Privacy Policy

Golden Hour Weather for iPhone and iPad · Last updated: 13 October 2026

Location

On your device

The app uses your location, or a place you pick, to work out where the sun is: sunrise, sunset, golden hour, blue hour and the sun's direction. That calculation happens on the device.

The app uses your location only while you are using it, in three cases. When you open it and no spot is saved yet, it asks iOS for your position to set up your first spot. It does the same whenever you tap "Use my location". For a spot it asks for a position accurate to about a kilometre, not for a precise fix. And while the view "Where will the sun be?" is open, ARKit, Apple's augmented reality framework, uses the device's location, compass and motion sensors to line the sun's path up with true north. That view asks for location access itself if you have not decided yet. The app reads no position there.

The app does not follow your location in the background. If you decline location access, you can add places by name instead: the first screen offers "Add a spot by name" next to "Use my location", and the Spots screen has a plus for it. The view "Where will the sun be?" needs location access to line up the path.

What goes to the weather service

The forecast comes from api.met.no, the weather service of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute (MET Norway). To ask for it, the app sends coordinates rounded to two decimals, which is roughly one kilometre, over an encrypted connection. For one spot that is up to seven points. It sends:

• the coordinates of the spot you are looking at;
• for the horizon check, forecast points 25, 50 and 80 km from that spot in the direction of the sunset and of the sunrise;
• the coordinates of the other spots you saved, with their horizon points, when the Spots screen ranks them.

The app asks while you use it: when you open it or come back to it and the forecast on screen is more than half an hour old, when you refresh, when you add or switch a spot, and when the Spots screen ranks your saved spots. The sun times are calculated on the device and need no network.

In the background the app asks only while the forecast change alert "When tonight changes its mind" is on. It then repeats the request for your selected spot and its three points toward the sunset, four requests at most, at the earliest every three hours and not after today's sunset. iOS decides when such a check runs. When you switch the alert off, the app withdraws its request for background checks.

Each request carries a User-Agent line that names the app, not you: the app's name and version, the address of its web page and a contact address. Version 1.0 sends https://oneclicklut.com/golden-hour-weather/ and support@oneclicklut.com, later versions send https://videowien.at/apps/golden-hour-weather/ and gillian@videowien.at. iOS adds the standard technical headers of a web request, such as the languages your device prefers. The app adds no name, no account and no device or advertising identifier.

Answers are stored on your device and reused for as long as the weather service marks them as current, so the app does not ask again before then. Once an answer has expired, the app asks whether the forecast has changed since (a conditional request with If-Modified-Since) and downloads it again only if it has. An expired answer stays on the device for up to 24 hours more, so the app still has a forecast to show, with its age, when the weather service cannot be reached. After that the app no longer uses it and deletes it the next time it starts and loads a forecast.

If the weather service answers that it is getting too many requests, or refuses one (HTTP 429 or 403), the app sends it nothing for at least an hour and at most a day, and shows the stored forecast meanwhile.

Like any web server, MET Norway sees the IP address a request comes from. Its terms of service state that the IP address and the coordinates of a request are stored in its access logs, which are kept in its own data centre in Oslo, Norway. Its privacy policy says that for its websites with meteorological data that need no login, IP addresses are stored for up to 90 days. MET Norway is responsible for that processing. See the privacy policy of the Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the terms of service of its weather API.

Where the GDPR applies, the legal basis for sending the approximate location to the weather service is Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR: the app cannot show a forecast for a place without it. Norway belongs to the European Economic Area, so the GDPR applies there as well.

These requests go straight from your device to MET Norway. They do not pass through us and we cannot see them.

Place names

When you add a spot by name, the app uses the place lookup that is built into iOS and run by Apple (CLGeocoder) to turn the text you typed into coordinates and a time zone. When you use your location, the same service turns your position into a place name and a time zone, once each time you do. For that lookup the position goes to Apple as iOS reports it at the kilometre accuracy the app asked for; the app does not round it. Apple handles these lookups under its own privacy policy.

