Nightwatch: Clear Sky Alerts
Know when the sky is clear
Only for Mac
Free
Mac
A quiet menu-bar app that tells you when tonight will be clear enough for a long imaging session, and what to point at.
Nightwatch sits in your menu bar and watches the weather for you. When tonight looks clear for long enough, it sends a heads-up before sunset, then a nudge just before the clear spell begins. If the forecast turns, it tells you.
Open it to see a sky score, the clear window, cloud by hour, darkness, the Moon, seeing, wind, dew risk and transparency, and the best targets for your telescope's field of view tonight.
• Two forecasts compared: Apple Weather, with Open-Meteo as a second opinion, and 7Timer for seeing
• A warning when rain is forecast after the clear window, for a telescope left running outside
• A warning when wildfire smoke or haze will dim a clear night
• Targets chosen for your field of view, with presets for popular smart telescopes and cameras
• Your own horizon: mark the houses, trees or hills that block your sky, or measure them from a phone photo, and Nightwatch only suggests what clears them
• "How to shoot this" on every target: filter, exposure and frames for your telescope
• Tonight's plan: your favourites in the order of their best time
• Darker skies nearby, scored for tonight against home
• Aurora alerts for your site, wherever you observe from
• Tonight's events: the Moon passing in front of a star, comets and the space station
• Spotlight and Shortcuts actions, so a shortcut can act on tonight's sky
• A Text size setting, and small, medium and large desktop widgets
No accounts, no advertising and no tracking. Nightwatch is open source.
Ratings & Reviews
- This app hasn’t received enough ratings or reviews to display an overview.
• A new look across the menu-bar popover, the Targets window, Dark sites and Settings: a night-sky backdrop, glass cards, a bolder sky score at the centre of the dial, and a warm-white accent in place of blue
• The desktop widgets follow it on a plain dark card, with the night drawn as an arc
• A night with a clear window warns when rain is forecast after it, for a telescope left running ("Rain possible from 03:00"), and when wildfire smoke, dust or haze will dim it, in which case the Transparency tile reads Hazy, the sky score falls by up to 30 and the best three lead with bright targets
• Tonight's plan suggests a target for each gap of three hours or more between your favourites, behind Show suggestions, with Add to plan
• Not tonight keeps a favourite in place as a dashed row with Put back, and under a finish time every row's times and the chart's shading stop there
• When Apple Weather or Open-Meteo refuses a request, Nightwatch says so plainly and takes the forecast from MET Norway or 7Timer, and fetches dark-site forecasts only for the nearest three while the Dark sites page is open
• A dark site's map no longer keeps Apple Maps' blank grid
• The last row of Eyes and binoculars can be scrolled into view
• Every link shows the pointing-hand cursor
• Apple Weather's mark is kept on disk and in About
• The app carries a privacy manifest
The developer, Richard Sutcliffe, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
- Location
Accessibility
The developer has not yet indicated which accessibility features this app supports. Learn More
Information
- Seller
- Richard Sutcliffe
- Size
- 19.1 MB
- Category
- Weather
- Compatibility
Requires macOS 14.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
- Mac
Requires macOS 14.0 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.
- Mac
- Age Rating
4+
- 4+
- Copyright
- © 2026 Richard Sutcliffe
