Skysta Terms of Use, what changed

16. Changes to these terms

We may change these terms, but only for a reason, and these are the reasons: the law or a regulator requires it; a feature is added, changed, or removed; a service Skysta depends on changes its own terms; or we have to close a security or abuse problem. We will not change them to take away something you already have for no reason at all.

How you will be told, and what that is worth. The date at the top of this page changes, and the release that carries the change describes it. Skysta has no in-app messaging and sends no push notifications, so this page is the notice.

If you do not accept a change, stop using Skysta and delete your account in Settings. There is nothing to pay and nothing to cancel. Continuing to use Skysta after a change has taken effect means the new terms apply from then on. A change never applies backwards to something you did before it, and no change takes away a right the law gives you as a consumer.

16.1 What changed on 28 August 2026

Four things changed. Two of them are material, which means they change what you agreed to rather than only how it is written down. Thirteen people accepted the previous version of these terms, so this entry says exactly what moved.

• You now have to be 18 or older. The age question is gone. These terms used to set the floor at 13, with a higher floor in some countries, and the app used to ask for a birth month and year on the phone before it would let anybody in. The question has been removed from the app entirely, along with the two yes-or-no values it left on the device. The floor is now 18, everywhere, and it is a promise you make to us rather than a test the app runs. This is a material change and §1 is the whole of it.
• “Show on the map” now starts OFF, for everybody, on every photograph. It used to start on for adults, and off only for somebody the old age question knew was under 18. Nothing seeds it now. This publishes less about you, not more, but it changes what these terms describe, so it is written down here. This is a material change and §7 is the whole of it.
• These terms are now written for United States law only. Skysta will be available on the United States App Store and is not offered anywhere else. Everything that existed only for European Union or United Kingdom law has been removed: the digital-consent ages, the EU and UK consumer section, the Digital Services Act contact point, and the references to representatives that were never appointed. §15 now says plainly that Utah law governs and that the courts of Utah have jurisdiction.
• There is a copyright takedown section now, at §10.1. It says how to send us a notice, what a notice needs to contain, how to send a counter notice, and that we terminate repeat infringers. It also says plainly that we have not yet filed a designated agent with the United States Copyright Office, and does not claim a safe harbour we have not registered for. When that filing is made, the placeholder in §10.1 is replaced with the agent’s name and address and this section gets a new dated entry.

What did not change. Everything else. Skysta is still free. Your photographs are still yours, the licence you grant by sharing still covers only showing the sky inside Skysta, and it still ends when you delete the post. The seven days in the feed and permanence afterwards, the coarse cell on every shared sky, Remove the place, the reporting and blocking rules, the 24-hour moderation commitment, the dormant-backup rule and the deletion behaviour are all exactly as they were. We have not added an arbitration clause or a class-action waiver, and §15 says so.

16.2 A later change on the same day, 28 August 2026

Two things moved after the entry above was written, on the same day.

• “Show on the map” starts ON again. The entry above records the switch moving to off for everybody. That was reversed the same day. It now starts on for everyone, on every photograph, and you turn it off on the share screen when you would rather not publish the pin. Both entries stay here because both happened, and a change log that quietly tidies itself up is worth less than no change log. If you set your account up this morning and read that the switch started off, this is how you find out that it does not any more. This is a material change and §7 is the whole of it. Nothing was republished and no sky already on the feed changed.
• You can share one sky per capture window. That is a new rule and it is in §9. It limits what you publish, not what you photograph: private captures in your Journal are not limited at all.

What did not change. Every shared sky still carries the coarse cell of about 5.5 km whether the map switch is on or off, so turning the switch off has never taken a sky out of its Local area and it does not now. The cell is still never drawn on a map and it still never becomes a place name. The switch is still per photograph and still one tap either way. The spot tag still comes off with one tap. Remove the place (§7) still takes the pin, the town name, the spot tag and the coarse cell off a shared sky together, and it still cannot be undone.

