Solar Journal

Privacy Policy

Last updated 19 September 2026. Applies to the Solar Journal app for iPhone and iPad.

Who is responsible

Solar Journal is developed and published by Sascha Wyss, Biel-Benken, Switzerland, trading as View into Space. You can reach me at the address given under Contact below.

What the app stores, and where

Everything Solar Journal creates stays on your device, inside the app's own storage:

• The photographs you import, kept as you imported them.
• The measurements derived from them, such as sunspot counts, apparent dark coverage and brightness values.
• Your observing journal: dates, times, notes, corrections and any groups you track.
• Your app settings.

None of this is sent to me, and none of it is sent to any third party. If you delete the app, this data is removed with it. Whether a copy exists in your own device backup depends on your iCloud or computer backup settings, which are under your control and not under mine.

Access to your photo library

To analyse a solar observation, Solar Journal needs to read photographs you choose. iOS asks for your permission before this happens, and you decide whether to grant access to selected photographs or to your whole library. The app reads only the photographs you pick, uses them to produce your measurements, and keeps its copy on the device. It does not scan your library in the background, and it does not modify or delete anything in it.

You can change or withdraw this permission at any time in the iOS Settings app, under Privacy and Security, then Photos. Withdrawing it stops you importing new photographs, and does not affect observations you have already saved.

Network connections

Solar Journal makes one kind of network request. When you open the Discover view, the app retrieves publicly available space-weather information published by the United States National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). This information is always shown with the date it refers to.

These requests carry no identifier, no account and no content of yours. Your photographs, measurements and journal are never part of them. As with any internet request, NOAA's own servers receive technical connection information such as your IP address, which is handled under NOAA's policies rather than mine. If your device is offline, the rest of the app continues to work and the Discover view simply has nothing dated to show.

Analytics, advertising and AI services

There are none. Solar Journal contains no analytics framework, no advertising SDK, no tracking and no third-party AI service. Nothing you do in the app is measured or reported back to me.

Crash reports

If you have enabled sharing of diagnostics with developers in your iOS settings, Apple may send me aggregated, anonymised crash and performance reports about the app. This is an Apple feature, controlled entirely by you in the iOS Settings app under Privacy and Security, then Analytics and Improvements. I receive no personal data and no content from your journal through it.

Exports and reports you create

Solar Journal can produce CSV, JSON, picture and analysis-prompt reports, and can back up and restore your journal archive. These are created only when you ask for them, and they go wherever you send them. Once a file leaves the app, it is yours to control, and what happens to it is governed by whichever service or app you hand it to.

Children

Solar Journal is not directed at children and collects no personal data from anyone, of any age.

Your rights

Swiss data protection law and the EU General Data Protection Regulation give you rights of access, correction, deletion, restriction and objection over personal data held about you. Because Solar Journal holds no personal data about you outside your own device, there is in practice nothing for me to disclose, correct or delete. Your data is in your hands: you can view, correct, export and delete every part of it inside the app.

If you contact me by email, I hold that correspondence only for as long as it takes to answer you, and you can ask me to delete it.

Changes to this policy

If the app ever changes in a way that affects this policy, I will update this page and change the date at the top. Material changes will also be noted in the app's release notes.

Contact

Questions about privacy in Solar Journal, or about this policy: use the contact form, or write to the support address listed on the support page.