How can we help?

It reads the sky for photographers. Every day it builds a briefing for your favorite locations — sunrise and sunset color potential (Emberlight), Milky Way core visibility, moonlight, dark-sky conditions, aurora activity, rainbow potential (Arclight), coastal bioluminescence (Bio Blue), tides, comets, and weather — and turns it into a practical field call: go or stay home, where, and when.

Conditions are local: the app uses your position to fetch weather, tides, dark-sky, and space-weather data for where you actually are, and to find photo spots near you. Location is requested while using the app only. You can decline or revoke it any time in iOS Settings — the app still works, but location-based features will be limited. Details are in the Privacy Policy.

The app ships with a full Field Manual — open Settings inside the app and look for the Help section. It explains every screen, score, and alert in depth.

Three things to check, in order:

• iOS notification permission — iOS Settings › Notifications › Shutter Scout must allow notifications.
• Your thresholds — alerts only fire when your chosen conditions are actually met (for example a Kp level or a sunset-color score). A quiet week can simply mean a quiet sky.
• Re-toggle the alert — flip it off and back on in the app to re-register with the alert server, then keep the app open for a few seconds.

Still nothing? Email us with which alert and your rough region (nearest city is plenty).

Alerts are off by default. If you enable one, the app sends a push token, your location rounded to the nearest whole degree (deliberately coarse), and your alert settings — nothing else, and never your name or account, because there are no accounts. Turning all alerts off deletes the registration. The full breakdown is in the Privacy Policy.

No. Briefings and the Ask Scout assistant run on your device. Downloading an optional voice model fetches model files once; your questions and briefings are never uploaded.

The optional "Better" and "Best" voices are large on-device models (roughly 2–3.5 GB) and need free storage and memory headroom. The app automatically falls back to the built-in Apple voice when the device is under pressure, and Settings will show a note if it did. You can switch voices any time in Settings inside the app.

All billing is handled by Apple through your App Store account — we never see or store payment details. Manage or cancel in iOS Settings › your Apple ID › Subscriptions. Canceling keeps Pro active until the end of the paid period.

Open the upgrade screen in the app and tap Restore Purchases. Make sure you're signed into the same Apple ID that made the purchase. The lifetime unlock also restores this way.

Refunds for App Store purchases are handled by Apple, not by us: request one at reportaproblem.apple.com.

Email a request with the button at the top of this page — include the email address your Apple ID uses for TestFlight, your device model, and what you shoot most. Invites arrive through Apple's TestFlight app. Beta builds include Pro features unlocked for testing.

There are no accounts, so there's very little to delete. Turning all alerts off instructs our server to delete your alert registration automatically. The one other server record — a pseudonymous consent receipt — can be deleted on request: email us the Install ID shown in the app under Settings, and we'll remove the receipt tied to it. Everything else lives on your device and goes away when you delete the app.

No accounts, no ads, no analytics or tracking SDKs, no selling data — ever. The Privacy Policy and the User Agreement are the same documents you accept inside the app.