Terms of Use
The one that matters
Blika is a forecast, not a promise. “Go now” means the conditions are favourable, not that you will see anything — and “Not tonight” is a judgement about the odds, not a guarantee that nothing will happen. Do not make an expensive, dangerous or irreversible decision on the strength of it.
What Blika is
Blika reads NOAA's aurora model at your grid square, the hourly cloud forecast above you, and the position of the sun and moon where you are standing, and combines them into one verdict with its reasons shown. It is an informational tool for deciding whether tonight is worth going outside for.
What Blika is not
- Not a guarantee of an aurora. Geomagnetic activity is a natural phenomenon, and nobody forecasts it reliably more than about an hour ahead.
- Not a weather service. Cloud cover comes from a third-party forecast and can be wrong, especially in mountains and on coasts.
- Not a safety or navigation tool. It says nothing about roads, ice, wildlife, temperature, or how far you are from help.
- Not a substitute for looking up. The best aurora detector ever built is a person outside with their eyes adjusted.
Accuracy, and what it depends on
Every reading comes from a public feed that we do not operate and cannot control. Feeds go down, publish late, and occasionally publish something wrong. Blika refuses to give a verdict at all rather than guess when one of the three load-bearing factors is missing — but it cannot make a source correct.
The three-night outlook covers cloud and darkness only. Aurora activity is not forecast that far ahead by anyone, and Blika does not pretend otherwise.
Going outside is your decision
Aurora chasing happens at night, often in cold and remote places, frequently by car. You are responsible for your own safety and for anyone with you: the weather, the road, the temperature, telling someone where you are going, and knowing your way back. Blika's verdict is one input into that decision and never the whole of it. Do not read your phone while driving.
Licence
Blika is licensed, not sold, to you. You get a non-transferable licence to use it on any Apple-branded device that you own or control, as permitted by the App Store Terms of Service. The licence does not let you distribute the app over a network where it could be used by several devices at once, or transfer it to anyone else.
You keep every right that mandatory law gives you regardless of this section — including, in the EU, the right to observe, study and test how the software works, and to decompile it so far as that is necessary to make it work with other software.
The purchase
Blika's verdict and its reasons are free to use. The dashboard is unlocked by a single one-time in-app purchase — not a subscription. It is bought once, it does not renew, and there is nothing to cancel. The price is shown in your own currency on the purchase screen before you buy, and varies by country.
The purchase is tied to your Apple Account and can be restored on your other devices, or after reinstalling, from the button on the purchase screen. Payment, receipts and refunds are handled by Apple under its own policy, not by us.
If you are a consumer in the EU or the UK, you normally have 14 days to withdraw from a purchase of digital content. That right ends once the content has been delivered, which for an in-app unlock is immediately — so buying and using the unlock means asking us to start straight away and accepting that the right lapses at that point. This does not affect your rights if the app is faulty or not as described. Because Apple is the merchant of record, a refund is requested from Apple, and Apple's own policy is often more generous than the minimum above. If something has gone wrong, write to us anyway and we will help you work out what to ask for.
Acceptable use
Use Blika for your own aurora watching. Do not present its output to other people as a professional forecast. You do not need to reverse-engineer the app to see where the numbers come from — every feed it uses is public, free, and listed on the home page.
Liability
Blika is provided as is, without warranty of any kind. To the fullest extent permitted by law, the developer is not liable for any loss arising from your use of it — including a journey that produced nothing, a night you stayed in, or anything that happened while you were out.
Nothing here limits liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or any other liability that cannot be excluded by law. If you are a consumer, your statutory rights are unaffected, and nothing in these terms is intended to exclude the legal guarantee that digital content must be as described and fit for purpose.
Apple
These terms are between you and the developer, not Apple. Apple is not responsible for Blika or its content, and has no obligation to provide any maintenance or support for it. If the app fails to conform to any warranty, you may notify Apple and Apple will refund the purchase price; to the maximum extent permitted by law, Apple has no other warranty obligation whatsoever with respect to it.
The developer, not Apple, is responsible for addressing any claim relating to the app, including product liability claims, any claim that it fails to conform to a legal requirement, and claims arising under consumer protection or privacy legislation. The developer, not Apple, is responsible for investigating and defending any third-party claim that the app infringes that party's intellectual property rights.
You confirm that you are not located in a country subject to a US Government embargo or designated as a “terrorist supporting” country, and that you are not on any US Government list of prohibited or restricted parties.
Apple and its subsidiaries are third-party beneficiaries of these terms, and upon your acceptance of them Apple will have the right — and is deemed to have accepted the right — to enforce them against you.
Changes and contact
These terms may change as the app does, and the revision date at the top changes with them. If a change materially reduces your rights, it applies only to use of the app after the change — it is not applied retrospectively, and continuing to use an app you have already bought is not treated as agreement to a term you never saw. Where a change would disadvantage you materially and you are a consumer, you may simply stop using the app.
These terms are governed by the law of Germany, without prejudice to the mandatory consumer protections of your own country of residence, which you keep in every case.
Questions: support@blika.app.