Changelog
Every version of Skyty, from launch to the latest update.
1.5 — Skyty on your wrist
A full Apple Watch app with four complications. Live-synced from iPhone via WatchConnectivity, with the Watch's own GPS as fallback when the iPhone is out of reach.
New
- Apple Watch companion app. Glanceable view of your position, altitude, speed, course and nearest airport — without pulling out your iPhone.
- Four complications for any face that supports them (Wayfinder, Modular, Infograph, Chronograph Pro):
- Altitude — current flight altitude in a circular complication.
- Position — city, altitude and speed at a glance in a rectangular complication.
- Position (Inline) — city and altitude on a single line.
- Altitude (Corner) — flight altitude tucked into the corner of your watch face.
- Live sync via WatchConnectivity. When the iPhone is reachable, the Watch mirrors your phone’s GPS within seconds. When it isn’t, the Watch falls back to its own GPS — no lost display.
- Smart Stack relevance. During active flight recording the Skyty card rises to the top of the Stack.
Improved
- Carries forward the auto-recording motion-sensor fusion from 1.4.2 (no false triggers on highways or high-speed rail) and the Prepare-for-Flight button fix from 1.4.1.
1.4.2 — Smarter auto-recording
Auto-recording uses motion sensors to distinguish flights from cars and high-speed trains, eliminating false triggers on highways and high-speed rail.
Improved
- Auto-recording now reads the iPhone’s motion sensors alongside GPS to tell flights apart from cars and high-speed trains. No more false triggers on highways or high-speed rail.
1.4 — More Live Events, cleaner pre-flight
Four new Live Events: visible satellites, solar/lunar eclipses, noctilucent clouds, geographic transitions. Plus a one-tap pre-flight cache and an expanded rocket-launch view.
New
- Four new Live Events on the map:
- Visible satellites — predicted overflights of ISS, Hubble, Tiangong and Starlink trains
- Solar and lunar eclipses — paths precomputed to 2035, magnitude shown at your seat
- Noctilucent clouds — seasonal alerts when conditions match in mid- to high latitudes
- Geographic transitions — Equator, International Date Line, Tropics, Polar Circles
- Prepare for Flight — new section in Settings. One tap caches all Live Event data for the next 24 hours.
- Rocket-launch detail view — live T-MINUS countdown, launch-window indicator, “X minutes ago” with playback marker for past launches.
- Primer cards — a short explainer per Live Event category: what to look for, when, and from which side of the plane.
Improved
- Smaller polish across the app.
1.3 — Live Events
Live Events on the offline map: rocket launches, aurora, active volcanoes, recent earthquakes. Plus iPad landscape, two new themes.
New
- Live Events on your map — see what’s happening below you while you fly:
- Rocket launches from spaceports along your route (Launch Library 2)
- Aurora when a geomagnetic storm lights up the sky (NOAA SWPC)
- Active volcanoes and recent earthquakes (NASA EONET, USGS)
- Tap a pin for time, distance and a short description.
- Everything is cached at the pre-flight step and works offline once the cabin door closes.
- iPad landscape, finally proper — real landscape layout with its own sidebar. Coordinates, metrics, events and landmarks are always visible while the map fills the rest.
- Two new map themes:
- Cockpit Amber — classic warm NVG/HUD orange
- Stealth — reduced grayscale look
Improved
- Smaller polish across the app.
Fixed
- Auto-recorded flights occasionally vanished after an app restart. Resolved.
1.2 — Night Sky
Identify constellations and bright planets from your window seat — auto-activated at twilight, with altitude-corrected horizon.
New
- Night Sky / Constellation View — see which constellations and planets are visible from your current position, altitude and heading, computed entirely offline
- Altitude-corrected horizon — at FL350 the geometric horizon dips ~3.4°, revealing celestial objects hidden from the ground. Skyty accounts for this so what you see in the app matches what you see out the window
- Auto-activation at civil twilight — the view appears automatically when the sun drops below −6°, then disappears at sunrise. Manual toggle remains available
- Bright Star Catalogue — Yale BSC filtered to magnitude ≤ 4.0, ~500 stars, public domain, all bundled (~80 KB)
- Planet positions — Mercury through Neptune, computed from VSOP87 perturbation series, no ephemeris download needed
Improved
- Sun position computation reused for both the existing daytime sun marker and the new Night Sky activation logic — no duplicated math
- Compass band shared with the Landmark Spotter view for visual consistency
Fixed
- Live Activity altitude readings no longer briefly flicker to ”—” during background-to-foreground transitions
1.1 — Landmark Spotter
What's that mountain? Skyty now answers — for ~6,800 landmarks worldwide, fully offline.
New
- Landmark Spotter — tap to see what’s outside your window: mountains, lakes, volcanoes, cities, islands, capes, rivers and notable buildings, ranked by relevance and distance
- POI database — ~6,800 curated points of interest bundled inside the app (~600 KB gzipped), no network required
- Side-of-plane awareness — combined with your current heading, Skyty tells you whether each landmark is on the left or the right of the cabin
- Compass band UI — consistent with the Night Sky view, showing direction and distance at a glance
- Free vs Premium split — top 3 nearest POIs free; full results plus event overlays unlocked with Premium
Improved
- Map theme transitions are smoother during scroll
- Reverse-geocoder now uses the new POI database when no city is within 200 km — better answers over wilderness and remote regions
Fixed
- Cleared up a handful of duplicate Swift files that had crept into the project after merge conflicts
- Background recording correctly respects the 30-second sampling interval on iOS 18+
1.0 — Initial release
Offline world map, real-time GPS, AGL via SRTM, flight recording, Apple Watch, Live Activity.
New
- Bundled offline world map (Protomaps PMTiles, ~46 MB)
- Four map themes: Aviation Dark / Light, Satellite, Topographic
- Real-time GPS: position, altitude, speed, course, accuracy
- Offline reverse-geocoding: city, country, ocean
- Altitude modes: MSL, WGS84, plus AGL with optional SRTM terrain pack
- Manual flight recording with GPX export
- iCloud sync for the flight archive
- Live Activity (Dynamic Island + Lock Screen)
- Apple Watch app, complications, home-screen widgets
- Nearest-airport lookup with bearing and distance