Sun Friend vs Sunplot

The sun has something to say. Are you up yet? Sun Friend isn't your average sunrise app. It's astronomically accurate down to the minute, but it also has personality. Part solar almanac, part smug little star that knows the whole system revolves around it. What you get: Today's sun - See sunrise, sunset, solar noon, and exactly how long today's daylight lasts, all calculated for where you are. Home screen widgets - Sunrise, sunset, and the daylight you've got left. Small and medium sizes, in matching sunny-day and starry-night styles. Daily sun messages - A fresh message every day, written in the sun's own voice. Dramatic. A little smug. Fully convinced it's the main character (it kind of is). Golden hour & blue hour - The light photographers chase, on schedule: morning golden hour, evening blue hour, and twilight, timed to the minute every day. A sun that clocks out - After sunset the whole app winds down to a calm, starry night and counts down to tomorrow's sunrise. Even the sun needs its rest. Time-travel the calendar - Swipe through any date, past or future. Curious about the longest day of summer or the sunset on your birthday? The sun already knows. The sun's risen every day of your life. Might as well be friends. https://mintzi.xyz/sunfriend/terms

Every seed packet says "full sun" or "part shade". Almost nobody knows which one their own garden is. Sunplot answers it with a number. Stand where the bed is, hold the phone up, and trace the roofs and trees around you with a finger. Then it walks the whole day a minute at a time and counts only the light that actually reaches that spot. WHY THE ANSWER IS DIFFERENT Other sun apps show you where the sun is. That is the easy half. The half that decides the answer is what stands in the way — the fence, the garage, the lime tree next door. Sunplot measures that skyline with the camera and subtracts it. A bed under open sky and the same bed behind a two-storey terrace are not the same bed, and the number knows it. FREE • Today's hours of direct sun at a spot, and what that means: full sun, part sun, part shade, full shade • What will grow there — 42 plants sorted into will do well, will manage, and too much sun • The map: where the sun arrives from, where it leaves, and where it is right now, with a slider through the day • The sky view: the sun's path drawn over the camera, and the skyline tracing that makes the answer real ONE PAYMENT UNLOCKS • The whole year at a spot — when full sun starts and ends, and the weeks it gets none at all • As many spots as you like — the bed by the fence and the bed by the garage answer differently • Which is better? Every spot side by side, ranked • A word before the sun arrives, so a short winter afternoon is not missed • The home screen widget One payment. No subscription, nothing renews, nothing to cancel. HONEST ABOUT WHAT IT KNOWS The compass in a phone can be badly wrong, and most sun apps draw a confident line anyway. Sunplot says so on screen when it does not trust its own reading. Before you have traced anything it labels the figure as open sky — the most the spot could get — instead of pretending to know. It is a gardening and planning tool, not a survey instrument. Check anything expensive against a professional measurement. NOTHING LEAVES THE PHONE No account, no server, no analytics, no third-party code, and nothing to sign up for. Everything is worked out on the device and stays there. It works with no signal at all. GOOD FOR Vegetable beds, borders and allotments. Balconies and window boxes. Greenhouses and cold frames. Roof pitches for solar panels. Working out which corner will take a shade planting, and which window a houseplant will survive.