16.3 A third change on the same day, 28 August 2026

The age floor goes back to 13. §16.1 above records it moving from 13 to 18 earlier today. That has been reversed, so the floor is 13 or older, which is what it was before this morning and what the thirteen people already using Skysta agreed to when they signed up.

So the material change §16.1 announced on this point has been undone rather than compounded. If you accepted the older terms, the age rule you agreed to is the one in force again.

It is still a promise you make rather than a test the app runs. Nothing about that changed. There is no age question in the app, nothing estimates your age, and email verification proves somebody can read a message, not how old they are. §1 is the whole of it.

One thing was added in the app because of this, and it is worth knowing about. "Show on the map" still starts on. But the first time you share a sky with it on, Skysta stops once and tells you plainly what publishing an exact pin means, and lets you share without it instead. Once you have answered that, it never asks again. It is a one-time explanation rather than a setting, and it does not change what the switch does or how it starts.

16.4 A fourth change on the same day, 28 August 2026

“Show on the map” starts OFF again. §16.1 records it moving to off. §16.2 records it moving back to on. This entry records it moving to off once more, which makes three settings of one switch in one day, and this is the one Skysta launches with. All three entries stay above this one because all three happened, and a change log that quietly tidies itself up is worth less than no change log. Nothing earlier in this section has been edited to look like it always said this.

This is a material change, and it goes in the direction of publishing less. Nobody reading this needs to worry that they have been publishing more than they thought. Nothing new is published by this change and nothing new is collected. A sky you shared earlier today carried a pin only if the switch was on when you pressed Share, and the share screen said in words what that meant, beside the switch, before you pressed it. Nothing was republished and no sky already on the feed changed. §7 is the whole of it.

How the switch works now. It starts off, for everyone, on every photograph. One tap turns it on for that one photograph, nothing remembers the answer, and the next photograph starts off again. Turn it on and the post carries the exact coordinate the photograph was taken at and the name of the town. Leave it off and it carries neither.

The one-time explanation from §16.3 is still there. The first time you turn the pin on and share, Skysta stops once, tells you plainly what publishing an exact pin means, and lets you share without it instead. Once you have answered, it never asks again. What it is for has shifted: when the switch started on it interrupted a default, and now it confirms a decision you made. It is still an explanation rather than a setting, and it still does not change what the switch does or how it starts.

What did not change. Every shared sky still carries the coarse cell of about 5.5 km whether the map switch is on or off, so the pin has never been what puts a sky in its own area, and turning the pin off has never taken a sky out of the Local feed of people near where it was taken. The cell is still never drawn on a map and it still never becomes a place name. The spot tag still appears on its own near a trusted spot and still comes off with one tap. Remove the place (§7) still takes the pin, the town name, the spot tag and the coarse cell off a shared sky together, and it still cannot be undone. A sky you keep in your Journal still publishes nothing about where it was taken. The age floor is still 13 or older (§16.3), Skysta is still free, and your photographs are still yours.

16.5 The Community Guidelines

There is a third document now, and it is the short one. The Community Guidelines say in plain words what belongs on Skysta and what does not. They are not a new rule: every line in them is something these Terms already required or something the report sheet already asked you to flag. What changed is that you can now read the standard you are being asked to hold other people to, and that they are being held to.

If the Guidelines and these Terms ever seem to disagree, these Terms govern, and please write in so the mistake gets fixed.

16.6 What changed on 30 August 2026

The Moments feed is now three days long instead of seven. §6.6 says so, and so does the short version at the top. That is the whole of the change and it is the only number that moved.

A shared sky is still permanent, and this is the sentence to hold on to. Leaving the feed has never meant being deleted. A sky that leaves the feed moves, and it stays where it moves to: on your profile, where any signed-in account that taps your name can see your whole archive, oldest to newest, and on the page of the trusted spot it was tagged to, if it carries a tag. A shorter feed is a shorter time being news. It is not a shorter life for the photograph. Nothing is removed automatically, ever. There is still no timer anywhere in Skysta that takes a sky down, and the only two people who can take one down by hand are still you, at any time, from the ⋯ menu, and us, from outside the app, for the four reasons §6.6 lists.

