Manual
How to read the globe and what every control does. The app asks for no account and keeps nothing about you but your own preferences, and those stay in your browser.
The buttons at a glance
Every control carries a label for a screen reader, but on screen most of them are just a small drawing. Here is what each one does.
What the globe shows
Inside the dark band the eclipse is total or annular; the dashed line is the middle of that band. The thin rings around it show where 20, 40, 60 and 80 percent of the Sun is covered. The soft blue veil is night, and everything belongs to the moment shown on the time slider.
Choosing an eclipse
The eclipse list holds every eclipse that turns total, annular or hybrid somewhere; partial eclipses come along once you tick Partial eclipses in Settings. Past events keep working, but move behind the upcoming ones. You can also search by period (2040-2050, 2040s, 204x), by the name of a list ("historical", "archive") or by a place: type a town or a country and every eclipse visible there comes first, with how much of the sun it covers at most.
Choosing a place
Click or tap the globe to pick a point, or type a town in the location field. Coordinates work too, as "52.37, 4.90". The lock holds your point in place while you drag or zoom the globe. The arrow beside the i uses your own location; your browser asks for permission first.
City seeker
The City seeker lists every known city and town where the umbra or antumbra passes, one card per place, so you can choose where to watch from. It works per eclipse and draws on climate data: it says what is likely, not what the weather will do.
Choosing an eclipse
Type in the Eclipse field to choose by date, type or country. Typing a place or a country, such as Delft or the Netherlands, puts the eclipses visible there first, with how much of the Sun is covered. The list then shows the places under the central shadow of that eclipse.
What a card shows
Every card has the place name, the country and the number of inhabitants, with the score in a ring: gold from 80, blue from 60. Below them are the duration of the central phase, the average cloud cover at that hour, and the height and direction of the Sun; on a second line the usual temperature and humidity at that hour. At the bottom are the local start time with UTC behind it, the distance to the central line and the nearest airport. A warning marks a Sun lower than ten degrees: there haze often spoils the view, and buildings or trees nearby are enough to hide it. The place name opens the map just inside the central phase. The icons mean:
Sorting and searching
The pills above the list sort it by score, duration, cloud cover, the height of the Sun, the time or the airport; More holds the rest. A second tap reverses the order, and the value sorted on lights up in gold on every card. The Search place field matches a place, a country or an airport, by name or by code. If a name is both a place and an airport, as Málaga is, or a place and a country, a list under the field lets you choose which one you mean; without a choice you see everything. On a phone the row of pills scrolls sideways; an arrow with a number says how many are still out of view.
Filters
The Filters button beside the search field opens a slider for each value. Where both ends matter, such as the temperature, the height of the Sun, the distance to the central line and the number of inhabitants, a slider has two knobs; otherwise one, at the end that counts. Under Country stands every country on the path with its number of places: tap one to leave its places out, and tap it again to bring them back. The filters you set stand as chips above the list, each with a cross, and Clear filters puts everything back. They stay when you choose another eclipse.
The score
The score runs from 0 to 100. It is roughly the cloud-free part of the sky (100 minus the average cloud cover), times the height of the Sun (full from 25 degrees) and the duration, which counts lightly; an airport within 400 km is a small correction. The best place of the eclipse gets 100 and the others a share of that. The cloud cover is an average over years, and that is not a chance: an average of 20% can be a little cloud every day, or days that are fully overcast and fully clear by turns, so it is not an 80% chance of a clear sky. It also comes from a grid of about 110 km, smoothed in between, so a coast or a mountain ridge is not in it and a difference of a few points says little. The score is therefore a guide, not a chance. The Score button beside Filters sets how heavily each part counts: off, light, normal or heavy. The number of inhabitants and the temperature only count when you switch them on. Under Advanced you set from which height the Sun counts fully, up to how far an airport counts and which temperature you like best. Your browser remembers it; Restore default puts it back, and a gold dot on the button shows that your own weighting is in use.
The travel risk bundles the travel advice of the Netherlands, the United States and the United Kingdom for the area of each place into one number from 0 to 100. Per government, nothing special counts 0, a caution 10, only essential travel 50 and do not travel 100; the number is the mean of the three, so the more governments warn, and the stronger, the higher it is. It counts in the score like the other parts, at Normal, and where all three advise against travel the score is 0. It only appears for the eclipses of the two years after the advice was read, because an advice says nothing about an eclipse further off. It is a summary for comparing places, not a travel advice: before you go, read the advice of your own government. Where the advice comes from stands under About Totality Trail.
Where the Sun stands below 15°, the city seeker also looks at the terrain in its direction, from the centre of the place: how high hills and mountains stand from 1 to 120 km away. With the Sun 3° or more above them the view is clear, 1 to 3° is tight, and below 1° the Sun is probably behind the terrain. Behind the terrain a place keeps a fifth of its score, never zero, because a few kilometres away or higher up the view may be clear. Trees and buildings are not included. The horizon counts at Normal and can be switched off under Score.
