Skyty Wall is getting a radar theme — and we need testers
The three v1 themes tell you what is flying overhead. The new one tells you where.
Skyty Wall shipped with three themes: LED, split-flap, minimal. All three are flight boards — a vertical list of callsign, altitude, ground speed, route. They answer “what’s up there” as text. To answer “where exactly, in which patch of sky should I look”, you still have to translate in your head.
The fourth theme asks that question directly: Radar. A classic phosphor-green CRT scope, with a rotating sweep and each aircraft drawn as a blip at its real bearing and distance from you. It’s in TestFlight right now, and we’re looking for a few people to help us sharpen it before the public release.
What the scope does
- Round CRT scope on near-black, phosphor green. Concentric range rings labelled in kilometres, N/E/S/W markers, a “you are here” dot in the middle.
- The sweep rotates clockwise, once every five seconds, with the trailing afterglow you’d expect from a real PPI radar.
- Each aircraft is a blip at its true bearing and distance, with a short heading-leader line. Tracked flights get a ring around the blip; squawk 7700 turns it red. Callsign labels brighten as the sweep passes over.
- Two sweep modes, switchable in the view menu:
- Persistent (default) — blips stay visible at a base brightness; the sweep highlights them as it passes. Best for an ambient glance from across the room.
- Authentic — blips appear only as the sweep discovers them, then fade. Position is latched: a blip only updates as the sweep repaints it — the real CRT-radar look, instead of having planes jump across the screen every eight seconds.
- Focus mode works on the radar too. Tap a row in any list theme, switch to Radar, and the scope narrows to that single aircraft. Everything else falls away — just sweep, rings, and one blip.
The default density is .spacious — the radar is built for a wall-mounted iPad. It works on iPhone, but its home is the large surface.
What’s not in the box
- North-up, always. There’s no “track-up” rotation. For a fixed wall display, north-up is the right convention.
- Per-blip VoiceOver. The scope has one summarising accessibility label (“Radar, N aircraft in range”). Per-element a11y against a canvas that repaints every frame isn’t worth fighting.
- A second data line per blip (altitude/speed, ATC data-block style). We’re shipping callsign-only first, and we’ll revisit the data-block question based on feedback.
The radar is a premium theme — same as split-flap and minimal. It comes with the €4.99 upgrade, no separate purchase.
We’re looking for testers
Radar lives in the public TestFlight beta of Skyty Wall. One click and you’re in:
You’ll need Apple’s free TestFlight app on whichever device you want to test on (iPhone, iPad, or Mac). Once you join, Skyty Wall shows up in TestFlight as a beta build — install it, open it, and switch to the radar theme in settings.
We’re starting small: 10 tester slots for this round, so we can actually talk to each of you. First come, first served — if it fills up, email us at [email protected] and we’ll make room for the next wave.
What we’d most like to hear:
- Which sweep mode you prefer — Persistent or Authentic — and in which setting (wall-mounted iPad? desk? phone in hand?).
- Label legibility in your patch of sky. With a 50-km radius over a major city, it can get crowded — we want to know when it tips over.
- Which density you picked, and whether the rings are still readable at your viewing distance.
- Focus mode on a single flight. Is the “tap a list row → radar zooms to that aircraft” relationship intuitive, or do you expect something else?
- Bugs. Aircraft that jump through the centre. Sweep that freezes. Blips that linger after a plane leaves the radius. All of it.
Feedback can come back through the “Send Feedback” button inside TestFlight (screenshot included, lands directly with us), or by email to [email protected]. We read every message. Replies come from a real person, usually the same evening.
When it ships publicly
The rough plan is with the next v1.1 release — same one that bundles the speed and airline filters, saved presets, and the display schedule. If the radar lands there feedback-polished, that gets us a release tag.
Until then — if you’ve got an iPad waiting for a fourth idea, click into the beta. We’re looking forward to a few green sweeps.