Kagehinata: Sunlight & Shade

Kagehinata shows sunlight and shadows for any place you pick on the map.

Choose a place and a date and time, and the app shows the sun's direction and height and which way and how far shadows fall. Shadows of nearby buildings are drawn on the map too, so you can see whether a spot is in sun or shade and which hours of the day it gets sunlight.

Great for - Checking whether a south-facing room gets sun even in winter, before you visit a home - Knowing how harsh the afternoon sun is and until when a place gets sunlight - Planning a balcony, laundry or a small garden - Finding golden hour and sunset directions before a photo walk

Features - Tap the map to see the sun's direction, height and shadow direction - Shadows of nearby buildings on the map, and the hours a spot gets sunlight (PLATEAU 3D city models in Japan, OpenStreetMap buildings elsewhere; online) - Compare sunlight hours with and without buildings - How well a solar panel would charge, and which way to point and tilt it - Change the time and date with sliders, or jump to today, the equinoxes or the solstices - Sunrise and sunset times and directions, and day length - A view of the sky from where you stand, with today's sun path and the sun at the same time over a year (the figure-eight analemma) - Friendly comments such as how long your shadow is, or how much lower the sun is than a month ago - Weather-aware comments about shadows and sunsets (online) - A compass that tells you where the sun is relative to the way you face - Your location as a blue dot, with a button to jump back to it - Search by station, address or town, and save places with the star - Maps, search and sun calculations keep working offline with bundled data

The app interface is in Japanese.

Privacy: no account is needed. Your location and saved places stay on your device and are never sent to the developer.

Sun positions are astronomical estimates. Building shadows are approximate, based on open data; shadows from mountains and trees are not included. Building shadows can be turned off in Settings.

Discovery signals