privacy

Solar Almanac — Privacy Policy

Effective date: 2026-09-08 Last updated: 2026-09-14

Summary

Solar Almanac tells you when the sun rises and sets, when the twilight bands begin and end, and when the golden hour is, for any place and any date.

Every one of those numbers is worked out on your phone, from astronomical formulae compiled into the app. Nothing is fetched. There is no server of ours, no account, and no sign-up — and the app contains no HTTP client at all, so there is nowhere for your places or your dates to be sent even by accident.

This app can ask for your approximate location, and it is the only app we publish that asks for any location permission. It is used for one thing: filling in the Add place form when you tap the locate button. The Location section sets out exactly what happens to that reading, because a sunrise app asking for location is precisely the kind of request that deserves a straight answer rather than a paragraph of reassurance.

Who we are

• App name: Solar Almanac (Google Play: Solar Almanac: Sunrise Sunset)
• Developer: Dash Fusion
• Support email: dash.fusion@outlook.com
• App listing: Google Play (com.dashfusion.listsun)

Location: what it is for, and what happens to it

The app declares one location permission, ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION — approximate location, not precise. It never asks for ACCESS_FINE_LOCATION, and it never asks for background location.

• You are only asked when you tap the locate button on the Add place screen. The app does not ask on launch, and it does not ask again later. If you never tap it, Android never shows you the dialog and the app never holds the permission.
• Refusing costs you nothing. The screen says so once, and every other way of adding a place still works: search the bundled place list, or type the coordinates yourself. There is no nag and no second ask.
• One reading, on demand. The app asks the Android platform’s own location service for a single current fix at the moment you tap. It does not subscribe to updates, and no fix is ever requested in the background — there is no background location code in the app to run.
• It goes into the form, not into a record. The latitude and longitude fill in the two fields in front of you. If you then leave without saving, they are discarded with the screen. They are stored only if you save the place.
• It is rounded to four decimal places — about eleven metres — before it is shown or saved. That is the precision the astronomy actually needs; a kilometre of latitude moves sunrise by a couple of seconds.
• It is never transmitted. Not to us, not to Google, not to anyone. There is no networking code in this app outside the ads SDK, and the ads SDK is never handed anything from inside the app.
• The reading goes through the platform location service rather than Google Play services, so it also works on a device with no Google apps at all.

You can withdraw the permission at any time in Android’s own settings, under Settings → Apps → Solar Almanac → Permissions. The app keeps working; the locate button simply reports that it could not get a fix.

What the app stores, and where

Everything is written to this app’s private storage, which no other app on your phone can read:

• The places you saved — the name you gave each one, an optional country label, its latitude and longitude, the time zone the times are read in, and the order you put the list in.
• App preferences: theme, Material You colour, 12- or 24-hour clock, whether to show seconds, your notification choice, and when the rewarded ad-free window runs out.

That is the whole list, and the places table is the only table in the app. No sunrise, sunset, twilight time or golden hour is ever stored, because each one is a function of a place and a date and can be recomputed in a fraction of a millisecond. There is no name, no email, no contact and no identifier in any of it, because the app never asks for one.

The bundled place list you search when adding a place is a data file inside the app — a few hundred cities, about 44 KB of text. Searching it is not a network request, sends nothing, and works in aeroplane mode. There is no geocoding service behind it.

We hold no copy of any of this. There is no analytics SDK in this app, no crash reporter of our own, and no telemetry of any kind.

The app opts out of Android’s cloud backup and device-to-device transfer, so your places are never copied into Google’s backup service. The honest cost: uninstalling the app, or losing the phone, loses your list. The app has an export that writes every saved place to a readable file you choose the location of — that file is yours, and it is the intended way to keep a copy.

Notifications

The app can post one optional notification — sunrise, sunset or the start of the golden hour at a place you choose, optionally some minutes early. It is off until you switch it on, and switching it on is what triggers Android’s notification permission request.

To schedule it the app needs to run briefly when your phone restarts, which is why it declares RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED. That is all that permission does here: without it, the reminder would stop after the first reboot and the switch in Settings would go on claiming it was on.

The notification is computed on the device from the place you picked. Nothing about it leaves the phone.

Third-party services we use

Google AdMob (ads)

The app is supported by ads served by Google AdMob. Ads are the only reason this app needs an internet connection at all — every sunrise, sunset, twilight time and golden hour is computed offline, and the app answers just as well in aeroplane mode.

The app shows no banner ads, no native ads and no ads on launch. A full-screen ad can appear at one moment only: after you have added a place to your list, and not every time. There is also an optional rewarded video you can choose to watch, which removes ads for 24 hours; it is never forced and never interrupts anything.

To serve ads, Google receives data from your device, which may include your device’s advertising identifier (AD_ID), coarse location inferred from your IP address, device and app information, and ad-interaction data. It does not receive the location reading described above, any saved place, any coordinate or anything else from inside the app — the ads SDK is never passed data from the app’s own storage. Google’s processing is done as an independent controller under its own policies:

• Google Privacy Policy: https://policies.google.com/privacy
• How Google uses information from partner sites and apps: https://policies.google.com/technologies/partner-sites

Consent (UMP)

Where required by law, the app shows Google’s User Messaging Platform consent form before ads are initialised, and records your choice. In the EEA and the UK you are asked about personalised advertising; in covered US states you are offered the opt-out required there. You can change your decision at any time from Settings → Ad privacy options, and if you decline, every feature of the app continues to work exactly as before.

Data we collect ourselves

None. We operate no servers, no accounts and no analytics. We have no database with your name in it and no way to identify you or your device. We do not sell or share personal information, because we do not have any.

Permissions the app requests

• Approximate location (ACCESS_COARSE_LOCATION) — only when you tap the locate button, and only as described above. Optional; the app works without it.
• Notifications (POST_NOTIFICATIONS) — only if you switch the reminder on. Optional.
• Run at startup (RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED) — so a reminder you switched on survives a reboot. Not a permission Android asks you about.
• Internet / network state — solely so the Google Mobile Ads SDK can fetch ads.
• Advertising ID (AD_ID) — required by Google Play for apps that serve ads; used by AdMob as described above.

The app requests no precise location, no background location, no camera, no microphone, no photo or media access, no storage permission, no contacts and no calendar.

A few more permissions are merged into the final app package by the libraries the app is built on, so the list Google Play shows you is longer than the ones above. They are the Android Ad Services permissions plus wake-lock and foreground-service, all from the Google Mobile Ads SDK. None is a permission Android stops to ask you about, and none is used by any code we wrote.

Children

This app is not directed at children under 13 and is not designed for use under the COPPA framework. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children — as described above, we hold no personal data at all.

Your choices

• Location: grant it, refuse it, or withdraw it later in Android’s settings. Nothing else in the app changes either way.
• Notifications: the reminder is off until you turn it on, and can be turned off again in Settings or in Android’s own notification settings.
• Ad personalisation: change your consent decision any time via Settings → Ad privacy options.
• Reset your advertising ID or opt out of personalised ads in Android’s own settings, under Settings → Google → Ads.
• Delete a place in the app, or delete everything by clearing the app’s storage or uninstalling it. Because your places live only on your device, that removes them completely — there is no copy anywhere else, and no deletion request to send us.

Changes to this policy

If we change this policy we will update the Last updated date above and publish the new version at this URL. Material changes will also be noted in the app’s release notes on Google Play. This policy is versioned publicly in the Dash Fusion privacy repository, so any change is visible in its history.

Contact

Questions about this policy or about the app: dash.fusion@outlook.com