Show HN: Sol ー Pocket Sky, Become more mindful of your time, day or night

Hey everyone

Happy to introduce you to Sol today!

Sol brings the brilliance of dawn and dusk into your pocket. It shimmers at night to the twinkles of stars and glows just before sunrise. It helps you become more mindful of your time, day or night, by tracking the position of the sun, the moon and its phases visually on your phone or tablet.

Not only does it present you with a beautiful snapshot of your sky, but it also lets you scroll in a circular path around the screen, like using an iPod Classic, to go forward or backwards in time, all the while transitioning a spectrum of solar hues that change and simulate the opacity of the sky during different parts of your day.

Sol features a timezone manager that displays your favorite locations. Each location tile displays its time, timezone offset to your location, and window into its sky. You can even check out Antarctica and its perpetual dawn or dusk!

Sol also features a weather view (NOTE: Requires an add-on subscription) that displays conditions for any major town or city in the world. The weather is beautiful when combined with the changing color of the sky for each time window.

A lot went into the design inspiration of the app. The core tenets were to maintain restraint in adding interface components and capturing the essence of the hues of dawn and dusk. In doing so, the app behaves and looks very different from other apps in its category. It prods you to interact with the sky and time, to explore other locations and to gain an appreciation of the solar and lunar cycles that occur silently above our roofs.

Sol also works great as a visual-assist to counter time-blindness, particularly when under extended lockdown or when working nights.

It was a labor of love for the most part - I hope that you would be able to appreciate it as a companion to your home screen as much as I do.

Stay safe! Insh