Skysta Privacy Policy

1. Your account

Skysta cannot be used signed out. You sign in with an email address and password, or with Sign in with Apple. If you use Apple’s Hide My Email, the relay address is all we ever get.

What we hold about you: your email address, the name you chose, your profile picture if you added one, when the account was made, when you last used the app, who you have blocked, the spots you saved, and your journal photographs. No phone number, no home address, no date of birth, no payment details, no contacts.

Your email address is readable by you alone. Your name and profile picture are public: they appear beside every sky you share.

New email accounts must confirm the address. We send a link, and until you follow it the only screen you can reach is the one asking you to. Resend, an email service, delivers the message, and the only things kept afterwards are a count of how many messages went to your account that day and how many have ever been sent to it. Apple sign-ins skip this.

We ask for a name before the app opens, with no skip. You can change it at any time by tapping your name at the top of Settings. We never publish anything taken from your email address.

While the app is on your screen it writes a small “online” record in a separate Google database: a random connection name, timestamps, and the app version. Nothing in Skysta shows it to anybody, and only your own account can read it.

Full text: §1

2. Location

Skysta asks for location only while you are using the app, at about hundred-metre accuracy. It asks for precise location only when you turn on Show on the map for a photograph, and iOS drops that permission when you leave.

Here is every place a location value goes:

• Your watched place, the town whose light Skysta shows you, is saved on your phone and sent at full precision to Apple WeatherKit for the forecast.
• A coordinate rounded to about 1.1 km goes to Open-Meteo for the air quality reading.
• Where each photograph was taken is recorded at full precision and only you can ever see it. It is not in your iCloud backup. Since September 2026 it IS in the private copy of your journal that Skysta keeps for you, so your own photo map survives signing out and moving to a new phone. That copy is readable by your account and no other, and it is deleted when you delete the photograph or your account. Sharing a photograph is the only thing that publishes anything from it, and §4 says exactly what.
• A spot you suggest carries the exact point you marked on the map.
• The review page asks Apple’s geocoder to name the town a photograph was taken in, so it can show you that name before you decide anything. It sends a rounded point, about 1.1 km across, and never the exact one. That point is only ever asked about. It is never stored and never published, and it is finer than the roughly 5.5 km cell §4 describes as riding on a shared sky, which has not changed. It runs when the page opens, so it happens even if you then keep the sky private. Until September 2026 this ran only when you turned Show on the map on, and it sent the exact coordinate.
• When you look at somebody else’s pinned sky, your phone asks Apple’s geocoder to name the place under their pin, so that coordinate leaves your phone too, with your network address and nothing else.
• The Lock Screen card, with the app closed. When Settings → Reminders → Lock Screen → Show the card is on and you have a watched place, the app keeps one record on our own server, under your account. It holds that place rounded to about 1 km, its name, your phone’s time zone, the card switch, your Sunset and Sunrise switches, your quiet hours and days, the app version, the next window the server should handle, the last window your phone planted itself, which of Apple’s two push services your copy uses, the token Apple gives your phone for starting a card, a second token for ending the one card that is running and which window that token belongs to, and three housekeeping values: which shape of record it is, when your phone last wrote it, and one word saying what your phone did with the last card it was asked about, which is either that it kept it, that it ended a second copy of it, or that it ended one it had not started itself. It is rewritten when any of that changes, and again the next time the app runs more than a week after the last write. The server adds its own notes beside it: which window it handled, which window the end push is for, when it last pushed, when the card should end, and how many cards your phone did not answer. Up to two pushes go to your phone for each card: one to start it at the opening minute, and one to end it five minutes after the window closes, using a second token your phone hands back for that one card. The start push carries the card’s times and your watched place’s name. The end push carries the times. Neither carries anything about the forecast or your Sky Score. Turn the switch off and the record is deleted.
• On the website, skystaapp.com, checking a Sky Score sends the place you typed, or, if you press Show my sky or Use where I am, your position rounded to about 5 km, to our own server, which passes it to Apple WeatherKit and Open-Meteo for the forecast and, for a rounded position only, to OpenStreetMap to name the town. It is not stored and it is not linked to any account.
• The map of spots on the website is drawn with map tiles from OpenFreeMap (tiles.openfreemap.org), a free project on its own servers behind Cloudflare. Your browser asks it for the map pieces on your screen and the label fonts, and each request carries your IP address, the area you are looking at, and the name of our site. It sets no cookies and asks for no key or account, and we send it nothing about you. If your browser cannot draw this map, the older OpenStreetMap map (tile.openstreetmap.org) is used the same way, under the OpenStreetMap Foundation privacy policy.
• Suggesting a spot on the website sends the name you gave the place, its town and two-letter state or country if you filled them in, why you think the sky is good there, whether it is better at sunrise or sunset, the exact point you marked on the map, and your email address if you chose to leave one, to our own server, which files it in the same review queue the app’s suggestions go into. Nothing else goes with it: no account, no cookie, and we do not keep your network address.

