Terms of Use — APOD Mate

Effective date: 2026-09-12

These Terms of Use (“Terms”) govern your access to and use of APOD Mate, including its iOS, macOS, visionOS, watchOS, and App Clip apps and any associated widgets (together, the “App”), provided by Darren Wood (“we”, “us”, “our”). By downloading, installing, or using the App, you agree to these Terms. If you don’t agree, don’t use the App.

1. The Service

APOD Mate displays NASA’s Astronomy Picture of the Day (“APOD”) and related content — images, video, and explanatory text — sourced from NASA’s public APOD feed, along with supplementary features we build on top of it: favorites, comments, trending, an astronomical seeing forecast, notifications, and widgets.

We are not affiliated with, endorsed by, or sponsored by NASA. APOD content is produced by NASA and the individual astronomers, photographers, and copyright holders credited on each entry. Where the App shows a copyright notice on an entry, that image remains the property of its stated owner and is displayed for informational and attribution purposes only — the App does not grant you any rights to that image beyond what its own copyright holder allows. Tapping the copyright text takes you to more information about the rights holder where available.

2. Eligibility

You must be at least 13 years old (or the minimum age of digital consent in your country, if higher) to create an account or use features that require one. The App’s App Store age rating governs its intended audience; use it accordingly.

3. Accounts

Signing in uses Sign in with Apple — we never see or store a password. On first sign-in we create an account tied to the identifier Apple gives us, with an auto-generated nickname you can change any time in Settings. Your account is used to:

sync favorites across your devices,
attribute comments you post to your nickname,
register your device for push notifications, and
restore purchases and subscription entitlements.

You’re responsible for keeping access to the Apple ID used to sign in secure. You can delete your account and all associated data, or export a copy of your data, at any time from Settings — see Section 10.

4. Subscriptions and In-App Purchases

The App offers the following purchases through Apple’s App Store, billed to your Apple ID:

Item	Type	What it unlocks
All Features	Auto-renewing subscription, billed monthly, with a 2-week free trial	Every current and future premium feature, including HD images and the seeing forecast, for as long as the subscription is active
Unlock HD Images	One-time purchase	Full-resolution images for every entry, permanently
Unlock Seeing Forecast	One-time purchase	Tonight’s astronomical seeing/transparency/cloud-cover banner, permanently
Remove Ads	One-time purchase	Removes all banner and interstitial ads, permanently

Current prices are shown in the App before you buy and may vary by region; the price and duration you’re shown at the point of purchase is the price and term that applies.

Auto-renewing subscription terms:

Payment is charged to your Apple ID account at confirmation of purchase.
The subscription automatically renews for the same length and price unless you turn off auto-renewal at least 24 hours before the end of the current period.
Your account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours before the end of the current period.
Any unused portion of a free trial is forfeited when you purchase the subscription it applies to.
You can manage or cancel your subscription any time in your device’s Settings app (Apple ID → Subscriptions), or via the “Manage Subscription” button in the App.
Refunds are handled entirely by Apple under its own policies — we cannot issue refunds directly. Contact Apple Support to request one.

One-time purchases are non-consumable: pay once, and the unlock applies to that Apple ID (and family members, where family sharing is enabled) indefinitely. Use “Restore Purchases” in Settings to reapply a purchase made from another device or after a reinstall.

5. Advertising

The free version of the App shows banner and occasional full-screen ads served by Google AdMob. Ads only run on iOS — the macOS and visionOS apps never show ads.

On first launch, we ask for your consent to ad personalization through Google’s User Messaging Platform (UMP), as required in the EEA, UK, and Switzerland.
We separately ask for permission to track you across apps and websites (Apple’s App Tracking Transparency). If you decline, or aren’t asked because of your region, you’ll still see ads, but they won’t be personalized using your device’s advertising identifier.
To serve and measure ads, AdMob and its partner ad networks may process device identifiers, coarse location, and app interaction data. See our Privacy Policy for details.
You can remove ads entirely at any time by purchasing Remove Ads or subscribing to All Features — see the table above.

6. User Content and Comments

If comments are enabled, you may post short comments on an entry’s discussion thread, attributed to your account’s nickname (never your Apple ID or real identity, unless your nickname reveals it).

By posting a comment, you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free license to store, display, and distribute that comment within the App and any associated services, for as long as the comment exists. You’re solely responsible for what you post.

You agree not to post content that:

is unlawful, harassing, defamatory, or hateful;
infringes someone else’s intellectual property or privacy;
is spam, or attempts to circumvent the posting rate limit; or
impersonates another person or the App’s own administrators.

Comments can be reported by any signed-in user; reported and flagged comments may be hidden by moderators. Hiding masks a comment rather than permanently deleting it, so it can be reviewed if the hide is appealed. We may remove or hide any comment, and suspend or terminate an account that repeatedly violates these rules, at our discretion. Comments authored by App administrators are shown with an “Admin” badge and can’t be reported.

Comments may be turned off site-wide at any time; if they’re off, existing comments are withheld from display rather than deleted.

7. Location Services

The seeing forecast feature asks for your device’s location (only “when in use”) to fetch tonight’s forecast for where you are. Your coordinates are sent to our backend to generate that forecast but are not tied to your account or stored against your identity. If you decline or later revoke location access, the seeing forecast banner simply stays hidden — no other part of the App is affected.

8. Push Notifications

If you opt in, we send a notification when a new daily entry is published. Separately, if you’re signed in, your device may receive silent (invisible) notifications used only to keep favorites in sync across your devices — these don’t require notification permission and don’t show an alert. You can turn off visible notifications any time in Settings or in iOS/macOS System Settings; unregistering removes your device token from our backend.

9. Acceptable Use

You agree not to:

use the App in any way that violates applicable law;
attempt to interfere with, disrupt, or gain unauthorized access to the backend service, other users’ accounts, or comment moderation systems;
scrape, reverse-engineer, or bulk-extract data from the App or its backend beyond normal personal use; or
use the voting, trending, or comment systems to manipulate rankings or harass other users.

We may suspend or terminate access for anyone who violates this section.

10. Account Deletion

You can permanently delete your account, including your favorites, comments attribution, and device registrations, from Settings at any time. This does not cancel an active App Store subscription — cancel that separately through Apple as described in Section 4. You can also export a copy of your account data from Settings before deleting it.

11. Disclaimer of Warranties

The App and the underlying APOD content are provided “as is” and “as available,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including accuracy, availability, or fitness for a particular purpose. Astronomical seeing forecasts are estimates and should not be relied on as the sole basis for safety-critical decisions. NASA’s APOD feed, and any third-party services the App depends on, may be unavailable or change without notice, and we’re not responsible for their content or availability.

12. Limitation of Liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, we are not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, or consequential damages arising from your use of, or inability to use, the App. Our total liability for any claim relating to the App is limited to the amount you paid us, if any, in the 12 months before the claim arose.

13. Changes to These Terms

We may update these Terms from time to time. If we make material changes, we’ll update the effective date above and, where practical, notify you in the App. Continuing to use the App after changes take effect means you accept the updated Terms.

14. Governing Law

These Terms are governed by the laws of The United Kingdom, without regard to its conflict of law principles, except where mandatory local consumer-protection law gives you additional rights that can’t be waived.

15. Contact

Questions about these Terms: support@darrenwood.codes.