AuroraSpy vs Lyklaborð
Price, ratings, monetisation and update history for both apps, side by side — with what reviewers say about each.
AuroraSpy
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AuroraSpy is the calm aurora guide for travelers in Iceland. Instead of throwing raw Kp numbers and cloud percentages at you, AuroraSpy combines space-weather activity, local cloud cover and how dark the sky actually is right now into one clear decision: go out tonight, wait an hour, or skip and try tomorrow. The app is built around how a real night unfolds. As dusk turns into true night and the hours march toward dawn, the screen changes with you — showing the right card for "is it dark yet?", "is anything happening?", "is it worth driving somewhere clearer?", and "did I miss it?". One screen. Eight faces. No dashboards. For travelers • A single trustworthy answer when you have one cold night to spend • Honest about clouds — it will tell you when it's not worth going • Bilingual: English and Icelandic out of the box • Off-season friendly: explains why summer isn't aurora season and when the dark hours come back What it uses • Real-time geomagnetic activity (Kp, Bz, solar wind speed) • Local cloud cover from public weather services • Sun altitude + astronomical twilight at your coordinates • Optional: your location, only when you ask for a viewing call Privacy first • No account required • Sighting reports are anonymous — no device or user ID is stored • You can erase your waitlist email from inside the app in two taps • Full policy: https://auroraspy.com/privacy.html Built in Iceland. Made for the long winter nights.
Lyklaborð
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The keyboard that actually knows Icelandic — and types excellent English on the same layout. Lyklaborð is what a third-party keyboard should have been for Iceland: one Icelandic layout that fluently blends Icelandic and English as you type, autocorrect that understands Icelandic inflection, on-device learning you fully control, and a hard privacy guarantee you can verify in the source. Free base keyboard. Open source. No account required. No telemetry. No AI bloat. On-device learning of your own words is an optional subscription, Lyklaborð+. WRITE ACCENT-NAKED Dropping accents is an input method, not a typo. Type "flytjum i bud" at full speed and get "flytjum í búð" — the keyboard restores the accents for you, so you never have to reach for a long-press. THE FIRST KEYBOARD THAT UNDERSTANDS INFLECTION All 3 million word forms from BÍN (Beygingarlýsing íslensks nútímamáls) are valid vocabulary, and suggestions follow case and context — "frá" takes the dative, and the keyboard knows it. No other keyboard on any platform actually inflects Icelandic. ICELANDIC AND ENGLISH, ON ONE LAYOUT A two-lane language model follows you between languages. One-off English words — a "deploy", a brand name — never derail you, and the keyboard never hijacks your language mid-sentence. When you genuinely switch to English, it comes with you. No 2-language limit, no language toggle. CORRECTS LESS, NOT MORE A word that's valid in either language is never silently replaced, and the exact word you typed always sits in the suggestion bar, quoted, as an escape hatch. URLs, emails, and abbreviations are left alone. When the spacebar's neighbour is the more likely key, it's treated as a hypothesis, not a typo ("smelirna" → "smellir á"). YOUR VOCABULARY, TRULY YOURS (LYKLABORÐ+) The optional Lyklaborð+ subscription adds the personal layer: the keyboard learns the words you type, entirely on your device. You can inspect every learned word, delete them one by one — and deletions stick, so a removed word is never silently re-learned. Switching from SwiftKey? Import your vocabulary from a SwiftKey data export in one step. Nothing you type in password, URL, or email fields is ever recorded. If your subscription ever lapses, nothing is deleted — your learned words stay on your device, paused, and exporting your data is always free. ZERO NETWORKING CODE The keyboard extension contains no network code at all — no phoning home, no analytics, no data collection, no terms to accept. This isn't a promise; it's verifiable in the source. The whole app and keyboard are open source under the MIT license, so you can read exactly what it does. The App Store privacy label is "Data Not Collected." Optional iCloud sync keeps your personal dictionary with you across your own devices — encrypted with AES-256-GCM before it leaves your device, with the key held only in your iCloud Keychain. Not our server. Not readable by us, or by Apple. BUILT FOR SWITCHERS Familiar muscle memory: a "." key with a long-press punctuation cluster, spacebar cursor control, and double-space period. Works fully without Full Access — typing, autocorrect, and prediction never need it; Full Access only turns on personal-dictionary sync and typing haptics (iOS blocks keyboard haptics without it). Icelandic language data is derived from BÍN, © Árni Magnússon Institute for Icelandic Studies, used under the BÍN conditions. Made in Iceland. Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Screenshots
Verdict
The clearest difference is update cadence: AuroraSpy at every 2 days against Lyklaborð's monthly. AuroraSpy also leads on device support (3 vs 1) and iOS requirement (15.1 vs 18.0). On price, ads and in-app purchases there is nothing between them.
Scored on Price · Rating · Positive reviews · Number of ratings · Update frequency · Ads · In-app purchases · Monetization · Best chart rank · Devices · Requires iOS
Both are free to download. Neither carries in-app purchases, so what you see is what you pay.
AuroraSpy ships an update every 2 days, Lyklaborð monthly. The most recent releases landed on October 12, 2026 and October 15, 2026 respectively.
| Parameter | AuroraSpy | Lyklaborð |
|---|---|---|
| Price | Free | Free |
| Update frequency | Every 2 days — better | Monthly |
| Ads | No | No |
| In-app purchases | No | No |
| Devices | iPhone, iPad, iPod — better | iPhone |
| Requires iOS | 15.1 — better | 18.0 |
| Further details — not scored | ||
| Size | 49 MB | 165 MB |
| Age rating | 4+ | 4+ |
| Developer | Brynjar Bjornsson | Jokull Audunsson |
In-app purchases
AuroraSpy
No in-app purchases
Lyklaborð
No in-app purchases