Full text: §2

3. Your photographs

Every photograph is taken with Skysta’s own camera. Skysta cannot read your photo library; it can only add to it when you tap Save to Photos.

Your journal is private, and it is backed up to your account. A copy of each photograph, re-encoded at 2048 pixels on its long edge, goes to your own private area of Skysta’s storage so your skies come back on a new phone. Since 15 September 2026 the coordinate is part of that copy too, readable by your account and no other, so your own photo map survives a sign-out (§2). The trusted spot tag is in that copy too, so a restored photograph comes back wearing the spot’s public name. Only your account can read the backup. There is no switch to turn it off, and administrator access exists and is used on a backup only to delete it.

When you share a sky, the image is rebuilt from raw pixels at 3072 pixels on its long edge. That strips every piece of embedded data the camera wrote: no GPS tag, no capture time, no camera serial number.

Before a sky or a profile picture is published, your own phone checks it with Apple’s sensitive content analysis, on the device, with nothing uploaded. If it is flagged, Skysta refuses to publish and records nothing about the refusal. The check runs only if Sensitive Content Warning is on in iOS Settings. A photograph you keep in your journal is never checked, on purpose.

Full text: §3

4. What a shared sky publishes

Every shared sky carries: the photograph, your account identifier, your display name, whether it was a sunrise or sunset, whether it was taken inside a live light window, when the shutter fired, when it was published, and the picture’s shape.

Two things depend on your choices:

• The spot tag, if the photograph was taken within 500 metres of a trusted spot. It starts on and names a public overlook. Tap the ✕ to take it off.
• Show on the map, which starts off, for everybody, on every photograph, unless you set it to start on at Settings → Location & units. Turn it on and the sky carries the exact coordinate the shutter fired at, drawn as a pin. It is a choice on every photograph, and one tap either way decides that photograph. The name of the town goes out whichever way it sits; Name the town, in the same place, is the switch for that.

And one thing goes with no control: a coarse cell of about 5.5 km, on every shared sky with a coordinate, whichever way the map switch sits. It puts your sky in the Local feed of people nearby. The town name is worked out from a different, finer point that is only ever asked about and never published: see §2. On the map it is drawn as a town-sized area, about 5.5 km across, with the town’s name on it, and never as a point: there is no zoom at which it becomes one. It is readable by every signed-in account. A sky you keep in your journal publishes nothing at all.

If a spot tag and the map pin are both on, the pin other people see is drawn at the spot, but the record still holds your exact coordinate.

Full text: §4

5. Who can see it

Every signed-in Skysta account. There is no friends list and no private audience. Every field of every shared sky is readable by anyone with the app, the image link works for anyone who has it, signed in or not, and anybody can screenshot it. Treat a shared sky as public, because it is.

