Updates, news & flight stories
Release notes, behind-the-scenes posts and tips for getting more out of Skyty.
What you actually see flying over the Greenland ice sheet
The world's second-largest ice mass sits three hours east of New York and nobody talks about it. A small guide to the most underrated window-seat moment on the transatlantic.
Read post →The loneliest spot on Earth, from a window seat
An hour past Greenland, three hours short of Ireland — at some point you fly over a place where the nearest inhabited island is over 1,000 km away. The middle of the North Atlantic is one of aviation's most underrated views.
Read post →Sky Briefing #001 — Alaska Discovers Europe
Alaska Airlines makes its European debut to Rome, Hawaiian vanishes as a booking system, and Chicago breaks its delay record for 2026.
Read post →What's coming next: Landmark Spotter, Night Sky and Plane Spotter
Skyty 1.0 shipped in April. Three more releases are planned for the rest of 2026. Here's what's in each, and the thinking behind the order.
Read post →Cramming the entire world into 46 megabytes
How a vector tile pyramid, a clever file format and aggressive zoom-level pruning make it possible to ship the whole planet inside an iOS app — and still meet App Store size limits.
Read post →Privacy by design: why Skyty has zero analytics, zero accounts, zero excuses
Most apps know more about your travel patterns than you do. Skyty doesn't. Here's the architecture that makes that true, not just a marketing claim.
Read post →Record your first flight in under a minute
A quick walkthrough: how to record a flight in Skyty, what gets saved, and how to share or export it after landing.
Read post →A traveler's guide to the window seat: how to read what you're flying over
Sunrises at 35 000 feet, ice fields north of Hudson Bay, the desert ridge that means you're crossing into Iran. A field guide to looking out the window with intent.
Read post →Why we put Protomaps and MapLibre inside the app — instead of using Apple Maps
Apple MapKit is fast, beautiful and free. We don't use it. Here's why an offline-first flight tracker needs an open-source map stack — and what the trade-offs look like.
Read post →MSL, AGL, WGS84: three altitudes you'll see at 35 000 feet
The number on the seat-back display, the GPS altitude in your phone, and your height above the ground are all different — sometimes by hundreds of meters. Here's how to read them.
Read post →Why GPS still works in airplane mode (and how Skyty uses that)
GPS receivers don't transmit anything — they only listen. Here's why your iPhone keeps tracking position the moment you flip airplane mode on, and how Skyty turns that into a flight tracker.
Read post →Skyty 1.0 — why we built an offline flight tracker
Most flight apps die at 10 000 m. Here's why we built one that doesn't, and what it taught us about offline-first iOS.
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