Privacy Policy

For the Sky Clock app and skyclockapp.com · Last updated 10 August 2026

Who this is from

Sky Clock is made by Eric Rosenbaum, an independent developer, and published on the App Store under the name Sam Harper. In this policy, "we" and "us" mean the developer, and "the app" means Sky Clock for iPhone and iPad.

What the app uses, and why

Your location

With your permission, Sky Clock reads your device location so it can compute which planets, Moon phase and satellite passes are visible from where you are standing. The calculation happens entirely on your phone. The coordinates are never uploaded to us, logged remotely, or shared with anyone.

If you would rather not share your location at all, you can type in a place by hand, and every feature works the same way. The one exception is described under "Weather" below: to fetch a cloud forecast for a place, that place has to be sent to Apple.

Your observation log

If you subscribe to Sky Clock Plus, the sightings you save — the object, the date, the coordinates, and any note or photo you add — are stored on your device and, if you are signed in to iCloud, mirrored to your own private iCloud database. That database belongs to your Apple Account. The developer cannot see it, and neither can anyone else. Deleting the app, or deleting the entries inside it, removes that data.

Notifications

Alerts are scheduled locally on your device from the same calculations the app already performs. There is no push server, and no device token is registered anywhere.

Diagnostics

The app keeps a small rolling buffer of events, such as "a screen was opened", in memory on your device, so that a development build can show what a session looked like. It contains no identifiers, it is never written to a server, and no part of it leaves your phone. There is no analytics SDK, no crash reporting service and no advertising identifier in the app.

The network requests the app makes

The app makes three kinds of network request and no others.

• Orbital elements, about once a week. A small public text file is downloaded from Celestrak (celestrak.org) so that Space Station pass times stay accurate. The request carries no identifier and nothing about you beyond the ordinary network metadata any web request carries. The file is cached, and the app works offline from the cached copy.
• Space weather, for the aurora. A public planetary K-index forecast is downloaded from the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (services.swpc.noaa.gov). It is the same file for everyone, it carries no identifier, and whether the aurora could reach you is worked out on your device from your latitude.
• Weather, if you use the forecast features. The cloud forecast comes from Apple Weather through Apple's WeatherKit. To return a forecast for your location, Apple receives that location. It goes to Apple, not to us; we never see it. Apple states that location data used for weather is not linked to your identity or used to build a profile. See Apple's Privacy Policy. This is the only request that involves where you are, and it is only made when you use the parts of the app that show a cloud forecast.

Purchases

Subscriptions are handled entirely by Apple through the App Store. Sky Clock never sees your payment details, your name or your billing address. Apple provides the developer with aggregate, anonymous sales reporting, which cannot be traced back to an individual customer.

This website

skyclockapp.com is a set of static pages. It sets no cookies, runs no scripts, embeds no fonts, images or players from other companies, and has no analytics. The company hosting the site keeps standard server logs, which typically include IP addresses and are used only to serve and protect the site.

Data the developer receives

None. No usage data leaves your device. If you email support, the developer will of course see your email address and whatever you choose to write. Those emails are kept only for as long as it takes to help you, and are never used for marketing.

Your rights

Privacy laws including the GDPR and the CCPA give you the right to see, correct, export and delete the personal data a company holds about you, and the right not to have your data sold. We hold none, so in practice there is nothing for us to hand over or delete, and we have never sold or shared personal data because we have never had any. Data that lives on your device or in your iCloud account is under your control: you can delete individual log entries, or remove the app and its iCloud data, at any time. If you would like to ask about any of this, write to the address below.

Children

Sky Clock is rated 4+ and contains nothing objectionable. It collects no data, so there is nothing to collect from a child either. We do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone, at any age.

Changes

If this policy ever changes, the updated version will be published on this page and the date at the top will change. If a change is ever significant enough to matter to you, it will be called out in the app's release notes.

Contact

Eric Rosenbaum
ericrosenbaum77@gmail.com