Tell the Sky App

Tell the sky. See who catches it. Write a message on a glowing paper lantern and let it go. It drifts across a live world map on real wind, and when it passes over someone, they can catch it, read every message, add one of their own and let it go again. Somebody, somewhere, will catch it. HOW IT WORKS • Write: a wish, a story, encouragement, or something you are letting go of. • Launch: from where you are, or from a town or city anywhere in the world. Hold to let it go. • Drift: it rides real wind forecasts across the map. Every so often you can raise or lower it into a different wind, and everyone who catches it shares that control. • Catch: when a lantern drifts over you, the sky tells you. You have two hours to catch it and read the whole chain, then 15 minutes to add your message and release it again. THREE WAYS TO SEND • Lanterns ride the high winds and can cross oceans and continents. • Blimps have a little motor: pick a destination town and a speed, and strong winds can still push them off course. Everyone who catches a blimp can steer it too. • Bottles set out from the coast and drift on real ocean currents. ALONG THE WAY • Give whatever you send a name anyone can see, and a note about what it is for that only its catchers see. • Give a lantern or blimp a banner to trail, or the flag of the country you launch from, and a pattern. • Follow a lantern's trail and the path the wind is likely to take it, and replay a whole journey in fifteen seconds. • Your Journeys page keeps every lantern you sent or caught: the cities and countries it reached, how far it went and how long it was aloft. • The Sky tab shows everything out right now on a live map, with a running count of lanterns, blimps and bottles. Tap a kind to see only those. ON THE CHAIN • Sign any message as "a stranger" if you would rather not put your name to it. • Translate any message into your language with one tap. • Anyone with a message on a chain can react to its messages with an emoji. • Everyone on a chain can see who else is on it, with names and home towns. Someone who signs as a stranger shows neither, and nobody off the chain sees the home towns. • Chain news tells you when something you sent or caught crosses a sea, reaches a new country or continent, or circles the globe. You can turn it off for each one. • When a journey ends, everyone on the chain can come back to read it again and replay it. KIND BY DESIGN • Nobody's exact location is ever stored or shown. Your account keeps only a coarse area, and the map shows city-level places. • When you use your current location, your phone rounds it to a coarse area before anything is sent. • Anyone can watch a lantern fly. Only the people on its chain read its words. • A short list of slurs is turned away. Anything else unkind can be reported from any message or lantern, and you can block the person who wrote it. • No ads and no tracking. You can delete your account at any time from Settings. Tell the Sky is not for anyone under 18.