Every SkyWatch mode, explained
SkyWatch turns one small round display into a window on the world around you — the sky overhead, the sea and rails and roads nearby, the markets, the scores, even your own focus. It does this through sixteen live modes, each one a different lens on what's moving out there. This is the complete tour: what every mode does, and who each one is for.
Watching the skies
Aircraft
The mode SkyWatch is built around. A top-down radar scope shows the planes overhead as blips at their real bearing and distance from you, each with a fading track, a heading line, and a tag showing its tail and flight number. Tap any aircraft for the full story — owner, manufacturer, type, altitude, speed, route and times, often with a photo. You can tint planes by altitude, plot nearby airports, or swap the radar scope for a real map. It's mesmerizing, and it's the one that turns idle desk-glancing into a habit.
Satellites
Look straight up. Satellites mode is a sky dome — the center is directly overhead, the rim is the horizon — showing the satellites currently passing above you as amber blips. Tap one for who launched it and when, where from, its orbit, current range, and the next time it'll be visible from your spot. Spotting the ISS sail overhead never quite gets old.
Stars
An offline planetarium of the bright stars for your exact location and the current moment. Brighter stars show as larger dots, the brightest are labelled, and you can zoom in to spread the field and reveal more names. Tap any star for its magnitude, its constellation, and a description. Because it's computed locally, it works with no internet at all.
Constellations
The companion to Stars: the classic stick-figures connecting each constellation's stars, every one tappable. Tap a constellation for its full name, an image, and its story — including who first catalogued it and when. A quietly educational mode that makes the night sky legible.
Space Weather
A live space-weather radar with Earth at the center, tracking the Sun's recent solar flares and coronal mass ejections. Each event is plotted by direction, strength and how long ago it happened, and anything aimed at Earth is ringed and called out. It's the mode for aurora chasers, radio operators, and anyone who likes knowing what our nearest star is up to.
Sea, rail and road
Ships
The same radar idiom as Aircraft, but tracking vessels over their AIS radio signals — each ship a blip at its bearing and distance, with a name tag and heading line. Tap one for its name, type, navigational status, speed and course, size, and its declared destination and ETA, all read straight from the broadcast. Switch on the map to watch harbor and shipping-lane traffic on real coastline.
Trains
Live Amtrak trains on the radar scope, pulled keyless from Amtrak's own feed — no setup needed. Each train is a blip with its number; tap it for the route name, origin and destination, current or next station, on-time status, speed and heading. Turn on the map and trains ride a real rail-line overlay so each one sits on actual track. The mode that reaches the rail fans none of the others do.
Traffic
A live local map that layers real-world data on the streets around you: nearby roadside cameras you can tap to watch, fuel stations colored cheapest-to-priciest, the locations of Flock-style license-plate-reader cameras, and a live road-congestion layer. Each overlay toggles independently, so you build the map you actually want — whether that's hunting the cheapest gas or checking the commute before you leave.
Information at a glance
Weather
A live precipitation radar for your area, drawn over a real map. Rain and storms appear as colored cells from light blue through to heavy red, with a rotating sweep for the instrument feel and a color key along the bottom. It's keyless and refreshes as new radar frames are published — a genuinely useful "should I grab a jacket" glance.
News
The day's top headlines scroll across the upper part of the face, with a persistent five-day forecast strip along the bottom. Each headline shows its source and how recent it is; tap one to open the full story in a scrollable card. Both feeds are keyless, and the language and region follow your settings.
Crypto
A live cryptocurrency ticker. The round face shows one coin at a time — symbol, name, a large current price, the 24-hour change in green or red, and a 7-day sparkline — then cycles through your list. Tap to jump to the next coin, or switch the source between your watchlist, the most active coins, the top gainers and the top losers. Build your watchlist from your phone.
Sports
A live scoreboard that cycles through games — the two teams' logos, scores, and the live clock, final, or upcoming start time. It covers the major leagues across football, basketball, baseball, hockey and soccer; choose which leagues to follow, star your favorite teams, and optionally show only games in progress. Scores stay live and refresh quickly.
Golf
A live tournament leaderboard for the PGA Tour and LIV Golf — position, player, score to par, and holes played — carousel-ling through events. Lock onto a tournament to stop it cycling, and choose which tours to follow. Under-par scores are highlighted and the status is color-coded by state. The mode for the golf fan who wants the leaderboard glanceable on their desk.
Desk companions
Clock
A working clock drawn on the radar scope — but the hands are real aircraft. The seconds sweep, hour and minute hands are each tipped by a live plane flying somewhere in the world right now, and in the last seconds before each minute, two fresh aircraft fly in and park exactly at the hand positions. Tap a parked hand for that plane's full detail card. When the feed's unavailable it falls back to placeholders and keeps perfect time, so it never stops being a clock.
Productivity
A built-in Pomodoro focus timer, played by touch — no data feed needed. The round face shows the current phase (focus, short break, long break), a countdown ring that empties as time runs down, the big remaining time, and a row of pips for sessions completed. Tap to start, pause or resume; it flashes the whole face on each phase change so a glance across the room catches the switch. Turns SkyWatch into a genuine work tool.
Flight Log
An on-device, scrollable history of everything SkyWatch has tracked around you — aircraft, ships and satellites. While any of those modes runs, it quietly records what it sees, then lists it under a stats header with totals and quick analytics like the most-seen types and the busiest hour. It's the mode that turns SkyWatch from a live display into a record of your own little patch of sky and sea.
And eleven games, too
Beyond the sixteen live modes, SkyWatch hides a full arcade of eleven touch games — radar defense, arcade classics, quick sports games, and even an AI-powered twenty-questions guesser — all playable offline with no data needed. They're the perfect thing for the moments between the live stuff.
One device, sixteen windows on the world
That's the whole point of SkyWatch: it's not a plane tracker or a weather radar or a focus timer — it's all of them, on one screen, switchable in a tap. Start with the headline mode your unit comes with, then add whichever others fit how you want to watch the world. The same small round display can show you the plane overhead, the ship offshore, the storm rolling in, the score, or the time told in live aircraft — whenever you fancy a different view.
