Privacy policy

Effective 4 October 2026

The short version: ClutteredSky needs to know where you are and which way your phone is pointing, and it keeps both on your phone. The one exception is the optional Aircraft layer, which is off by default: to show the planes near you, it has to ask for them by rough area. There are no accounts, no analytics, no ads, and nothing is sold or shared.

What the app uses, and where it goes

Your location

The app uses your location to work out what the sky looks like from where you're standing. That calculation happens entirely on your phone. Your location is never sent to us, and with the Aircraft layer off (the default), it isn't sent to anyone else either.

The location fix itself comes from Android's location service (Google Play services' fused location provider), the same one other apps use. How Google handles that is covered by Google's privacy policy and your phone's location settings, not by us.

The Aircraft layer (off by default)

If you turn on the Aircraft layer, the app asks adsb.lol, an open ADS-B network, for the aircraft around you about every 15 seconds. That request carries your location rounded to about 10 km, and your IP address, as any request does, plus the app's and Android's version numbers (as below). Nothing else is sent, and nothing is sent while the layer is off. adsb.lol's handling is covered by its own terms.

When you tap a plane, the app looks up its scheduled route at adsbdb.com. That request carries only the flight's callsign (for example BAW123), plus your IP address; you can switch route lookups off in Settings. Routes are kept on your phone for a day.

If adsb.lol ever asks for an API key and you enter one in Settings, the key is stored on your phone and sent only to adsb.lol, with each aircraft request. It never comes to us.

Your camera

The camera view is off by default. If you turn it on, the live image is shown behind the sky on your screen and nowhere else. It isn't recorded, saved, analysed or sent anywhere. The app works fully without camera permission.

Motion sensors and light sensor

The compass, gyroscope and accelerometer tell the app which way you're pointing, and the light sensor drives auto-dim. Their readings are used on the phone as they arrive and aren't stored or sent.

Settings

Your settings (display choices, layers, brightness and so on) are saved on your phone only. The app opts out of Android's cloud backup, so they aren't copied to your Google account either. Uninstalling the app deletes them.

What the app downloads

Everything about stars, planets, the Moon and deep-sky objects is built into the app and computed offline. When you're online, the app downloads these from our server:

• Satellite orbits, a few times a day, so satellite positions stay accurate.
• High-detail planet and moon surfaces, only when you zoom deep into one.
• A small list of live data sources, only while the Aircraft layer is on, so the app knows where to ask for aircraft positions and how often.

These requests to our server are the same for everyone, and they carry no identifier, no location and nothing about you. Each one does include the app's version and your Android version (for example ClutteredSky/1.0 (Android 16)), so we can keep old versions working.

Our server and Cloudflare

Our server and this website run on Cloudflare. Like any web server, it sees your IP address when your phone or browser connects. The IP address is used to deliver the response and to rate-limit abuse (a cap on requests per address). We don't store IP addresses ourselves, and our code writes no per-request logs. Cloudflare keeps operational logs on our behalf to run and troubleshoot the service. Their handling is covered by Cloudflare's privacy policy.

Outside the beta testers' page (below), this website sets no cookies, and it loads no trackers, analytics or third-party fonts.

What we don't do

• No accounts or sign-in.
• No analytics, crash-reporting or advertising SDKs.
• No selling, renting or sharing of data, because we don't collect any.
• No tracking across apps or websites.

Beta testers

If you're invited to the beta, your email address is added to the list that controls access to the beta downloads page. When you sign in, Cloudflare Access emails you a one-time code and sets a sign-in cookie for that page. Your email address is used only for that and for talking to you about the beta. Ask us to remove it at any time.

Children

ClutteredSky collects no personal information from anyone, children included.

Changes

If the app ever needs to send something new off your phone (for example, an optional paid tier), we'll update this policy before that version is released, and say what changed and why. The effective date above always shows the latest version.

4 October 2026: added the Aircraft layer, which sends your rounded location to adsb.lol and a selected flight's callsign to adsbdb.com while it's on.

Contact

Questions or requests: privacy@clutteredsky.com.