The seven days in §6.3, §10 and §11 are Google’s, and they did not move. Google Cloud Storage still keeps a deleted photograph in a recoverable state for seven days before it destroys it. That window is about destroying a picture we deleted, not about how long a sky sits in the feed, and nothing here touches it. The one hour a deleted record stays readable and the thirty-day rule on our own dated copies are unchanged as well.

What this does to a sky you already shared. A sky more than three days old leaves the feed sooner than the earlier wording said it would. It goes exactly where it was always going to go, and it stays there for good: onto your profile, and onto the trusted spot’s page if it carries a tag. Nothing was republished and nothing was deleted, and no sky already on the feed had anything added to or taken off it.

What did not change. Everything else. Skysta is still free. Your photographs are still yours, the licence you grant by sharing still covers only showing the sky inside Skysta, and it still ends when you delete the post. The coarse cell on every shared sky, Remove the place, one sky per capture window, the reporting and blocking rules, the 24-hour moderation commitment, the age floor of 13 or older, the dormant-backup rule and the deletion behaviour are all exactly as they were.

16.7 A later change on the same day, 30 August 2026

Two sentences in §10 had fallen behind the app, and both have been corrected. Nothing in the app changed today; the words caught up with what shipped on 28 August 2026.

• Your profile picture is screened before we accept it. §10 said a profile picture was never checked and called that a gap. Since 28 August the avatar goes through the same on-device check a shared sky does, on the same terms, and is refused before anything is stored if the check flags it. The gap the old sentence described is closed, so the sentence is gone.
• You can report a person, not only a sky. §10 said there was nothing in the app to press about an avatar or a name on its own. Since the same day, tapping somebody’s name or picture on a sky they shared opens their page, and its ⋯ menu has Report this person and Block. The one limit that remains is now stated in its place: somebody who has never shared a sky cannot be reached from any screen in the app, and the answer there is still hello@skystaapp.com.

The Community Guidelines already described reporting a person from their page; these Terms had not caught up, and now they have. Nothing about the licence you grant, the rules in §9, the 24-hour commitment or what deletion reaches moved with this entry.

16.8 What changed on 2 September 2026

These terms were split into a short version and a full text. The page at skystaapp.com/terms/ is now a document of ordinary length, about three thousand words, and the text that used to be there, about eleven thousand, is at skystaapp.com/terms/full/. Every section of the short version points to the same numbered section of the full one, and the full one governs where they differ. This page, the record of every change, moved to skystaapp.com/terms/changes/.

Nothing in the agreement moved. No right, no rule, no number and no date changed. The age floor is still 13, Skysta is still free, your photographs are still yours, the licence you grant by sharing still covers only showing the sky inside Skysta, the feed is still three days, the coarse cell, Remove the place, one sky per capture window, the 24-hour commitment, the seven days, the one hour, the thirty days and the six months are all exactly as they were. The designated-agent box in §10.1 is still unfilled and still says so.

Why. The Terms of Use had grown to a hundred and ninety-five phone screens. A document nobody reads protects nobody. The short version keeps every promise and every warning; what it drops is the reasoning behind them, which is still in the full text for anyone who wants it.

16.9 What changed on 3 September 2026

A spot can now be suggested from the website. §8 gains one sentence in the short version and one paragraph in the full text saying that a suggestion sent from skystaapp.com/spots/suggest is on the same terms as one sent from the app: the same fields, the same confirmation that the place is public and safe, the same licence, and no obligation on us to publish, credit, or pay. A website suggestion has no account behind it and no status page, and the form says so before you send it.

Nothing else moved. No right, no rule, no number and no date changed anywhere else in these terms.