Troubleshooting

Incorrect Sunrise / Sunset Times

Symptom: Displayed times don’t match what you expected.

Likely Causes:

  1. Wrong timezone in Settings → Regional. The timezone must match where the location is, not necessarily where you are right now.
  2. Wrong location coordinates — verify by tapping the location and checking its address.
  3. Date in wrong timezone — if you’re near a timezone boundary, midnight may be in a different day.

Solution: Go to Settings → Regional → Timezone and confirm it is set to the timezone of your shooting location. For international shoots, update this setting before planning.

Weather Data Not Loading

Symptom: Weather screen shows a spinning indicator or “Unable to load weather.”

Likely Causes:

  1. No internet connection — WeatherKit requires connectivity.
  2. Location permissions denied — Apex Lucis cannot fetch weather for your current position without location access.

Solution:

  1. Check your internet connection.
  2. Go to iPhone Settings → Privacy → Location Services → Apex Lucis → Set to “While Using the App.”

iCloud Sync Not Working

Symptom: Data does not appear on a second Apple device.

Likely Causes:

  1. iCloud is disabled for Apex Lucis.
  2. The device is offline.
  3. iCloud storage is full.

Solution:

  1. Go to iPhone Settings → [Your Name] → iCloud → Show All Apps → ensure Apex Lucis is toggled on.
  2. Check iCloud storage: Settings → [Your Name] → iCloud → Manage Storage.
  3. Allow a few minutes after going back online for sync to complete.

A Notification Didn’t Arrive

Symptom: You expected a shoot reminder, conditions warning, golden hour or low tide alert and nothing came.

Check first: Settings → Notifications. If the alert is not listed there it was never scheduled, which is a different problem from one that failed to deliver.

Likely causes:

  1. The alert is switched off for that booking. The four environmental alerts — Poor Conditions, Golden Hour, Low Tide, Tide Cut-Off — are off unless you turn them on. Check the booking’s Details tab.
  2. It was already too late. Every alert has a lead time and one whose moment has passed is not scheduled. With the default 18-hour conditions warning, a shoot starting in three hours gets none.
  3. Conditions were fine. The Poor Conditions alert only fires below your Warn When Rated setting — 6 out of 10 by default. Raise it in Settings → Alert Timing to hear about more shoots.
  4. The location cannot support it. Golden Hour needs an outdoor location; Low Tide needs a Coastal one near a tide station.
  5. There was no low tide worth reporting. A window has to last at least an hour, and only the one nearest your shoot is raised — a coastal booking gets one low-tide alert, not one per tide.
  6. You turned it off from the notifications list. Swiping a shoot reminder, conditions or low-tide alert away also switches it off on the booking. Check the booking’s Details tab.
  7. Permission was declined. Check Settings → Privacy → Notifications.

Solution: See Notifications for what each alert needs.

A Notification Appeared on One Device Only

Symptom: A booking made on your Mac reminded you there, but your iPhone stayed silent — or an alert you turned off on one device is still listed on the other.

Cause: Scheduled notifications are held by each device separately; Apple provides no way to sync them. What syncs is your data, and each device works out its own alerts from it.

Solution: Open Apex Lucis on the quiet device. It catches up immediately. Devices also catch up on their own when iCloud wakes them, usually within a minute or two — but a device that is never opened and never woken schedules nothing, and Low Power Mode stops background wake-ups entirely.

If a reminder absolutely has to be on your phone, open the app on it once after making the booking.

An Alert I Deleted Came Back

Symptom: You removed an alert from Settings → Notifications and it reappeared after restarting the app.

Cause: You are on an older version. Alerts are worked out from your bookings, so removing the alert on its own left the booking still asking for it.

Solution: Update to the current version, where the swipe action reads Turn Off and switches the alert off on the booking behind it — which then syncs to your other devices. Alternatively, turn the alert off in the booking’s edit sheet.

Symptom: Generated invoices show a blank space where the company logo should be.

Cause: No logo has been added in Company Settings.

Solution: Go to Settings → Company → Company Logo → tap to upload an image from your photo library.

Moon Alignment Shows No Results

Symptom: The Moon Alignment results screen is empty for the selected date range.

Likely Causes:

  1. The moon doesn’t rise above the horizon in alignment with the camera-to-subject bearing during the selected dates.
  2. The subject and camera pins are placed at the same spot.
  3. The date range is very narrow (try extending to a week or more).

Solution: Extend the date range and check that the camera and subject pins are placed in distinct locations with a meaningful bearing between them.

Optimal Windows Is Missing a Location or a Day

Symptom: A location you have saved never appears in the results, or the list stops a few days short.

Likely Causes:

  1. The location is outside the Within radius of whatever Near is set to.
  2. There is no location fix yet, so the scan says so and covers everything instead.
  3. Without Pro, a scan covers your three nearest locations over three days. The ones it left out are named below the results.
  4. Nothing at that location scored 6 or more, which is the lowest score worth surfacing.
  5. That day already contributed its four windows, and something scored higher.

Solution: Widen Within, or set Near to the location you are asking about, and run Refresh. A scan reaches ten days at most — as far as the weather forecast goes. See Optimal Windows.

App Crashes After Update

Solution: Force-quit the app and relaunch. If the problem persists, delete and reinstall the app. Your data is stored in iCloud and will be restored after reinstallation.