A person reads every message.

I didn’t get my verification email

It comes from noreply@skystaapp.com and the subject is “Confirm your email”. Try these, in this order.

• Look in spam and junk. Skysta is new, so our sending address has no history yet, and some mail providers are careful with new ones. If you find it in there, mark it “not junk”. That helps the next one land properly.
• Wait a minute, then tap “Send it again”. There’s a one minute gap between sends and a cap of eight a day per account. That’s there to stop somebody flooding your inbox, not to slow you down.
• Check the address. The screen prints the address we sent to. If it’s wrong, tap “Wrong email? Sign out and start again” and sign up with the right one.
• You don’t have to tap anything when you get back. Skysta keeps asking on its own while you’re on that screen, and again the second you come back from Mail. “I tapped the link” is only there to hurry it.

Still nothing? Email us and we’ll let you in by hand. And if you signed in with Apple you’ll never see that screen at all, because Apple has already checked the address for us.

Why doesn’t the camera open?

Because the light isn’t happening yet. The shutter works from golden hour to last light in the evening, and from first light to the end of golden hour in the morning. Tap it outside those hours and it turns you down where you stand and tells you the time the camera opens. There’s no waiting room to sit in, and nothing to keep checking. Tap “Remind me” and your phone will nudge you when it opens.

Those times are worked out for exactly where you are, so they move with you and with the season. There are places and days with no window at all, up near the poles, and Skysta says so rather than naming an hour nobody worked out.

Why does my spot list look empty?

One of two reasons, and the app tells you which.

Nothing is near you yet. Discover shows places within a hundred miles of you, or 150 km if you read in kilometres, and it says how many real places sit further out than that. Widen it to three hundred miles, or to everywhere. The list grows one approved place at a time, and it starts wherever the research has been done. We’d rather show you an empty map than a place nobody has looked into.

A filter is on. If you’ve narrowed it by kind of place, or to sunrises or sunsets, clear a filter and the rest come back.

You don’t need a trusted spot to use Skysta. Your light times and your Sky Score work anywhere in the world, tonight.

Where does the Sky Score come from?

Your phone works it out. It reads the hourly forecast for the minute the colour actually peaks, which is a few minutes after sunset rather than at it, and it also reads the sky along the light’s path before it reaches you. It’s our best read, not a promise. When there’s no forecast for that minute there’s no score, and we never make one up. When part of the forecast was missing, the app says which part in a line beside the number instead of scoring around the hole and saying nothing.

Who can see where my photos were taken?

Your exact spot: nobody, unless the map switch is on when you share. A shared sky carries a map pin only with “Show on the map” on, and the pin is exactly where you took the photo. That switch starts off, for everybody, every time. It’s chosen fresh for every photo and never remembered, so one tap turns it on when you want the pin, and doing nothing keeps it off. One more thing every shared sky carries, switch on or off: a rough square, about 5.5 km across, of where it was taken. It exists so people near you can find your sky in their Local feed. It’s never drawn on the map, it never names a place, and it comes off with “Remove the place”. Also worth knowing: stand at one of our trusted spots, or within a short walk of one, and the post carries that spot’s public name unless you tap the × to take it off. You don’t have to have planned it. That’s a named public place, not your GPS. Your journal photos back up to your account now, and since September 2026 where you took them goes with that copy, so your own photo map survives a new phone. Only your account can ever read it, and keeping a sky in your journal still publishes nothing about where it was taken. The details are in the privacy policy, which is written in plain English on purpose.

How do I take the location off a sky I already shared?

Open the sky, tap the ⋯ menu, then Remove the place. Confirm it, and the place comes off the post. The photograph stays exactly where it is.

It takes all of it at once, on purpose: the pin, the town, the trusted spot’s name, and the rough cell every shared sky carries. There’s no half-way state where the map pin goes but the post still says where you were. It can’t be undone, and nothing can put a place back on a sky afterwards. That’s deliberate too. A sky can lose its place. No sky can gain one.

The row only shows on your own skies, and only when the sky actually names a place. If you can’t see it, there’s nothing on there to take off.

Do my private photos get uploaded?

Yes, and that’s a change we made. Your private skies used to live on your phone and nowhere else, so losing the phone lost them. Now a sky you keep to yourself is copied to your own private corner of our storage. Sign in again, on any phone, and your skies come back. The privacy policy has the date it changed and what it changed from.

