Where the sun will be, and where the shadow will fall — computed on your phone
Last updated: 30 August 2026
The sun’s position is closed-form geometry — given a coordinate and a moment, the answer can be computed exactly, on your device, with no server and no data feed. So the app’s core function sends nothing anywhere.
There is no account, no login, no analytics, no advertising and no crash reporting. I do not know which screens you open or how often you open the app.
Two things do reach other companies, and both are named in full below:
Nothing else leaves the device. Your location is not sent to me, the shadow calculations run locally, and the camera view is never captured.
Sun Path & Shadow is made by Anıl Sancar, an independent developer.
Contact: anilsancarr@gmail.com
If you have a question about this policy, or a request about your data, email that address. It is read by one person — me.
Each of these is asked for when it is first needed, with the reason on screen, and the app keeps working if you say no.
Used to compute where the sun is from where you are standing. It is requested only while the app is open, at balanced accuracy — the sun’s apparent position changes by well under a tenth of a degree across a city, so there is no reason to ask for more precision. On Android the app declares both coarse and fine location, but only ever requests balanced accuracy at runtime.
I never receive your location, and the sun and shadow maths never sends it anywhere. There is no reverse geocoding: the app does not send your position to a naming service to find out which street or town you are in, which is why it labels your position simply as your current location. That was deliberate.
The one exception is the Map screen, described below.
Maps are drawn by Apple Maps on iOS and Google Maps on Android. Like any map, it works by requesting the tiles for the area being displayed, and when the map opens on your position, that area is derived from it. Those requests go to Apple or Google directly and are governed by their privacy policies, not mine — I never see them.
If you would rather no coordinate of yours reached a mapping company, the rest of the app works without ever opening that screen.
Used only to show the live view behind the sun-path overlay in the sky screen. No photo or video is captured, saved, or transmitted. The frames are drawn to the screen and discarded, and nothing about them is analysed or stored.
Used to work out which way your phone is pointing so the sun can be drawn in the right place over the camera view. Read on the device, used immediately, never stored and never sent.
These are stored in the device’s own secure storage (the iOS Keychain, or the Android equivalent). They stay on the device, they are not readable by other apps, and deleting the app deletes them. There is no backup to any server of mine, because I do not run one.
Payment itself is handled entirely by Apple or Google, depending on where you installed the app. I never see your card, your billing address, or your name.
To know whether a purchase is valid — and to restore it if you change phones — the app uses RevenueCat, a subscription infrastructure provider.
This check runs at every launch, not only when you buy. The app has to know whether to unlock the paid screens before it renders, and whether a free trial is still available to you, and only RevenueCat can answer that. So a person who installs the app and never spends a penny still causes these requests.
What RevenueCat receives:
No location, no camera data and no sensor data is ever included.
RevenueCat processes this to validate purchases and keep them restorable. Their privacy policy is at revenuecat.com/privacy.
Where this app shares data with a third party — RevenueCat for purchases, Apple or Google for maps and for payment — I require that they provide the same or equal protection of your data as this policy states, and I do not permit them to use it for anything beyond providing that service.
Some taps leave the app: the Terms and Privacy links open this website, which is hosted on GitHub Pages; “Manage subscription” opens the App Store or Play Store; “Contact” opens your own mail app with a message addressed to me, pre-filled with nothing but your platform name so I know what device you are describing. Nothing is sent until you press send.
The app also asks once, in-app, whether you are enjoying it. If you say yes it opens your store’s own rating sheet; if you say no it opens that same mail draft. Your answer is not recorded or transmitted anywhere.
The app is not directed at children and collects nothing from them. It has no social features, no messaging, no user-generated content and no advertising.
Data on your device stays until you delete it in the app or delete the app.
Purchase records held by RevenueCat and by Apple or Google are kept according to their own policies and their own legal obligations — I cannot delete an Apple or Google purchase record, because it is a financial record.
Map requests are Apple’s or Google’s, and are retained under their policies. I have no access to them and cannot delete them on your behalf; those companies’ own privacy tools are the route for that.
Depending on where you live, you may have rights under the GDPR (Europe), the KVKK (Türkiye), the CCPA/CPRA (California) or a comparable law — to know what is held about you, to get a copy, to correct it, to have it deleted, and to object to processing.
In practice, almost everything this app touches is on your own device and under your own control, and can be erased by deleting the app. For anything held in connection with a purchase, email anilsancarr@gmail.com with the store receipt or transaction identifier and I will act on it. Without something that identifies the purchase there is genuinely no way to find a record, because there is no account to look you up by.
If you believe your rights have been breached, you can complain to your national data protection authority — in Türkiye, the Kişisel Verileri Koruma Kurumu.
If this changes, the date at the top changes with it, and the current version always lives at this address. Material changes will be described in the app’s release notes rather than made silently.
anilsancarr@gmail.com