RipCat: Tides, Buoys & Marine

RipCat 1.4 is the "show me the good stuff" release. New here, or just suspicious of buttons with tiny ocean secrets in them? Take the new two-minute tour. THE TOUR - RipCat now walks you through the parts worth knowing: picking a NOAA tide station, loading the tide curve, reading the Solar Tide Dial, scrubbing the chart, tapping live buoys, arranging buoy sections, flipping map layers, reading NWS marine zones, playing Small Craft Advisory timelines, starting a Live Activity, and finding the Watch app goodies. TIDE CURVE + SOLAR DIAL - The walkthrough scrolls you to the chart, moves the crosshair, and shows the Solar Tide Dial tracking the same moment with dawn, sunrise, sunset, and twilight markers. MAP POLISH - Buoy labels are more useful by default: swell, wind/gusts, and water temp when the data is available. Sparse NOAA/NDBC rows now stay politely quiet instead of pretending they know things. MARINE CHIPS - Marine forecast chips use human-readable labels, with tap for the full forecast and long press for quick conditions. FIRST-RUN CALM - The tour no longer ambushes brand-new users right after onboarding. Start it from the Today card or replay it anytime from Settings > Help > Take the Tour. BUG SWEEP - Tidied the Solar Tide Dial ring at 12 o'clock, smoothed the tour highlights, and gave RipCat's first-run face mark a better light/dark wardrobe. BLOG IS LIVE - Curious about how tide predictions actually work? We've got a full write up at http://ripcat.dev/blog/ -check it out. WE HAZ INSTAGRAM NOW - @ripcatapp on the 'gram. Big SHOUT OUT to Miles Siebs of the CS Goodland crew, our FIRST IG Follower - when he's not schralping J-Bay rumor is he can be seen getting Pitted at the other J north of G-Town. Need to get that kid on a Randy Cone Surfboard. Thanks for using RipCat. See you out there - keep it fishy.

RipCat 1.4.1 started with one surfer. We got word that a low-vision surfer in the Santa Cruz area was looking for a new favorite tide app. That was all the motivation we needed. We hope she loves this one, and we hope these changes make RipCat better for every ocean person. ACCESSIBILITY FIRST — The Solar Tide Dial now has a custom VoiceOver rotor for high and low tides, first light, sunrise, sunset, last light, moonrise, and moonset—so the moments that matter are only a flick away and she can stay in the know for when to go surf. VoiceOver users can also scrub the dial with Direct Touch and optional pitch-mapped audio feedback. A MAP FOR EVERYONE — A new searchable List view makes tide stations, buoys, and marine forecasts accessible without having to discover pins visually. LARGER, CLEARER, CALMER — Calendar, Search, onboarding, map labels, favorites, and marine controls now work better with larger text. RipCat also responds more thoughtfully to Increase Contrast, Differentiate Without Color, and Reduce Motion. MOONLIGHT — The Solar Tide Dial now displays and announces the moon’s phase and illumination at night. WATCH POLISH — We fixed and refreshed the RipCat Watch app icon. This release also improves VoiceOver grouping, navigation order, button semantics, touch-target sizes, and adjustable tide controls throughout the app.

OCEAN ALERTS RipCat 1.5 lets you stop checking the same three screens and tell the app what your ocean window looks like. Build a named recipe from NOAA tide predictions and NDBC/CDIP buoy or C-MAN observations, add multiple conditions to one station, and chain as many as three sources with Match All or Match Any. RipCat only offers criteria the selected station actually reports. One complete custom alert is free for everyone while we keep building the feature out. RipCat Pro unlocks up to eight recipes. Checks happen on your device so your secret spots stay secret and matches use local notifications, with repeat protection so a condition does not tap you on the shoulder every few seconds. SURFERS Stop translating four moving numbers in your head. Name a recipe example: "Harvest Dawn Patrol," combine available swell direction, swell height and period with wave height at a reporting buoy, then require the tide station to cross your preferred height. When the whole recipe matches, RipCat tells you it is worth opening the data and taking a look. BOATERS Build the departure window you actually use: tide height at the harbor, wave height and period offshore, and wind speed or direction at a C-MAN station. Name it for the run, inlet, or anchorage so the alert means something when it lands. RipCat brings the readings together; you still make the call. FISHERMEN Water temperature moved, the wind backed off, and the swell settled into your range? Put those available measurements in one named recipe instead of refreshing three station pages before the bite. Use water temperature, tide, wind, wave and swell criteria where each station reports them, then let Rip do the refreshing while you handle the rods. ALSO IN 1.5 Open the adjacent bell to see what is matching now, expand the exact readings and thresholds that triggered, and jump back to the source station. Repeated matches inside your one-, two-, or four-hour cooldown stay grouped in the same event. We got word that a low-vision surfer was looking for a new favorite tide app. That was all the accessibility motivation we needed. We hope they love this one, and we hope these changes make RipCat better for every ocean person. Thank you to Apple's Accessibility team for shipping awesome features and maintaining top-shelf documentation. You make it possible for small teams like ours to build better experiences for more people. NOAA/NWS/NDBC observations and predictions are informational and are not navigation advice. United States coverage.

