Shade Tracker - Sun Simulator

Will your balcony get sun at 4pm? Where should you park so the car is still shaded in three hours? Does that table stay in the sun through dinner?

Shade Tracker answers those questions on a live map. Drag the timeline and watch the shadows of buildings and trees move in real time. The sun's position comes from actual astronomical calculation.

LIVE SHADOW MAP
• Building and tree shadows drawn directly onto the map
• Tree heights come from a global canopy model, so shade under trees counts too
• 2D, tilted 3D, and satellite views

THE TIMELINE
• Scrub with your finger and the shadows follow instantly
• One pixel is one minute, with about six hours of context on screen
• The colour of the timeline is the real solar elevation for that minute, so night, twilight, golden hour, and full day are visible at a glance
• Scroll as far into the past or future as you want, or jump to any date
• One tap on Now returns you to the current moment

HOURS OF SUN
• Turn the map into a heat map of how many hours each spot gets sun, over a range you pick: sunrise to sunset, now to sunset, or the whole day
• Tap anywhere to read the exact figure for that point

ANNUAL SUNLIGHT
• The same heat map sampled across a full year, for longer decisions about a roof, garden, or balcony

SHADOW CALCULATOR
• Draw a structure on the map, give it a height, and its shadow is included immediately
• Set the height to zero to erase instead: see what changes if a tree comes down or a building is removed
• Drawings stay on your device and can be edited or deleted

SUN DIRECTION AND STATUS
• Arrows from the map center show the current sun direction, the sunrise direction, and the sunset direction
• A floating badge gives the sun's compass bearing and elevation, plus whether you are in sun or shade right now, read from the shadow data rather than guessed
• Sunrise and sunset times

UV INDEX
• Current UV for your location, in the standard health colour bands
• Scrub the timeline to see the UV forecast for that hour

SAVED PLACES
• Long-press a point and name it: Home balcony, Work parking, that café
• The address resolves automatically; tap the list to fly back

SEARCH
• Place and address search with live suggestions
• Type coordinates to go straight to a point
• Times are shown in the local time zone of wherever you are looking

GOOD FOR
Apartment hunting, parking in the shade, picking a side of the terrace, gardening and the full sun versus partial shade question, photography and golden hour, early thinking about solar panels, shaded walking routes on hot days, architecture and site studies, and planning outdoor events.

WHAT IT DOES NOT DO
Building heights are mostly estimates from open map data, so not every roof is modelled exactly. Tree heights come from a global model rather than individual measurements. UV is a clear-sky value and does not account for you being in shade. Clouds and weather are not part of the calculation: this answers where the sun falls when the sun is out.

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