Chase the Light

Overview

Chase the Light is a photography light-phase app for iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch. This policy describes what the app accesses, what leaves your device and why, and what is never collected.

The short version: there is no account, no analytics, no advertising and no tracking. We run no servers. The only data that leaves your device are the requests the app makes to show a forecast, a place name and satellite imagery, and the App Store purchase that Apple handles.

Location

On your device, your position is used to:

• Calculate the sun's altitude and azimuth, sunrise, sunset, solar noon and the day's seven light phases
• Schedule light alerts, the Light Loop Live Activity and the watch complications
• Place the indicator dot on the satellite image

Your coordinates are sent to two kinds of service, and to no one else:

• The weather source, to return a forecast for your position. By default that is Open-Meteo (api.open-meteo.com). Pro users may choose Apple Weather, served by Apple's WeatherKit, or the National Weather Service (api.weather.gov). These are ordinary web requests with no account or identifier from the app; the National Weather Service asks every client to name itself, so those requests carry the app's name.
• Apple Maps, to return the name and time zone of your position. When you search for a place, the text you type is sent to Apple Maps to find it. Apple's privacy policy covers these requests.

The app keeps your most recent position and time zone on the iPhone so the Live Activity can finish its window and alerts can be rebuilt. It is overwritten each time and never leaves the phone.

Satellite imagery

The satellite view downloads public images from NOAA's GOES-East feed (cdn.star.nesdis.noaa.gov), EUMETSAT's Meteosat view (eumetview.eumetsat.int) and the Japan Meteorological Agency's Himawari feed (data.jma.go.jp). Your location is not part of these requests. As with any HTTPS connection, the server sees your IP address.

Alerts, the Live Activity and widgets

Light alerts are local notifications, scheduled on your iPhone or watch. There is no push notification server. The Light Loop Live Activity is created by the app on your iPhone, without push tokens. The watch complications and the Smart Stack read their schedule from the watch app's own storage. The app's one background task has a single job: ending the Live Activity when its window closes. It reads no location and downloads nothing.

Apple Watch

The watch app asks for the watch's own location and computes the light phases on the watch. Your iPhone sends the watch your Pro status, your alert settings and the current cloud cover over Apple's WatchConnectivity link between your two devices. Nothing passes through any server of ours.

Purchases

Chase the Light Pro is a one-time purchase through the App Store. Apple processes the payment; we never see your name, payment details or Apple Account. The app only receives the purchase state from Apple's StoreKit, keeps it on your device and shares it with your watch.

What we do not collect

• No account or sign-in
• No analytics or usage tracking
• No advertising or ad identifiers
• No third-party SDKs and no crash-reporting service of our own
• No location history or logs
• No data sold or shared with anyone

If you have chosen in iOS Settings to share analytics with app developers, Apple may pass us anonymised crash logs and aggregate statistics. They contain nothing that identifies you.

Children's privacy

Chase the Light collects no personal information from anyone, including children under 13, and complies with the Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA).

Changes to this policy

If this policy changes, the updated version is posted at this address and the effective date below is updated with it.

Contact

Questions about this policy or the app: chasethelight@ihaupt.com or github.com/Haupt2it.