Privacy Policy

Last updated: 12 October 2026

Location, kept on your device

When you search a city, use "Use my location", or enter coordinates, we save that location in your browser only. It's sent to our server with each request (so we can compute planet positions, weather, and so on for it), but we never store it in a database or link it to you as an identity. Clearing your browser's site data removes it completely.

Phone finder: when you tap "Find", your phone's compass and tilt readings are used on your phone only, to point the arrow. They're never sent anywhere. On iPhone, Safari asks your permission first.

What we store

News articles: titles, summaries, links, images, and source names, pulled from public RSS feeds — none of it about you.

Astronomical/space-weather data: satellite orbital elements, geomagnetic indices, and similar reference data, cached briefly to keep the site fast — again, not about you.

The contact form: whatever you type is sent as an email to our inbox, not saved in a database.

Device notifications: if you turn on alerts for a device, your browser gives us an anonymous push address (a URL at Google, Apple, Mozilla or Microsoft's push service, depending on your browser). We store that, the location, and the conditions you picked — no email, no name. Alerts last 24 hours: you get one last notification saying they've ended, and an hour later the push address is deleted. Turning alerts off deletes it straight away; blocking notifications in your browser deletes it the next time we try to reach it.

Saved places and settings (theme, saved locations) stay in your browser's own storage and never reach our server.

What we don't have: accounts, logins, passwords, names, or any server-side record of your location history or reading habits beyond an active device alert.

Browser permissions

On your first visit, if no location is saved yet, the site starts from a rough location — usually the nearest city — that Cloudflare, our host, works out from your internet connection. That needs no permission and nothing about it is stored; it's labelled "approximate", and you can change it at any time. Your device's own precise location is only used when you click "Use my location", and your browser asks your permission first. Turning your coordinates into a place name ("London, England") happens as a direct call from your browser to BigDataCloud's free geocoding service — your coordinates go straight there, not through our server. Working out your time zone sends the coordinates, rounded to about 1 km, to our server, which asks Open-Meteo.

Third-party data sources

Sky and space-weather data comes from NASA, NOAA, CelesTrak, and Open-Meteo; news comes from the outlets listed on the About page. Each has its own privacy practices — following a link from skycrate takes you to their site, governed by their policy, not this one.

"Ask what tonight's good for"

This runs when you click the button, and once automatically if your location was detected for you on arrival. Either way, only that night's already-computed data for the location (moon phase, visible planets, cloud cover, aurora odds — not your name or any identity) is sent to Google's Gemini API to generate a plain-language summary. If you type a follow-up question, that text is sent to the same API alongside the same data, and only answered if it's actually about tonight's sky.

Advertising and cookies

skycrate is kept free partly by ads from Google AdSense, shown only on the main pages (the dashboard, forecast, news and About) — never on this page, the contact form or the terms. Google and its partners may use cookies or similar technology to show ads and measure them, including ads based on your earlier visits to this and other sites. In the UK, the EU and the EEA you're asked for your consent before any of that happens, through Google's consent message, and you can change your choice at any time from the "Privacy and cookie settings" link it adds. You can also turn off personalised ads for your Google account at adssettings.google.com. skycrate's own features don't use cookies; saved places and settings live in your browser's storage, as described above.

The Ko-fi "Support skycrate" button is loaded from ko-fi.com, which may set its own cookies when you use it.

Analytics

We may use basic, privacy-respecting analytics to see overall traffic, without identifying individual visitors.

Children's privacy

skycrate isn't directed at children, and we don't knowingly collect personal information from anyone, of any age.

Contact

Questions about this policy can be sent via the contact form.