Skyty 1.0 — why we built an offline flight tracker
When the cabin door closes and the wifi symbol on your phone goes from “weak” to “none,” most flight apps quietly stop working. Maps go gray. The position dot freezes. The “where are we?” question — the most natural question on a long flight — becomes unanswerable.
We thought that was strange. GPS works in airplane mode. It’s a one-way receiver. The only thing missing on most flights isn’t satellite signal — it’s the map data to draw your position on top of.
So we built Skyty as an experiment in shipping the whole map with the app. Today, that experiment becomes a real product, on the App Store.
What’s in v1.0
- A vector world map bundled inside the app — Protomaps PMTiles, ~46 MB, four themes
- Real-time GPS with offline reverse-geocoding (87 cities, fall-through to country and ocean)
- Altitude in MSL or WGS84, plus AGL via NASA SRTM terrain data
- Manual flight recording with route polyline, altitude profile, and GPX export
- Live Activity, Dynamic Island, Lock Screen, Apple Watch app and complications
- Nearest-airport lookup with IATA code and bearing
Everything works without WiFi. Always. By design.
What’s coming next
- v1.1 — Landmark Spotter: “what mountain is that?” answered offline, for ~6 800 POIs worldwide
- v1.2 — Constellation / night sky: look up at the stars from the window seat, without losing the offline guarantee
- v1.3+ — Events: rocket launches, aurora forecasts, volcanic activity, surfaced when you’re near them
If you’ve ever pressed your face to a window at FL370 and wondered, what is that? — Skyty was made for you.