Lunette

What it does

On the Mac, Lunette draws tonight's Moon in the menu bar at its real phase, with the next sunrise or sunset beside it; click it and the whole sky for the day opens up. On iPhone, iPad and Android the same sky fills the app, and widgets bring the Moon to your home screen.

• The Moon as it looks tonight: its phase, how much of it is lit, how far away it is, and when it rises and sets where you are.
• The day at a glance: a chart of the Sun's arc over the horizon, coloured by what the sky is doing — night, twilight, blue hour, golden hour, day — with the Moon's path dotted across it.
• Sunrise, sunset and the length of the day, and how much longer or shorter it is than yesterday.
• Golden hour and blue hour, morning and evening, for photographers. Civil, nautical and astronomical twilight too, if you want them.
• The next four phases: first quarter, full moon, last quarter and new moon, to the minute.
• Eclipses: the next solar and lunar eclipses, and whether you can see them from where you are.
• Any day: step through the days or pick a date to plan an evening, and see the month's Moon in a calendar.
• Meteor showers and planets: the next shower's peak night and how dark the sky will be, and when Venus, Mars, Jupiter and Saturn are up tonight.
• A compass and alerts: where the Sun and Moon rise and set, and a notification for the full moon, the new moon, golden hour, sunrise, sunset, moonrise or an eclipse you can see.
• Widgets: the Moon and the day's sky on the Mac desktop and on the home screen of your phone or tablet, and on the iPhone Lock Screen.

Requires macOS 14 Sonoma or later, iOS or iPadOS 17 or later, or Android 8.0 or later. One App Store purchase covers Mac, iPhone and iPad; the Android version comes from Google Play.

Worked out on your device

Every figure comes from the formulas astronomers publish, calculated on your own Mac, iPhone, iPad or Android device from the date and your location. There is no weather service behind it, no download and nothing to go out of date, and the times agree with the US Naval Observatory's almanac to within a minute or two.

Seen from south of the equator the Moon appears upside down and lit from the other side. Lunette draws it the way it looks from where you are.

Privacy in one paragraph

Lunette asks for your location only to work out sunrise, sunset and moonrise where you are. It keeps it rounded to about a kilometre, on your device, and has no network access to send it anywhere. There is no account, no analytics and no tracking. If you would rather not share your location at all, Lunette uses your time zone's main city instead, which is usually within a few minutes. The full privacy policy says the same at greater length.