Sun tracker apps for filmmakers

What a filmmaker needs from a sun app

Four answers, usually on a scout with the director waiting. When does the light go warm and low, and for how long? Where on the horizon does the sun set, against the frame you want? What stands in the way: the ridge, the building across the street, the tree line? And will you be ready, which means the whole crew knowing the time, not only you.

Every app here answers the first two. They differ in how they show the third, what else they do, and whether they are on your wrist.

The apps

Prices and devices from each app's US App Store page, and Android from each live Google Play listing, checked November 2, 2026. "Not on its listing" means the App Store page does not name it.

Golden hour is not one number

Apps draw the edges of golden hour in different places, so two of them can disagree by several minutes on the same day. Cutvey Meter, and every free tool on this site, uses the sun's height: golden hour from 6° above the horizon to 4° below, and blue hour from 4° to 8° below. That is why golden hour runs on past sunset here. Whatever app you use, put the times and the definition on the call sheet so nobody argues about them on the day.

A worked example: a rooftop sunset interview in Los Angeles

The director wants the interview on a rooftop with the sun going down behind the talent. You scout on a bright morning in March. Sunset that day is 7:04 PM, at W, 271°; by the shoot in December it is 4:43 PM, far round to SW, 244°. That is a different background. If the shoot were in June, sunset would be 8:07 PM, well north of west.

Worked out with the same solar maths and bands as Cutvey Meter (NOAA's method; golden hour from 6° above the horizon to 4° below, blue hour from 4° to 8° below), on a flat horizon.

In Cutvey Meter you stand where the camera will be and open the sun screen. The day's path is drawn over the live view, with hour markers and the compass, and you can add the shoot day as a tracked date to see both arcs at once. Meter Map plans the same roof from anywhere: pick the day, drop a pin, and a stand-in's shadow falls true to the map's scale at each hour, so you can see when the neighbor's tower shades the roof. Share the plan as a picture, with or without the location. On the day, the watch taps you 15 minutes before golden hour.

The compass is the weak link

Every sun app that draws the arc over the camera depends on the phone's compass, and phone compasses drift near steel, cars and speakers. The sun's position itself is accurate; the drawing is only as good as the heading. Cutvey Meter shows the arc only once the compass is within 15°, prints the compass's uncertainty on screen, and lets you fix the heading by pointing the camera at the sun once. When the sun is in view, the camera can find it in the picture and keep correcting the heading by itself.

When to choose the others

• You shoot night skies, the moon or the Milky Way: PhotoPills or Sun Surveyor.
• You work on Android: PhotoPills, Sun Seeker and Sun Surveyor all have Android versions.
• You want the sun on your phone's home screen: PhotoPills, Sun Seeker and Sun Surveyor each have a widget.
• You want Street View in the planner: Sun Surveyor.
• You want to record video inside the sun tracker for a scout deck: CineTemp.

Where Cutvey Meter falls short

It has no moon and no Milky Way, no Android or Mac version, and no home screen widget on the phone; the Apple Watch has the complications. Its alert covers each golden hour and the evening blue hour, never the blue hour before dawn. The times assume a flat horizon, like every app here, so a hill to the west ends the sun sooner. The map and place search need a signal; the sun screen, the meter and the times do not.

What it does that the planners do not is the rest of the light. The same app that tells you when the sun drops reads the color of the light when it does, names the gel to match your lamps to it, and keeps the ND for your rig. If you want one app on set for light, that is the reason to pick it. If you want the deepest sun and sky planner, pick PhotoPills or Sun Surveyor and use our free golden hour and blue hour pages for the call sheet.