LIGHTHOUSE
Keep the light for one night.
Turn your body and the beam follows.
Want to keep the light for a night? Lighthouse is free on TestFlight: turn your wrist, hold the beam on a ship, and bring it home. Join the beta (version 1.0 (2); this invitation is good through January 22, 2027).
This build, tell us about: Hold the beam on a ship: does about a second and a half feel right, or does it drag or slip away? · Play a whole night, about two and a half minutes: does the pace hold, from the first ship through the fog and the squall? · Let a ship run aground on the Watch: does the wreck plate cover the lubber triangle too long to steer by?
You can play on Apple Watch or on iPhone, and on Apple Watch without an iPhone. Lighthouse steers by compass, so it needs a Watch or iPhone that has one. On iPhone Duo, the chart takes one screen and the keeper's log the other.
HOW TO KEEP THE LIGHT
Turn to aim
Your compass is the beam. Face a ship and it lights. You steer by turning, on Apple Watch and on iPhone: the screen does not steer.
Hold the light
Keep a ship in the beam for a beat and it sees the rocks and turns for open water. Clippers are quick, and a rowboat's lantern shows only to the middle of the beam.
Bring them home
Fourteen ships come in over one night of about two and a half minutes. Let one go and it finds a reef. Fog rolls in, the wind rises and a squall narrows the beam.
ONE NIGHT, FOURTEEN SHIPS
- Fourteen ships in one night of about two and a half minutes, from dusk to first light
- Five named reefs: the Teeth, Mud Hen Bar, Crab Biscuit, Redfish Ledge and Skillet Shoal
- Lose a ship and the iPhone logbook gains a page: 11 real Northeast shipwrecks, each with a photograph, its credit and its true story. The Watch names tonight's wreck at dawn
- Northeast Lights: 40 lighthouses from Maine to New Jersey on a pinch-to-zoom chart, with a photograph, the years it was lit and, where we found one, the group that keeps it standing
- A ship's bell and a storm wind, both real recordings
- A tap on your wrist or in your hand when the beam finds a ship, and heavier ones for the rocks
- Plays fully on Apple Watch, no iPhone needed
- No accounts, ads or tracking
The wreck and lighthouse photographs are public domain or openly licensed, from the Library of Congress, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Navy, the National Park Service, the National Archives and photographers who share their work on Wikimedia Commons. Each picture names its maker and license in the app. The coastline is Natural Earth, the lettering is Cinzel Decorative by Natanael Gama, the bell is by qubodup and the storm wind was recorded at Killiney Hill, both shared with no restrictions.
Friends groups, historical societies and museums keep these towers standing, and each light's page in the app links the one that looks after it. If you can spare a few dollars, they have earned them: the American Lighthouse Foundation, the Friends of Seguin Island Light Station, Friends of Acadia and the Nauset Light Preservation Society. Most of the photographs live on Wikimedia Commons, a project of the Wikimedia Foundation, which runs on small gifts too.