Frequently asked questions
What's free, how accurate it is, what works offline, and what to do when the compass is wrong. If it isn't here, the user guide probably has it.
It's an astronomy and astrophotography planner. For any place and date it gives you the Sun, Moon and twilight times, a 360° planetarium and AR sky, a map planner that draws the Sun, Moon and Milky Way paths through your camera's field of view, a calendar of sky events (meteor peaks, eclipses, conjunctions, ISS passes), and weather built for observing. It runs natively on iPhone, iPad and Mac.
Open the app and allow location. The home screen shows tonight where you are. Then tap the sky icon to see what's overhead, or the calendar icon to plan another place or date. The quick start walks through all three.
Yes. The user guide on this site goes through the app one screen at a time, and the app has a built-in tutorial that covers each feature.
Red means you're looking at a selected place, not your current location. Tap it to switch back.
Free covers today, for any place you choose: Sun, Moon, twilights, sky events, the 360° and AR sky and the planner, plus two saved plans that sync through iCloud. Pro adds any other date, favorite and recent places, unlimited plans, the camera tools, reordering home cards, details for faint stars in the catalogue, and live forecasts. The yearly plan starts with 7 days free. Lifetime is a one-time purchase for everything except forecasts. Lifetime owners can add forecasts with the Weather Pass. Current prices are shown in the app.
No. Purchases are tied to your Apple Account. On the other device, sign in with the same Apple Account and use Restore Purchases in Settings.
Go to Settings → Restore Purchases while signed in with the Apple Account that bought it. It takes a few seconds. If nothing changes, quit and reopen the app, and check you're not signed in with a different account in the App Store.
You do it through Apple, which manages subscriptions. On iPhone or iPad, go to Settings → your name → Subscriptions. On the Mac, go to App Store → your name → Account Settings. If you cancel, you keep access until the current period ends.
Refunds come from Apple, because all payments go through Apple. Request one at reportaproblem.apple.com. We can't issue refunds ourselves.
Lifetime is a single purchase that gives you every feature for good, except live weather forecasts, which have an ongoing data cost. The subscription includes forecasts. Lifetime owners who want forecasts can add the Weather Pass.
Try Restore Purchases first. Then check that the Apple Account you're signed in with is the one that bought it. If the app still shows the free version, email support@stilldark.app with your App Store receipt.
They match the U.S. Naval Observatory to the minute for a sea-level horizon. The app finds rise and set by scanning for the actual moment the upper limb crosses the horizon, with atmospheric refraction included. It doesn't use the common single-step approximation, which can be 45–75 seconds early. Sun and Moon positions are apparent, which means they include refraction and, for the Moon, parallax for your spot on Earth.
Usually because of a different definition, not an error. Apps differ on upper limb versus centre of the disc, whether refraction is included, the observer's elevation, whether seconds are rounded up or down, and the time zone of the place versus your device. No app includes hills and buildings in "rise". That depends on your local horizon, which the planner's 3D view shows.
All azimuths in the app are true north. In AR and the compass card, the device's heading is corrected for magnetic declination automatically, so what you see matches the numbers.
The phone's compass can easily be off by ten degrees or more near metal, magnets (including magnetic cases and mounts) and cars. Step away, move the device in a figure-eight, and try landscape. Make sure Compass Calibration is on in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Location Services → System Services.
Star positions are corrected for the date and for your location. Catalogue positions are J2000, so the app precesses them to the date you're looking at. Without that, positions drift by about 20 arc-minutes per decade. Planets and moons use full analytical ephemerides (VSOP87 and ELP).
Years in either direction for the Sun, Moon, planets, twilight and sky events. Satellite passes are the exception. Orbit data is only reliable for about two days either side of its epoch, so passes are predicted a couple of days out and refreshed when you're online.
The core's position is exact, but "visible" is a judgement. The app counts the core as visible when the galactic centre is above a usable altitude while the Sun is below −18° (full astronomical darkness). It reports Moon interference separately, so you can decide.
Every time and direction in astronomy depends on where you are. Sunset in Miami and sunset in Seattle happen at different times.
Yes. Search a city or place, drop a pin in the planner, or enter coordinates. The app then uses that place for everything.
Positions and times are computed on your device. The network is used for map tiles, weather forecasts, satellite orbit data, aurora and comet feeds, and nothing else. There's no account and no sign-in.
Yes, anywhere. During the midnight Sun or polar night the app tells you there's no rise or set that day.
Yes. All positions and times are calculated on the device, and the star and deep-sky catalogues come with the app, so it works with no signal. Forecasts need a connection to download, then the last one is kept.
Map imagery, weather forecasts, satellite orbit data (refreshed from CelesTrak), the aurora forecast (NOAA) and comet elements (Minor Planet Center). Each keeps its last download, so a forecast fetched at home is still there at the site.
iPhone and iPad on iOS 18.2 or later, and Mac with Apple silicon on recent macOS. One purchase covers all three.
No. Still Dark is built natively for Apple platforms.
No, every recent iPhone works. AR needs a camera, a compass and a gyroscope, and some Wi-Fi-only iPads don't have a compass. The Mac has no camera or compass, so you drag to look around the 360° sky instead.
There are home-screen widgets for iPhone and iPad. An Apple Watch app is planned.
The Mac has a desktop layout: the Sun & Moon panel beside the map, a resizable planetarium with the deepest star catalogue, a separate Settings window, and the sky ticker along the bottom of the planner and optionally in the menu bar.
Yes. Tap the bell on a card or event to set a reminder, and choose how long before.
Check iOS Settings → Notifications for the app, any Focus mode that silences it, and Background App Refresh. Reminders are scheduled locally on the device.
Sun, Moon and planets come from the VSOP87 and ELP analytical theories (via SwiftAA, an implementation of Meeus' Astronomical Algorithms). Stars come from ESA's Gaia DR3 plus the bright-star catalogue. Deep-sky objects come from OpenNGC and the Messier catalogue, asteroids from JPL's Small-Body Database, satellites from CelesTrak with SGP4 propagation, comets from the Minor Planet Center, aurora from NOAA's OVATION model, and Moon imagery from NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio.
From Apple Weather or Open-Meteo. You choose which in the weather sheet. Forecasts are cached, so you still have them without a signal.
Email support@stilldark.app with the place, date and time, what the app showed, what you expected and the source you compared it with. See Report a problem.
Still Dark puts the planetarium, the sky-events calendar, the observing weather and the planner in one app sharing one live sky, and it's native on the Mac as well as iPhone and iPad. Those two are excellent planners, and Still Dark covers the same things: Sun, Moon, Milky Way and camera field of view on a map. Try the free tier and decide for yourself.
Still Dark is built around planning a photograph, and those are planetarium apps first. It has a full 360° planetarium and AR sky too, but its main tools are the camera tools, the Milky Way night ranking, the Moon-alignment planner and the observing weather.