SOLAR — Time by the Sun
The Sun is your clock.
SOLAR is an iPhone clock that reconnects time to the Sun. It shows Solar Time, the current day or night cycle, daylight, sunrise, sunset, twilight and alternate historical ways of reading time.
Athens, from afternoon to evening. Real app captures.
The idea
See where you are in the day.
A clear-sky light field and a temporal Halo show where you are: between sunrise and sunset, or between sunset and sunrise.
Choose a place and a date, move through the day, and see the calculated positions of the Sun and Moon in an illustrated sky.
Four ways to read time
An hour isn’t always an hour.
Your familiar clock is one way to read the day. SOLAR lets you discover three more.
Solar Time
The Sun keeps its own time.
On the solar clock, 12:00 is the moment the Sun crosses your local meridian. The same noon may have a different name on your ordinary clock.
Seasonal Hours
The hours grow and shrink with the day.
Daylight is divided into twelve equal parts, and so is the night. Each hour grows or shrinks with the season.
Byzantine Time
The day begins at sunset.
Equal-length hours counted from the local sunset. A familiar event becomes the beginning of a new cycle.
Local Time
The time you already know.
It follows the time zone of your selected place: a familiar reading while you watch the Sun, the Moon and the changing day.
Switching clocks changes the reading, not the sky.
The changing day
Know what comes next.
Sunrise, solar noon, sunset and the different stages of twilight, in the order you live them — golden hour and blue hour included.
Athens · 14 September 2026
7:05 AMsunrise 12 hr 29 minof daylight 7:34 PMsunset
- astronomical dawn
- nautical dawn
- civil dawn · blue hour begins
- golden hour begins
- sunrise
- golden hour ends
The morning of 14 September 2026 in Athens, as shown on the app’s Solar Day screen.
Let the event set the time.
Set a reminder for golden hour or sunset, and choose how early and on which days. Solar Reminders follow natural events as their civil times move through the year.
Look a little further ahead.
Choose a place and a date. Explore the Sun’s daily path and how its position changes through the year.
Closer at hand.
Widgets, and an AR view on compatible iPhones.
After dark
Keep an eye on the Moon.
Find its next rise and set. See its phase, move through the lunar calendar, and return a selected moment to the sky.
Night does not arrive all at once: SOLAR also shows the twilight between sunset and darkness.
On the wrist, on Apple Watch
Solar time, seasonal hours, or the time you already know: a few ways to carry the day.
Faces captured in Simulator.
A closer look
Follow a day. Discover a year.
Reveal the Sun’s path across the sky. Then see how the same hour traces a different position as the year unfolds: the curve called an analemma.
Learn
Why is noon not always at twelve? Can an hour grow longer? SOLAR’s Learn library starts with something you can see.
- The solar dayYour shadow is a clock. (new tab)
- Seasonal hoursThe hours grow and shrink with the day. (new tab)
- Byzantine timeThe day begins at sunset. (new tab)
- Polar days & nightsSome days have no sunset. (new tab)
Bring the sky into your day.
For the light before a walk.
For the Moon on your way home.
For the hours you never knew.
- Platforms
- iPhone · Apple Watch
- Time systems
- Local · Solar · Seasonal · Byzantine
- Languages
- 12 App Store localizations
- Privacy
- No account or advertising; core solar calculations run on the device
Every image on this page is an app capture. The sky is a calculated visualization, not a photograph.