Golden Hour Weather

When the golden hour starts is easy to look up. Whether it will be worth the trip is the harder question. Golden Hour Weather answers it for every sunrise and sunset of the coming week: two scores from 0 to 10, and the reasons behind them.

Two scores, with reasons
Sky is the color show in the clouds: high and mid cloud catch the light like a canvas, low cloud and fog block it, humid air softens it, rain spoils it. Light is the warm sun on whatever you film or photograph. The scores come with plain reason lines, such as "Low cloud 70 %: blocks the sun", and a verdict: Go, Good, Maybe or Skip.

The horizon check
A sunset burns when the sky above you has cloud to paint and the sky where the sun goes down is open. The app reads the forecast 25, 50 and 80 km toward the sun and says so: horizon open, or horizon clouded.

Today, the week, your spots
• Today's light as a sun arc, with golden hour, blue hour and a countdown
• Sunrise and sunset with their times, the sun's direction, and when golden hour and blue hour start and end
• The week ahead: seven days, a score for every sunrise and sunset
• Saved spots, ranked for the next sunset, best first
• Use your location, or add any place by name if you would rather not share it

Where will the sun be?
Stand at your spot, hold up the camera and see the day's sun path over your view, with hour marks and a time slider that moves the sun along it. You see where the sun will stand at the time you plan to shoot. The camera view needs camera access and location access, which is how the device finds true north, and on iPad the full screen. Indoors or near metal the compass can be off, and the path can sit off to the side. The camera picture is not stored or sent.

Alerts
• A reminder before each golden hour of the next seven days that reaches the score you choose
• A notification when tonight's sunset score changes by two points or more. While this alert is on, the app checks the forecast in the background when iOS lets it, at most every three hours. While it is off, the app does nothing in the background
• This week's golden hours in your calendar: one event for every sunrise and sunset golden hour, with the scores and an alarm. The app adds events and cannot read your calendar

An honest forecast
Forecasts are forecasts: the closer to the evening, the better they get. Hourly detail covers the next two to three days. Beyond that, the weather arrives in six-hour steps. Sun times are calculated on your device and need no network. Without a connection the app shows the last forecast it stored and says when it is from.

Privacy
No account, no ads, no tracking, no server of ours. To read a forecast, the app sends the coordinates of a spot to MET Norway, rounded to two decimals, about 1 km. Place names are looked up with Apple's geocoder. Spots and settings stay on your device.

Based on data from MET Norway (The Norwegian Meteorological Institute), licensed under NLOD 2.0 and CC BY 4.0. Sky and Light scores are calculated by this app.

Made in Vienna by videowien, the makers of OneClickCamera and OneClickLUT.