Camera

The camera is used only in the view "Where will the sun be?". The camera picture is used live on the device by ARKit, Apple's augmented reality framework, to draw the sun's path over what you see. Nothing is recorded, nothing is stored and nothing from the camera is sent anywhere. The app does not use the microphone. To line the path up with true north, ARKit also uses the device's compass, motion sensors and location, as described under Location.

If you decline camera access, that one view is not available. The rest of the app works without it.

Notifications

Golden hour reminders and forecast change alerts are local notifications: the app creates them on your device. There is no push server behind them. They arrive as an alert with a sound; the app sets no badge. Both are off until you turn them on, and you can turn them off again at any time on the Alerts screen or in the Settings app. The Alerts screen tells you when notifications are switched off in Settings.

Calendar

Calendar access is write-only, and the app asks for it only when you tap "Add this week's golden hours to Calendar". It then adds events to your default calendar: one for each sunrise and sunset golden hour of the next seven days that is still ahead. Each event carries the scores in its title, the name of the spot as its location, the reasons for the scores and the credit "Weather data from MET Norway" in its notes, and an alarm at the lead time you chose.

The app cannot read your calendar and cannot change events that are in it. Because it cannot read them back, it keeps its own record of what it added, so a second tap does not add the same golden hours again.

From then on the events belong to your calendar and are handled like any other event in it, including by whatever calendar syncing you have set up.

What is stored on your device

• Saved spots: name, coordinates and time zone of each place, and which one is selected.
• Settings: your choices on the Alerts screen. If the weather service has asked the app to pause, also the time until which it sends nothing.
• Change alert baselines: for the spot you had selected and each day, the last sunset score the app saw, so it can tell when the forecast has changed. Baselines of days gone by are dropped after two days.
• Remembered calendar exports: for each golden hour the app added to your calendar, the name of the spot, the day, whether it was the sunrise or the sunset, and when the event ends. Entries for events that are over are dropped at the next export.
• A forecast cache: the weather answers for your spots and their horizon points, filed under their rounded coordinates, with the time each was fetched and how long it is current, so the app opens with numbers and asks the weather service less often. An answer is removed once it has been expired for more than 24 hours, as described above.

All of this lives in the app's own storage on your device. Deleting the app removes it from the device. If you back up your device with iCloud or a computer, everything in this list except the forecast cache is part of that backup, as with any app. The forecast cache is not.

What we do not do

• We do not ask for a name, an email address or a sign-in.
• We do not use analytics, advertising or tracking, in the app or across other apps and websites.
• We do not include third-party SDKs. The app is built only with Apple's own frameworks.
• We do not sell data about you. The app sends us none, and what it sends to the weather service and to Apple is described above.

One thing that is Apple's and not the app's: Apple shows every developer aggregated App Store figures such as download counts, and, from people who chose to share them in the Settings app, anonymous crash and usage statistics. None of it identifies you.

Children

We collect no personal data ourselves, from children or from anyone else. The app treats every user the same: what it sends to the weather service and to Apple is described above, and nothing goes to us. It has no account, no chat, no ads and no in-app purchases.

Changes to this policy

If the app changes in a way that affects this policy, we update this page and the date at the top. The current version is always at this address.

Who is responsible

Gillian Scharf, videowien, Kudlichgasse 21/7, 1100 Vienna, Austria.
Contact: gillian@videowien.at
Company details: Imprint

If you write to us, we use your email address and your message only to answer you, and keep them only as long as that takes. As the app sends us nothing, an email you wrote to us is the only data we could hold about you. For the access logs of the weather service, MET Norway is the one to ask.

You have the rights the GDPR gives you: access, correction, deletion, restriction, objection and data portability, and you can complain to a data protection authority. In Austria that is the Österreichische Datenschutzbehörde, dsb.gv.at.

This policy covers the app. For this website, see the site privacy notice.