South Swells have been pumping, but we managed to find some time to get a smoking new update out, here's the skinny on whats new: OCEAN APERTURE Press and hold an Ocean Alert and the buoy now tells the whole story. The new Ocean Aperture turns direction, height, period, your saved trigger, recent observations, wind, and water temperature into one dense glance. The petal points where the swell comes from. Its length is height. Its color carries period. The coral ring is your saved threshold, and the wake shows how the last few hours reached it. When recent provider history is available, RipCat also calls out the crossing and whether conditions are building, easing, or holding. Use NOW, 3H, and 6H inside the expanded notification to change the trend window. Multi-buoy alerts give every matching source its own compact aperture. MORE OCEAN CONTEXT The map now remembers your Buoys, Tide Stations, and Ocean Alerts visibility choices between launches. Buoy cards change color with swell period, grow subtly with swell height, and surface direction, wind, and water temperature. Select forecast-capable CDIP buoys now show forecast context sourced directly from the public provider. TEST IT BEFORE IT MATTERS Open any alert configuration and tap Test on Home Screen. RipCat schedules the production notification after 30 seconds so you can leave the app, press and hold the alert, and inspect the real system presentation. Also new: a one-time What's New tour for existing customers, a permanent How Ocean Alerts Work guide in Settings, and an Ocean Alerts step in the app walkthrough. Ocean Alert recipes and evaluation stay on device. Observations come directly from public NOAA/NDBC and compatible CDIP sources. iOS controls background timing. Informational only; not navigation advice.

HURRICANE MAP RipCat 1.6 adds a stateful Hurricanes layer built directly on official NOAA/NHC/CPHC public guidance. Active Atlantic, Eastern Pacific, and Central Pacific systems stay discoverable without a U.S. border filter, so storms off Mexico remain on the map. STORM LOOM Tap a storm to see its solid observed track, dashed official forecast path, center-track uncertainty cone, and category-coded fixes. The Storm Loom combines the selected fix, maximum sustained wind, intensity trend, pressure, movement, and Cyclone Iris—an asymmetric view of the official 34-, 50-, and 64-knot wind fields. Play the forecast progression, jump to any fix, or tap Full Track to keep the complete route and cone above the card. After playback reaches the last official fix, Play restarts the whole path from the current advisory. MORE CONTEXT, LESS HUNTING A New NHC Advisory shelf takes you straight to an updated storm. Details includes every official fix, source links, the map legend, and a clear explanation that the cone shows probable center-track uncertainty—not storm size. Explore Map now includes an accessible Storms list. The Hurricanes switch remembers its state between launches, alongside Buoys, Tide Stations, and Ocean Alerts. Buoy cards continue to communicate swell period with color, respond subtly to swell height, and show direction, wind, and water temperature. Select supported CDIP buoys include forecast context. FREE VERSION? No Problem No Cheddar? No Problems - One favorite station and one complete customizable Ocean Alert are free. Tide predictions, search, the map, buoy observations, marine advisories, and hurricane tracking are available without a subscription. Hurricane guidance comes directly from public NOAA/NHC/CPHC sources with device-side validation, freshness checks, and caching. Informational only; not for navigation or emergency decisions. Hazardous effects can occur outside the cone.

NIGHT VISION RipCat 1.7 adds an optional app-wide white-text treatment designed for nighttime use with red Color Tint. Go to Settings > Night Vision > Red-Light Display and choose Automatic, Always On, or Off. Automatic responds when iOS reports Color Filters or Grayscale; because iOS does not reveal which filter or tint is selected, it may also respond to filters used for color-vision or other accessibility needs. Always On gives you deliberate control for red-light use, while Off preserves RipCat’s normal appearance. People use accessibility display settings in different ways. If Red-Light Display affects your experience, please contact RipCat Support, message @ripcatapp on Instagram or via email, [email protected] so we can understand and address it. We’re continuing to work with Apple to find the best long-term approach for everyone. A MAP THAT GETS OUT OF YOUR WAY Buoys now shift between full condition cards, compact readings, and count-bearing constellations as you zoom. The map keeps targets readable without inventing averaged ocean conditions. Pinch gestures can begin directly over buoy, marine-zone, hurricane, or forecast markers instead of being swallowed by the annotation. The Small Craft Advisory timeline has a higher-contrast, full-size play control. Marine warnings remain distinguishable by symbols, borders, and luminance when color is reduced. FULL STORM HISTORY Hurricane progression now includes the complete official observed track before the current advisory, followed by the forecast. Select historical fixes, compare earlier intensity with current conditions, and replay the entire observed-plus-forecast path. Relative labels such as 2 Days Ago stay paired with the official valid time in Details and VoiceOver context. MORE RELIABLE MAP ENTRY This release also fixes the hard termination that could occur when opening Maps on a physical device. Map startup, annotation density, and location ownership are now bounded so the camera and annotation set cannot drive each other into a render loop. RipCat continues to fetch public NOAA, NWS, NDBC, NHC/CPHC, and compatible CDIP data directly on device. Observations and forecasts are informational only; not navigation or emergency advice.