Privacy Policy — Moon Shadows

The Short Version

The Moon Shadows app does not send your location or astronomy activity to the developer. There are no accounts, analytics, tracking, or advertisements, and the app's calculations run on your device. Optional Apple geocoding, Apple Weather, and StoreKit features exist only on iPhone and iPad; Mac and Apple TV use the on-device planner without them. This website has a separate, optional live sky view: only after you choose Use My Location, it sends a rounded coordinate to the Moon Shadows sky oracle to calculate the view. The service does not keep a location history or put coordinates in request logs.

Location

On iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, Moon Shadows can optionally use your current location to calculate local sun and moon positions, golden hour, blue hour, and shadow direction. On Mac, Use This Mac's Location requests one reading only after an explicit action. Apple TV never requests or accesses location. Every astronomy calculation runs on your device, and your coordinates are never sold, shared, or sent to Moon Shadows or to any service its developer operates.

On iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, Moon Shadows takes an automatic reading when you open it and when you come back to it, no more than once every five minutes and only while it is on screen. A Siri or Shortcuts action opens the app and takes its own one-shot foreground reading. The optional Follow Phone Compass setting uses the device heading only while the planner is visible. Mac uses neither the compass nor automatic location refreshes. No platform has a background location mode, and live readings are not accumulated into a history.

To name where you are rather than showing "Current Location", the Look up place names setting sends your coordinate to Apple's reverse geocoding service and shows the name it returns. It is on when you install the app, applies on iPhone and iPad only, and can be switched off at any time in the location sheet. Pick My Location instead sends only the city or place you type to Apple's forward geocoding service and uses the result for planning until you choose another location or close the app; it does not require location permission and does not send your current coordinate. The most recently selected non-sample place can remain in Moon Shadows' private App Group container so its widgets can calculate for it after the app closes. Apple handles both geocoding requests under its own privacy policy. Moon Shadows keeps no record of either request. With place-name lookup off, the app can name your current location from a deliberately coarser built-in list without a network connection.

On iPhone and iPad, Check current sky conditions sends the coordinate on screen to Apple Weather and receives current cloud cover plus Apple's required attribution. It is on when you install the app, runs only while the planner is showing the current time at a real location, and waits at least 15 minutes before asking again for the same rounded place. It does not request a forecast, temperature, precipitation, alerts, or weather in Home Screen widgets, on Apple Watch, in watch complications, Siri, or Shortcuts. Switch it off in the location sheet to keep the planner entirely on its geometry-only path. Apple handles the request under its own privacy policy; Moon Shadows stores neither the response nor a request history after you close the app.

On iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch, Moon Shadows saves exactly one selected non-sample place in its private App Group container so Home Screen widgets and watch face complications can calculate the same sky. On Mac and Apple TV, each app can save exactly one selected place in its own private preferences. A new selection replaces the previous one; no coordinate history is created, nothing is synchronized between platform apps, and the record is never transmitted to the developer.

If you do not grant location access, every platform remains fully usable with Griffith Observatory and bundled offline places. Apple TV has no location permission to grant.

Data Stored on Your Device

Moon Shadows stores simple preferences, such as measurement units, the last selected object height, and the settings available on that platform. iPhone, iPad, and Apple Watch also keep limited local usage state for optional-tip and eclipse-card reminders; Apple Weather responses are not stored. The App Group can hold one selected non-sample place for Home Screen widgets and watch complications. Mac and Apple TV instead hold one selected place in each app's private preferences. A new choice replaces it. All of this remains on that device, is never sent to Moon Shadows, and goes away when you delete the app. The app creates no account, remote profile, or supporter status — a tip unlocks nothing.

Network and Platform Services

The Moon Shadows app has no developer-operated network dependency and does not send astronomy, location, weather, or shadow-planning data to the developer. Core planning works offline on every platform. Only iPhone and iPad offer optional Apple geocoding, Apple Weather, and StoreKit tips. Mac and Apple TV are geometry-only and need no network for app features.

Optional Live Sky Website View

The live sky observatory requires an API token and does nothing with location until you press Use My Location and respond to your browser’s permission prompt. The browser requests one location fix without high-accuracy mode, rounds latitude and longitude to three decimal places — roughly 100 metres — and sends that rounded coordinate to the same-origin Moon Shadows sky oracle. The initial view requests the current Sun, Moon, light, and shadow; today’s local light events; and a 24-hour Sun and Moon path. Only the inexpensive current-position answer refreshes once a minute while the tab is visible. Your token and rounded coordinate stay in page memory; refreshing, closing, navigating away, or choosing Forget token and location removes them. They are not saved to browser storage or cookies. The server stores token hashes and temporary usage counters to control access; it keeps no coordinate history.

The web server’s operational access log may retain the request time, client IP address, API path, response status, byte count, request identifier, and duration for security, rate limiting, and reliability. Its log format excludes the query string and Authorization header, and the sky oracle logs parameter names rather than values. Moon Shadows does not use this traffic data for advertising, marketing profiles, or sale. Token-protected responses are marked no-store. The oracle checks tokens before calculating, limits work per token and across the service, and bounds concurrent expensive queries. The server may also temporarily block abusive traffic by IP address. Location is not used to make these decisions.

Apple Services

Apple may process geocoding, Apple Weather, purchase, diagnostic, or App Store analytics data according to your Apple settings and its own privacy policy. Moon Shadows does not receive personally identifying information from Apple.

Children's Privacy

Moon Shadows does not knowingly collect personal information from children or anyone else.

Changes to This Policy

If this policy changes, the effective date will be updated before the revised policy takes effect.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent to support@moonshadows.app.