Sharing somebody else’s sky sends a link, never the picture. Sharing your own sky sends a card carrying the picture, your name and profile picture, the light and the Sky Score, and the name of the trusted spot it was tagged at, when it has one. The town is not on the card. All of that is already public on the sky itself. A card never carries a coordinate.

A sky sent to one person is the exception, and it is narrow. From your journal you can send a private sky to exactly one person. The picture is copied to a private area of our server, and the link you send carries a secret. The first Skysta account to open that link becomes the one account, besides yours, that can ever see the sky; a forwarded link then opens nothing. It is never in the feed, never on a map, never on a spot’s page, and carries no location. Our server keeps a fingerprint of the secret, never the secret itself. You can take it back at any time, and that deletes the picture and the record. The person you sent it to can still screenshot it, so send it to someone you trust.

Nobody else can see your email address, your journal, your block list, your saved spots, your online status, or a report you filed.

Full text: §5

6. How long things last

A shared sky is in the public feed for three days. Then it is not deleted. It moves to your profile, which shows your newest sixty, and to the trusted spot’s page if it carries a tag, which shows that spot’s newest forty. Older skies are not deleted and still open from their own link. Nothing in Skysta removes anything on a timer. You can delete a sky at any time, and we can take one down on moderation.

A sky sent to one person stays until you take it back, delete the photograph, or delete your account. It is not on any timer. Your account, your saved spots, and your journal backup stay until you delete them or delete your account. Signing out does not remove the backup. A backup on an account unused for six months may be deleted, by hand, one account at a time.

A spot you suggest from the website is kept until a person has reviewed it, and if we publish the place it stays as the record of where the spot came from. The email address you gave is kept only until we have replied about that one place, then deleted by hand, and the review desk flags any address still held every time the queue is opened. To have the suggestion or the address removed sooner, write to hello@skystaapp.com with the name of the place and roughly when you sent it. Website suggestions are in the daily database copy for up to thirty days like everything else in that copy.

The record behind the Lock Screen card lasts while that switch is on. It is deleted the moment you turn the switch off, unset your watched place, sign out, or delete your account. Our server also deletes it on its own if Apple tells us your phone’s token no longer works.

Three windows are outside our control: Google keeps a deleted photograph recoverable for seven days, keeps a deleted record readable for one hour, and we take a dated copy of the database onto the developer’s own Mac once a day, kept for thirty days. Those copies hold records, never photographs.

Some things are permanent on purpose: a report somebody filed about you, and the line recording that we ever acted on your account.

Full text: §6

7. Taking the place off a sky

A published sky cannot be edited, with one exception that only ever removes. Open your own sky, tap the ⋯ menu, choose Remove the place. The pin, the town name, the spot tag and the coarse cell all go together and the photograph stays. It cannot be undone, and it cannot reach a screenshot somebody already took.

Deleting a whole sky is on the same menu.

Full text: §7

8. Diagnostics and app counts

Both are off until you turn them on, and they are two separate switches in Settings → Privacy. Signing out turns both off.

Crash reports go to Google’s Crashlytics. If the app breaks, a report is written to your phone first and nothing is sent until you say yes on a card the next time you open the app. A report holds where in the code it broke, what kind of phone, and memory figures. It never holds your name, email, photographs, coordinates, or anything you typed. It does carry an identifier for this install of the app.

App counts go to Google’s Firebase Analytics. Skysta sends exactly nine kinds of event: that you opened the app, that a reminder was placed and whether you opened it, that you photographed and kept a sky, that a capture failed and which of nine fixed reasons, and a handful of once-per-install milestones. None carries your account identifier, a coordinate, a photograph, or any text. Firebase adds a few automatic events of its own, including how long the app was in the foreground.

The sky rating is gone. No part of the app asks how a sky turned out, and no rating is written anywhere. The app counts switch governs Firebase Analytics and nothing else (§8.1).

One thing goes whether either switch is on or off: a small header Google’s libraries attach to every request, naming which Firebase pieces the app uses and the dates it was used.

