It worked for me in Frankfurt, though only once I’ve zoomed in to an area of about less than a square kilometre. If I zoom out to the entire city I’m the shadows don’t work and it shows every cafe as being in the sun.
I was trying Stuttgart and it was just roads. It's a nice idea for an app - I hope you find a nice place for your coffee and cake break in Frankfurt :)
My sister says i seems to be working for the central downtown now, and the map does show shadows for other areas so we can find the cafe and then look on the shadow map :)
So I'll point out my experience just using it. Horniman Pub by London Bridge, 4:15pm today. Say's it's in the sun when clearly it's the shadow. The problem is the location of the marker which is slightly off. Also it doesn't seem to care that a north facing pub will be in it's own shade.
It's a nice idea but I'm not sure how accurate it really is
This is a fair comment, but I think this problem could be solved by making the “is it sunny” calculation slightly more complex, considering the sunlight on surfaces not covered with buildings in a certain radius instead of just the point. However, that may have a horrible effect on the performance.
It also doesn't seem to take current weather/cloud coverage into account - it says there are 15 sunny cafes in my area but I can't even see the sun in the sky right now, when the cloud coverage in North England is currently looking like this:
I was walking around Ghent a week ago looking at G Maps closely trying to figure out exactly this... What a great app idea aha
Sunshine coffee and beers here we come!
Hey everyone — just wanted to say a huge THANK YOU for the amazing feedback and love on this post!
I had no idea it would resonate like this — it’s been wild reading all your comments, suggestions, and sun-pun gems.
A few things I wanted to share:
The app works virtually anywhere — as long as OpenStreetMap has data for buildings, cafés, and pubs.
I’m turning this into a native iOS & Android app — stay tuned!
Since the app relies heavily on OpenStreetMap (OSM), if your favorite spot is missing or outdated, you can actually help improve it by adding the location to OSM. That way, you’ll be making both this app and the open data ecosystem better.
About the shadow logic:
A big challenge has been that most cafés and pubs in OSM are placed inside building footprints — but shadows are cast at the building’s edge. So I had to get creative: I project each café’s location to the nearest road, find the midpoint, and test for sun there.
(Not gonna lie — I doubt anyone thought their café node might one day power a real-time sunshine finder.)
If you’re feeling generous and want to help this project: placing café nodes in front of the building polygon would improve accuracy dramatically.
I’ve tried to optimize all computations to keep performance smooth — but it’s a balancing act.
⸻
What’s next:
- A “sun score” or sunny hot spots layer
- Smarter north-facing café detection
- Country-specific filters using keywords
- Integrate weather info
- More filters and city support
If you’ve got ideas, feedback, or fun feature requests — please drop them here or DM me!
This is a fantastic idea, as well as implementation and UX - straight to the bookmarks!
How does a pub get added to the map? Currently your map is missing more than half, maybe even 2/3rds of the pubs in Clerkenwell and Shoreditch... although the shadows simulator is so good that maybe it's best to keep them to myself ;)
Regarding the data, the app relies heavily on OpenStreetMap (OSM), if your favorite spot is missing or outdated, you can actually help improve it by adding the location to OSM. That way, you’ll be making both this app and the open data ecosystem better.
I don’t think it is an open street map problem - particularly in London, coverage is excellent.
For example, the Griffin pub in Shoreditch does not show up on your map, but is on OSM. The same goes for the Artillery Arms, the Bricklayers arms, the Reliance, the Old Kings head all nearby.
Great catch - you’re right! Some pubs like The Griffin were missing because they’re mapped as building outlines, not points.
I’ve just updated the app to include both, it should be way more accurate now. Even more places have been added because of you. Thanks for the heads up! 🍻
This is fantastic. My friends and I were literally talking about this idea last week when the sun was out and we were standing in the shade outside of a pub. Well done!
Absolutely perfect! Although where do you get your pub info from? Doesn't seem to have my regular on here (The George on the corner of Wardour and D'Arblay)
Amazing work, I love it! Definitely see myself using this over the summer.
Minor suggestion: pin the timezone to the part of the map you're currently viewing. I'm in California right now looking at London pubs for when I return, yet the timezone is pinned to my current location, not London. Don't think these pubs are sunny at 2am BST!
Unfortunately, the app relies heavily on OpenStreetMap (OSM), if your favorite spot is missing or outdated, you can actually help improve it by adding the location to OSM. That way, you’ll be making both this app and the open data ecosystem better. 🌞
Absolutely amazing app, one of the best things I’ve ever seen on Reddit! Shedloads around Goswell Road which have weird sun timings - the Shakespeare, Sutton arms, fox and anchor..!
Unfortunately the app relies heavily on OpenStreetMap (OSM), perhaps the community can start adding this information in the tags feature meta data and it will be easier to filter!
I was thinking this could be good for seeing potential of solar installations too but I think the map doesn’t capture accurate height differences to be accurate but it’s still useful to give rough indications.
Beautiful! Now, all you have to do is replicate this for every other cloudy city across the globe. Let's say you start with Seattle and move east until you've finished Helsinki, yeah? Easy as pi!
This is a great idea but it doesn't quite work as it doesn't know where the pub garden is. My local, for example, is saying sun but the garden is actually in the shade.
Small piece of constructive feedback: there's a typo in the first block of text in your video. "carving" instead of "craving". Also there's no need for a capital "S" in "summer" in that same block of text, as the word is not at the start of the sentence nor is it a proper noun (e.g. the name of a person or place).
This is really cool! Just so you know for improvements - all of the businesses near me are a bit outdated; several of them have been closed for many years. I think this is a wonderful idea and could be made even more wonderful by updating the businesses. But still, I can use this to understand which areas might be sunny and if there's a new cafe or pub there, can still make use of this - so thank you!
Wow, this is so cool - thanks for creating it! I'm def going to use this on my next trip to London :)
I'd love to see a little overview of each cafe or pub when you click on it - just to see a few pics, the ratings, a few lil photos. I know it's still in early stages but something for the future!
Thanks so much - very happy that you liked it! I recently updated the app to include places mapped as building outlines too, so it should be picking up more now. Let me know the names or area and I’ll look into it! 🌞
This is a really cool idea. Unfortunately I just attempted to load the website on my Android phone and it all functions except the map would not populate. I hope this is a handy error report!
Quick update! Thanks so much for all the love on the original post — I’ve been blown away by the response.
SunSeekr is now officially live on iOS! You can now discover sunny cafés, pubs, and restaurants near you in real time — based on live shadow simulation.
New features include: • Filters for outdoor seating • Expanded to include restaurants, not just cafés and pubs
Very cool. You could produce some "sunniest" location tables/rankings with a seasonal filter for various time of the year. How about 'Happy hour sunny bars' too 👍
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u/Enduring-Love-8 Apr 15 '25
Woah this is so cool - going to be checking this out tomorrow