Comparing places
Press Compare on up to six cards, then open the comparison with the Compare button above the list, at the bottom right on a phone. The places become cards with all their values, with a podium by score above them, and the best value among the cards is yellow. The parts of the score stand as buttons: switch one off and the score is worked out again without it, so you see what that part does to the podium. A place that moved says where it stood, and the part goes grey on the cards. Parts that are off in your score are not offered. On a phone you swipe through the cards; an arrow shows there are more. The Share button gives a link to this comparison: whoever opens it gets the same places with the same weighting.
Downloading
The download button saves the list as you see it as a CSV file for a spreadsheet, with column headings in the language of the page. In the comparison it saves only the places you chose.
Time and playback
The slider runs from the first to the last contact anywhere on Earth. Play sets the time moving; the speed runs from real time up to 256 times faster and the same in reverse, down to -256; « and » beside Play set it. Under the gear you choose between local time at your point and UTC. The left and right arrow keys change the speed, and Enter or the space bar switches between playing and pausing. With the slider itself in focus, the arrow keys step through time. A time that falls on another calendar day shows that date.
The graphs below the map
The Point and path panel holds four pages; the tabs at the top name them and show where you are; tap one, or swipe, to move on. The first two pages are about your own point, the two after them follow the shadow along its path. A click in any graph moves the time; the white line marks the moment on screen and stays at the edge while the shadow is not on Earth yet.
Coverage · Eclipse at the selected point
How much of the Sun is covered at your point, with the start, the maximum and the end below the graph. What else holds for your own place stands in the watch guide.
Horizon · Horizon towards the Sun
The path of the Sun over the sky at your point while the eclipse is in view, across in the direction of the Sun, with the central phase drawn thick and the moment on screen as a disc. For a place with a low Sun the terrain in that direction stands below it, from elevation data 1 to 120 km away and without trees or buildings; where the Sun goes behind it, the path turns faint and the time stands below the graph. Other points get a flat horizon, and there the graph shows the height of the Sun against the time instead, with the clock at both ends. A scale in degrees stands on the left. A dotted line marks ten degrees: below it, haze often spoils the view. A tap in the panorama moves the time to the Sun nearest across.
Clouds · Average cloud cover
The average cloud cover at the spot where the shadow is at each moment: a monthly average over twenty years, worked down to the date and the local hour, and never a forecast. Below the graph stand the clearest and the cloudiest spot, each with a place name that jumps to that spot and that moment, and the average over the whole path.
Places · Places in the central shadow
For every country the central shadow crosses, this page lists the duration, the height of the Sun and the cloud cover from low to high, with a star on the best place. A tap on a row sets the time to the moment the shadow enters that country; the country name and the starred place are links to the city seeker.
Follow the shadow
Follow shadow keeps the camera on the moving shadow instead of on your point. Your chosen place stays chosen, so the watch guide keeps describing that place.
Watch guide and Point and path
The watch guide names the phases at your point: first contact, the start of the total or annular phase, maximum and last contact, with a countdown to whichever comes next. It also gives the height of the Sun there and the average cloud cover for that place and hour. That height, here and in Point and path, is the one you see: near the horizon the air bends the light, and the Sun seems to stand higher, by up to about half a degree. It is given in tenths, and where the geometric height without that bending differs, it follows in brackets, as in 2.6° (2.4°). For a place with a low Sun a line Horizon says whether the terrain in that direction is tight or hides the Sun; a tap opens the explanation and a way to the page Horizon. The Point and path panel shows the Sun as it stands there and the coverage in percent, and leafs through four pages.
Globe view and zoom
Scroll or pinch to zoom, drag to turn the globe. Under the gear you switch between satellite imagery and a plain map. Satellite is the default; if that imagery cannot be reached, the app falls back to the map on its own.
On a phone and on a wide screen
On a wide screen everything stands in one bar above the map: the eclipse, the place, the clock with the time slider and the playback buttons. The watch guide floats at the left of the map and the Point and path panel at the right, with its four pages inside it; the strip below the map carries the eclipse summary.
On a phone the bar holds only the playback row and the time; the eclipse and the place move behind the crosshair next to the gear. The watch guide and Point and path become two tabs at the edges of the map that slide in, and the graph travels with it. The map keeps the rest of the screen.
The switch happens at 1280 by 520 pixels: a phone in landscape, a tablet and a half desktop window get the phone layout, while a wide but low window keeps the bar. One more difference: on the map page pinching does not enlarge the page, so that it can zoom the globe instead. The text pages enlarge as usual.
Sharing and embedding
The share button copies a link that restores the eclipse, your place, the time, the zoom and the view. On the Embed page, in the menu, you build an embed code for another page, in three shapes: a globe that follows the shadow, a globe in a fixed view, or only the Point and path panel. An embed never starts moving by itself: it opens on pause, with its own play button.