Full text: §8

9. Who receives your data

• Google Firebase: sign-in, the database, the storage that holds photographs, the online record, the verification email function, the small job behind the Lock Screen card, the website, and, only if you switch them on, crash reports and app counts.
• Resend: your email address and the verification link, to deliver that one message.
• Apple: Sign in with Apple; WeatherKit gets your watched place at full precision; MapKit gets map regions, searches, and drive routes; the geocoder gets coordinates to name.
• Google Maps, only if you pick it for directions: the trusted spot as the destination, and nothing about you.
• Open-Meteo: a coordinate rounded to about 1.1 km, for the air quality reading.
• Apple’s push service: the tokens for your phone, the card’s times, and, on the start push, the name of your watched place, only while the Lock Screen card switch is on, so the card can start and end with the app closed.
• On the website only: our own forecast server, Apple WeatherKit, Open-Meteo, OpenFreeMap (map tiles and label fonts), and OpenStreetMap (map tiles when the newer map cannot be drawn, and naming a rounded position) receive the place you ask about, as §2 describes, and a spot you suggest there goes to our own server and into Skysta’s Firebase database. Firebase Hosting serves the pages.
• Other Skysta users: exactly what §4 lists.
• The developer’s own Mac: a daily copy of the database, records only.

Skysta has no advertising libraries and no tracking libraries. We do not sell your personal information and never have.

Three things you can send us by hand, a spot suggestion, a spot correction, and a feedback note, carry your account identifier and are read by a person. A suggestion is read at a desk: we check what you wrote against public sources and check your coordinate against a map, and nobody goes to the place. None can be edited or deleted from the app, and none is removed when you delete your account. Ask and we will remove them. A spot suggested on the website carries no account identifier, so if you want it removed, tell us the place and when you sent it.

Full text: §9

10. What stays on your phone

The coordinate of every capture, on your phone and in the private journal backup only your account can read. Your reminder schedule, set locally by iOS. Your units, your plan, and your preferences. Your two diagnostics answers. A small list of firsts so a milestone is never counted twice.

Your Lock Screen shows a card while a light window is open, and never before it, naming the place or the spot you planned. It shows the Sky Score when your phone has a reading recent enough to stand behind, and no number at all when it does not, or when the card was started by our server. When the light is over the card stays for one more hour, offering to show you what other people caught near you, then goes on its own. On iOS 26 the app hands iOS the next four windows and iOS starts each card at its opening minute, with the system alert sound, and nothing is sent anywhere. A card that starts itself has to make a sound, so one is only ever scheduled for a light you follow: with sunrise reminders off, which is how they start unless you chose sunrises or both lights when you set the app up, no morning card is scheduled. Beyond those four, and on earlier versions of iOS, our own server starts the card through Apple’s push service while the app is closed, using the small record §2 describes, and ends it the same way five minutes after the window closes. The start push carries the card’s times and the name of your watched place. The end push carries the times. That record exists only while the card switch is on. Anybody holding your locked phone can read the card. Turn it off at Settings → Reminders → Lock Screen → Show the card, or under Live Activities in your iPhone’s Settings.

Skysta switches off the database’s on-device cache so other people’s records are never written to your phone. Pictures are different: the app keeps up to 200 MB of recently shown shared skies in a cache on the phone so the feed is not re-downloaded every time, and that cache is emptied when you sign out.

Full text: §10

11. Deleting your account

Settings → Delete account. You prove it is you first. Then, in order, the app withdraws every sky you shared, withdraws every sky you sent to one person, retries any image that would not delete earlier, deletes your journal backup, your saved spots, the record behind your Lock Screen card, your profile picture, your block list, and your online record, revokes your Apple sign-in if it can, deletes your account record, and wipes the phone. If your skies, the ones you sent to one person, your backup, saved spots or that Lock Screen record cannot all be removed, it stops and tells you rather than leaving your things behind.

