Solander support

A clock face: noon at the top, midnight at the bottom, the day read clockwise. The needle is where the clock stands. Tap or drag round the ring to move it, or drag the wheel at the foot of the screen, and every page follows. The Sky tab's Tonight card is the same ring opened out into an arc, sunset on the left, sunrise on the right.

The night's astronomical dark — or, on a bright summer night that has none, the hours the sun is 15° under the horizon — with the cloudy hours cut out. Any hour the forecast puts at 35% cloud or more is removed, and nothing else is. It sits outside the ring because it is the answer rather than one of the workings, and its length is the number printed under the key. Without a trusted forecast nothing has been cut yet: the whole dark window stands, and the Sky tab's arc says forecast pending under the number.

Its colour follows the sun's height: full day, the glow at the horizon, blue hour, twilight, then astronomical dark, when the sun is far enough under the horizon that the sky has stopped contributing light of its own. Golden hour is the warm stretch above the horizon glow, blue hour the violet one below it. In midsummer in the north of the country there is no true dark at all, and the reading says no true dark rather than pretending.

Drawn hour by hour from the forecast, in the same three greys the verdict is spoken from: faint under 35% cover, mid between 35 and 60, full from 60 up. Where the mid or full grey crosses the dark, that hour is out of the green band. A ring with nothing but the faint grey on it is the forecast saying the night is open; with no forecast there is no cloud lane at all.

Drawn only over the hours the forecast gives a 10% chance of rain or more, and deeper as the chance rises. It never changes the number; it is there so you can see a dry three hours inside a wet night.

It runs for the hours the moon is above the horizon. It is drawn, not deducted: a bright moon washes the sky and will cost you anything faint, but the app leaves that judgement to you rather than cutting those hours out of the number. The moon gauge under the ring gives the phase, and the Objects & Events door says what the night still has in it.

One line per lane, in the ring's order from the outside in. Under the rule, tonight's usable dark, printed as hours and minutes and the word dark: the length of the green band. Three hours is a night. Twenty minutes is a gamble.

The ring doesn't print the verdict; it draws it. Behind the greys is one reading of the night's mean cloud over the dark: Go tonight under 35%, Cloud eats the window between 35% and 60%, Clouded out from 60%. VoiceOver speaks the words, the Tonight's arc widget shows them as a coloured dot, and an empty Shoots page uses them when no night this week is worth naming. The same two bars draw the greys, cut the green band and print the number on the ring, the Sky tab’s arc and the week, and from version 1.3 on the Tonight’s arc widget too, so they can’t disagree about the same sky. When to shoot answers a narrower question, the best window for one subject, so it can find a few clear hours in a night the ring calls cloudy. With no trusted forecast there is no verdict: the app never invents a sky.

Cloud, rain and wind at the needle's minute, and the moon's phase. Without a forecast the three weather gauges read a dash.

The next five nights, each the same reading at strip size, with its usable dark. Tap a night and the whole app loads it: the ring, the run of light, the Map and Live, all on that night.

Because everything the app says is true of one point on the earth and nowhere else. Where the sun sets, how long the dark runs and whether the moon is in the way all follow from the coordinate. Solander asks for location while you are using it, does the astronomy on the device, and sends the coordinate to Apple's weather service to ask what the cloud will do there. Mirentha never receives it. Decline, and you set the pin yourself on the Map tab.

The sun, moon and twilight maths work anywhere with no signal at all, which is the point of doing them on the phone. The cloud forecast is the part that needs a connection. The app keeps the last one it fetched in memory, not on disk, and reuses it for half an hour. Ask again after that with no signal, or open the app again after closing it, and the ring drops its cloud and rain lanes and the line under the week reads sample data — no connection. The Home Screen widgets hold on to the last forecast for six hours. The map needs a connection too, for the same reason any map does. Most useful spots have no signal, so read the forecast before you lose it.

Solander asks for one number most weather apps bury: total cloud cover, hour by hour, at the exact coordinate you are planning. A general forecast is smoothed across a town and built around rain and temperature, which is the right answer to a different question. Two forecasts can both be correct and still disagree about a hilltop three miles away.

The week strip shows five nights. The sun and moon figures on it hold to within a minute or two that far out and a great deal further, because they are astronomy. The cloud is the part with a shelf life: tonight and tomorrow are worth acting on, the third night is a steer, and past that it tells you which night to keep free rather than what to expect.

Yes, and it is how most planning gets done. Open the Map tab and long-press where you intend to stand, or pan there and tap Set position. Every tab retunes to that coordinate: the run of light, the ring, the week strip, the Live view. Save it as a shoot and it is waiting when you go.

Because it draws the sun, the moon and the stars over what the phone can see, so you can point at a gap in the treeline and find out what will be sitting in it at half eleven. It uses the motion and orientation sensors for the same reason, to know where the phone is pointing. The frames are used to draw the screen and, on the phone, to find the sun or the moon in the picture so the drawn sky lines up with it: nothing is recorded, saved or sent anywhere. The other five tabs never open the camera.

They go with it. Your spot, shoots, trips and kit live on the device and nowhere else. There is no account and no iCloud sync, so deleting the app deletes them and reinstalling starts you empty. Before you do, use Settings › Your shoots › Export as a file…: it writes every shoot and trip, with its place, coordinates and times and what you have packed for it, into one file you can keep in Files or mail to yourself. Import a file…, in the same place, reads it back into a fresh install.

In your App Store account settings rather than in the app: Settings, then your name, then Subscriptions. The Manage link in the app's own Settings opens the same page. Cancel at least 24 hours before the current period ends or it renews, and that applies to the free trial too. Apple takes the payment and handles refunds, at reportaproblem.apple.com. We cannot cancel or refund for you.

Sign in to the App Store with the same Apple Account and open Solander: it normally finds the subscription by itself. If it doesn't, tap Restore purchase at the foot of the subscription screen, or Restore a purchase under Subscription in the app's Settings. Your shoots don't move with the subscription; the export file above carries them.

An iPhone running iOS 18 or later. The app is in English only. The Live tab additionally needs a real device with a camera and a working compass.