Support & help — for Sunrise Sunset on Android and Solpedia: Sunrise Sunset on iPhone and iPad. Same app, same code.
Something wrong, or an idea for the app? Write to me — I read everything.
It helps to say which device and which version you are on, and — for anything about times — which place the app was set to.
Almost always this is the place, not the maths. Tap the location pill at the top and check what it says. A place you picked by hand keeps its own time zone, so a sunrise in Tokyo is shown in Tokyo's clock, not yours — which is usually what you want, and occasionally surprising.
If the place is right and a time still looks off by a minute against another source, see the last question below.
Location is optional and the app never insists. If you declined the permission, or your device has not produced a fix yet, tap the location pill and either search for a city or tap the world map to drop a pin. Everything works from there — the app does its astronomy on the device and needs no network at all.
To go back to automatic, open the same panel and choose Use current location. The switch beneath it decides whether the app re-locates every time it starts.
Widgets are refreshed by the operating system rather than by the app, so there can be a lag. Changing the location in the app updates them; if one still looks stale, remove it from the home screen and add it back.
On Android, the widget follows the app's location only while Update on every launch is on — otherwise it stays on the place you chose by hand, which is the point of choosing one.
Test them first, and do not rely on them for anything that matters. They are scheduled by the app on your device, and many Android manufacturers shut background apps down aggressively enough that a scheduled alarm never fires.
If they are unreliable on your phone, there is very likely a workaround for your manufacturer at dontkillmyapp.com. On iPhone and iPad, check that notifications are allowed for the app in Settings.
It needs the camera permission — decline it and the rest of the app is unaffected, you just lose that one view. If the overlay is rotated away from where the sun actually is, the compass needs calibrating: wave the device in a figure of eight, and step away from anything magnetic. Car dashboards and laptop speakers are the usual culprits.
The purchase is tied to your store account, not to the device, so it should restore by itself on a new phone as soon as the app starts and the store answers. If it does not, check that you are signed in to the same account you bought it with, then reopen the app. If it still shows ads, write to me with the date of purchase and I will sort it out.
An honest answer: the app's solar model is good to roughly a minute, so the minute it prints can differ by one from a source using a heavier ephemeris. Moon times are computed from a more precise model and agree more closely.
Refraction is the other reason two sources disagree. "Sunrise" means the upper edge of the sun appearing at a flat horizon under average air. Hills, haze, temperature and your height above the ground all move the real event by more than the arithmetic ever will.
The app does its work on your device. There is no account, no server of mine, and nothing about you is collected or logged. Ads are non-personalized. The full policy is here.