a postcard’s picture 7 days after its link runs out, and reports after 90 days. The scrambled form of a download’s identifier kept for the months of Sol Pro stays, so no one is given a month twice.
• 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.
• Daily games alertsUntil you stop the alert, until the push service says its address no longer works, or until a year passes with no alert sent, whichever comes first.
• Sunset alertsUntil you stop the alert, until the push service says its address no longer works, or until a year passes with no alert sent and the alert not turned on again, whichever comes first.
• 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, turn off usage statistics and crash reports in the app, 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. The website’s sunset alert rests on your consent, which you withdraw with Stop alerts or by blocking notifications for the site. The daily games alert rests on your consent too, which you withdraw with Stop or by blocking notifications for the site. Usage statistics and crash reports rest on our legitimate interest in keeping Sol working and making it better; you can object by turning them off in the app. 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.