FlightDial Support

Most often the sky really is empty at that range. Turn the Digital Crown to widen the dial out towards 30 nautical miles before assuming something is wrong.

Other things worth checking:

• The watch needs a working internet connection.
• Coverage comes from volunteer receivers and is thin in some regions, especially at low altitude.
• Aircraft that do not broadcast ADS-B never appear.

An empty dial is often correct. Zoom out with the Digital Crown to 30 nautical miles: if an airport marker appears and there is still nothing flying, the sky near you really is quiet.

A small "N↑" near the top means the dial is locked north-up rather than following your compass. That happens when:

• "Rotate with compass" is switched off in the app's settings;
• location access is off, since the compass needs it;
• the watch has no compass (Series 4 and earlier); or
• you are looking at another airport's dial, where a wrist compass would mean nothing.

FlightDial needs your location to place aircraft relative to you. To change it: Watch Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Location Services, then FlightDial.

With location denied the app still shows the time, but it cannot show aircraft.

A dash means no count has been recorded yet. Open the app once and let it find traffic; the complication then shows how many aircraft are within 20 km of you.

It updates on the system's schedule rather than continuously, so it can lag the app by a few minutes. That is normal and is what keeps it cheap on battery.

Airports within range appear as a small ring with a short name, at their true bearing and distance, so you can see where the traffic around you is headed.

The airports are built into the app, so they appear without a network connection. Smaller airfields are added from Apple Maps when you are online. If none appear at all, zoom out: the nearest one may simply be beyond the range you are looking at.

FlightDial only fetches aircraft while a dial is on screen. When your wrist drops, the screen dims, or you switch apps, it stops entirely.

Aircraft data comes from adsb.lol community data, under the ODbL licence. Where adsb.lol has no coverage, the app falls back to airplanes.live, a second community service. It can be delayed or incomplete, so FlightDial is for interest rather than operational use. See the Terms of Use.

The app collects no data about you: see the Privacy Policy.

Email info@mishigo.co with your watch model, watchOS version, and what you saw. A screenshot (side button and Digital Crown together) helps more than anything else.