What the button cannot reach: reports you filed and reports filed about you, the record that we ever acted on your account, spot suggestions, corrections and feedback you sent, and the verification email counter. Write to hello@skystaapp.com and we remove by hand everything on that list except two: the record of our own action, because a decision that can be erased is not a record; and a report somebody else filed, because it is their complaint.

Deleted photographs take seven days to be destroyed, as §6 says.

Signing out wipes the phone of the account that was on it and does nothing to skies you already shared. Your journal backup and saved spots stay on the account and come back when you sign in.

By email, you can ask for access, a copy, a correction, or deletion of anything, and you will get an answer within 45 days. This includes anything you sent from the website. We will never ask for a government ID or a password by email.

Full text: §11

12. Children

Skysta is not directed to children under 13, and we do not knowingly collect personal information from anyone under 13. The app does not ask your age and cannot check it. If you believe a child under 13 has an account, write to hello@skystaapp.com and we will delete it and tell you when it is done.

If you are young and here anyway: a shared sky is public and permanent, turn Name the town off in Location & units, leave Show on the map off, take the spot tag off, and know that your Lock Screen card can be read by anyone holding your phone. With those three off, a sky you share carries no pin, no town name and no spot. It still carries the rough cell, about 5.5 km across, so people near you can find it. If you want a sky to say nothing at all, keep it in your journal.

Full text: §12

13. Your rights

Everybody who uses Skysta can ask to know what we hold, get a copy, correct it, delete it, or limit what is collected, whether or not the law where you live requires it. You will never be treated worse for asking. Write to hello@skystaapp.com.

Nothing about you is decided automatically. The Sky Score is a forecast about the sky, not an assessment of you. Skysta does not sell your information and does not share it for advertising, so there is nothing to opt out of.

An account and a rough position are required for the app to work. Everything else is optional.

In statute categories, Skysta collects identifiers, photographs, precise and coarse location, app usage if you switch it on, and text you choose to send. It collects no audio, biometric, financial, health, or government data, and builds no profile of you. Skysta is operated from Utah and its providers, Google, Apple, Resend and Open-Meteo, may process data outside your state or country. Every one of them sees your network address on the requests the app makes.

Full text: §13

14. Security

Everything travels over TLS. Security rules are enforced by the server, not just by the app: every published record is checked field by field, the author must be the signed-in account, the publication time is the server’s clock, and no client can edit a published sky except to remove its place. Your journal backup is readable by one account, yours, and is never turned into a web address.

No service is perfectly secure. A location you publish is readable by every signed-in account, and the photograph can be screenshotted by any of them. Do not publish anything you would not be comfortable being public and permanent.

Full text: §14

15. Tracking

Skysta declares no tracking and does not use Apple’s tracking permission, because it has nothing to ask permission for. The website sets no cookies, runs no analytics, and loads no third-party scripts; the map’s tiles and the forecast are the only things it fetches from anyone, and a spot you choose to suggest is the only thing it sends, and §2 says what goes with them. Its privacy manifest declares email, user identifier, name, photographs, other user content, coarse location, precise location, and one row of other data for the online record, the date you last opened the app and the count of verification emails, all for app functionality and linked to your account. It also declares product interaction and crash data, which are not linked to your identity, and a device identifier, which is. Two things fall under that last row: the identifier Google and Crashlytics make for themselves when you turn diagnostics on, and the token Apple gives your phone for starting the Lock Screen card, which §2 describes.

Full text: §15

16. Changes to this policy

If Skysta changes what it collects, who receives it, or how long it is kept, this policy is updated and the effective date at the top moves. Every change is written down, dated, on its own page, in the words used at the time, and never edited afterwards.

Full text: §16

17. Contact

hello@skystaapp.com is the address for everything. It is read every day. Skysta is made and operated by Cy Liassides, in Utah, in the United States. There is no company behind it and no staff.

Full text: §17