What that copy is: only your account can open it. It’s not in the feed, it’s not on your profile, and no share link can reach it. Where you took the photo IS part of it, and that changed in September 2026. It used to stay on your phone and nowhere else, which sounded safer and meant your own photo map did not survive a new phone. The coordinate is in the copy now, still readable by your account and nobody else, and it goes when the photo goes and when the account goes. If the photo carried a trusted spot’s tag, that spot’s public name is in the copy too, and the restored sky comes back wearing it. The copy we keep is a bit smaller than the one on your phone, and it carries none of the camera’s hidden data.

What we won’t dress up: there’s no switch to turn the backup off, and we hold the keys to our own storage the way every app does. We don’t open your photos. Delete a sky and its backup goes too. Delete your account and the whole backup goes with it. And if an account goes six months without being used, we may delete that backup on its own. Nothing else goes with it, nothing happens automatically, and a person presses the button.

Someone sent me a link to a sky. Why can’t I see it?

A shared sky is an address, not a picture. The link opens Skysta straight onto that exact photo, so you need the app and an account. We don’t put the image on a web page, and a link never carries the file with it. That’s on purpose.

Can I save someone else’s sky to my Photos?

No. Save to Photos only shows up on your own skies, and Share sends a link rather than the file. It’s their picture. We can’t stop a screenshot, and we won’t pretend otherwise, but Skysta isn’t going to be the thing that carries it out.

How do I report a photo or block someone?

Tap the ⋯ menu on any shared sky to report it or block its author. We aim to act on reports within 24 hours, and one person reads them, so that is the usual answer rather than a guarantee. Blocking takes that account’s skies out of your feed and out of the trusted-spot galleries, on every device you sign in to.

How do I delete my account, and what goes with it?

Settings → Delete account, inside the app. We ask you to prove it’s you first, because Firebase won’t delete an account on a session that’s been open a while. Back out there and nothing has been touched.

What goes. Every sky you shared, and its picture, off the feed for everyone. Your journal backup, photographs and all. Your saved spots. The record behind your Lock Screen card, which is the one that would otherwise keep our server starting cards on a phone nobody is signed into. Your profile photo. Your block list. Your online-status record. Your Apple sign-in is disconnected, if you used it. Then your account itself. And on the phone: your journal, your reminders, your cached pictures, your unfinished photograph, your preferences and your two diagnostics answers.

If something won’t delete, the whole thing stops and your account is left exactly as it was, with a message saying how many failed, so you can try again in a minute. We’d rather stop than half-delete you. Three small steps are the exception and it’s fairer to say so: the profile photo, the block list and disconnecting Apple are tried, and then the sweep carries on either way, because one dropped connection over one tiny private record must never trap you inside an account you asked to leave. If one of those is ever left behind, tell us and we’ll take it. Once the rest finishes, there’s no undo.

What stays, and why. A report somebody filed about you is permanent: it’s their complaint, not yours to delete. A report you filed isn’t permanent, it’s just out of the button’s reach, because an app that can delete its own reports can file and refile all day. Spot suggestions, spot corrections and feedback you sent stay for the same kind of reason: they’re closed to every copy of the app, including yours. So is the counter that limits verification emails, which holds no address and no name, only how many went.

Everything on that list can be taken out by hand except two: a report somebody else filed about you, and the line recording that we ever acted on your account. Email hello@skystaapp.com and say what you want gone. We answer requests to see, correct, export or delete your data within 45 days. The whole thing, step by step, is in the privacy policy.

What happens if I just sign out?

Signing out clears this phone of the account that was on it: your journal, your reminders, your cached pictures, the local copy of your saved spots, an unfinished photograph, and your preferences. It does nothing to skies you’ve already shared. Those stay up.

It doesn’t cost you your journal any more. Sign back in, on this phone or another one, and your photographs come back from the backup, and your saved spots with them. The one exception is a photograph that hadn’t finished uploading yet. That one is only on the phone, so wiping the phone loses it. Skysta counts them and warns you before it does.

Can you add my favourite spot?

Suggest it from the Discover tab. Search for it, tap the map, or type the coordinates, so the pin lands exactly where the view is. A person reads every suggestion before it goes live for everyone. You can check where yours got to in Settings → Help → My suggestions. You can also suggest one from the website, at skystaapp.com/spots/suggest.

What do I need to run Skysta?

An iPhone on iOS 18 or later. It’s free, there’s nothing to buy inside it, and there are no ads. You’ll want a connection for the forecast. Your light times are worked out on the phone and don’t need one.