Embedding on your own page
Any site may embed Totality Trail as an iframe. Open Embed in the menu, choose an eclipse, a place, the shape and its start, and copy the code beside the preview; from the map the page opens on the view you have there. The address carries two things: ?embed= names the shape, and everything after #tt= is the view itself, the same code the share button makes. Three shapes exist; the examples show the eclipse of 12 August 2026 seen from Zaragoza.
The globe following the shadow (follow). Its controls sit in the top right: zoom, the lock, Follow shadow and the playback row.
<iframe src="https://totalitytrail.com/viewer?embed=follow#tt=eyJ2IjoxLCJlIjoiMjAyNi0wOC0xMiIsInAiOls0MS42NSwtMC44OF0sImMiOiJaYXJhZ296YSAoRVMpIiwidCI6NjIsInoiOjEuNywiZyI6WzQxLjY1LC0wLjg4XSwibCI6dHJ1ZSwiZiI6dHJ1ZSwiciI6NjQsInUiOnRydWUsInEiOiJFdXJvcGUvTWFkcmlkIn0.6wru22" width="640" height="400" title="Totality Trail" loading="lazy" style="border:0;max-width:100%"></iframe>
The globe in a fixed view (fixed). The view stays where you set it; the shadow passes through it.
<iframe src="https://totalitytrail.com/viewer?embed=fixed#tt=eyJ2IjoxLCJlIjoiMjAyNi0wOC0xMiIsInAiOls0MS42NSwtMC44OF0sImMiOiJaYXJhZ296YSAoRVMpIiwidCI6NjIsInoiOjEuNywiZyI6WzQxLjY1LC0wLjg4XSwibCI6dHJ1ZSwiZiI6ZmFsc2UsInIiOjY0LCJ1Ijp0cnVlLCJxIjoiRXVyb3BlL01hZHJpZCJ9.3pmd79" width="640" height="400" title="Totality Trail" loading="lazy" style="border:0;max-width:100%"></iframe>
Only the Point and path panel (point): the Sun as seen from that place, the countdown, and the tabs you tick on the Embed page: Coverage, Horizon, Clouds and Places in the shadow, the first three unless you choose otherwise. A playback row sits at the bottom. It fills its frame, so give it the height you want the graph to have. In a wide, flat frame the readings move next to the graph instead of above it.
<iframe src="https://totalitytrail.com/viewer?embed=point#tt=eyJ2IjoxLCJlIjoiMjAyNi0wOC0xMiIsInAiOls0MS42NSwtMC44OF0sImMiOiJaYXJhZ296YSAoRVMpIiwidCI6NjIsInoiOjEuNywiZyI6WzQxLjY1LC0wLjg4XSwibCI6dHJ1ZSwiZiI6ZmFsc2UsInIiOjY0LCJ1Ijp0cnVlLCJxIjoiRXVyb3BlL01hZHJpZCJ9.3pmd79" width="420" height="400" title="Totality Trail" loading="lazy" style="border:0;max-width:100%"></iframe>Width and height are yours to change; the frame scales to its box. Every embed carries its own small controls, opens on pause and never starts moving on its own. It stores no preferences for your visitors, downloads the city index only when you tick Places in the shadow, and the link at the bottom opens the full app at exactly the view you embedded. If you change that view later, generate the code again: the view lives in the address, not on our server. In the two globe shapes a small square in the bottom right shows the Sun as it stands at the chosen place, with the percentage covered, and 100% during totality; the top left carries the date and the time of the moment on screen, with its time zone.
Each embed with a globe is the whole app with a globe of its own, and on a phone that weighs heavily. Put at most two of them on one page; for more, a link to the app works better. An embed that has been out of view for a few seconds lets go of its satellite image and loads it again when you scroll back to it. With Load only after a click on the Embed page, a frame loads the app only when a visitor clicks it.
Several embeds playing together
An embed tells the page around it when you play, pause, change the speed or move the time, and follows the same message when it comes from that page. Two embeds on one page therefore do not play together by themselves: your page has to pass the message on. The lines below do that; put them once anywhere on the page. Play, pause and the speed then go to every embed, and the moment to every embed of the same eclipse.
<script>
addEventListener('message', event => {
if (event.origin !== 'https://totalitytrail.com' || event.data?.type !== 'totality-trail:playback') return
for (const frame of document.querySelectorAll('iframe[src^="https://totalitytrail.com/"]')) {
if (frame.contentWindow !== event.source) frame.contentWindow.postMessage(event.data, 'https://totalitytrail.com')
}
})
</script>Installing as an app
On Android and iOS, Settings shows an Install app button. Android opens its own install prompt where it can; on iOS the button shows the steps for Safari. Once the site runs as an installed app, the button is gone. Installed or not, the app keeps working without a connection once you have opened it: the globe, the watch guide, the city seeker and the other pages then come from your own device.
Safety
Never look at the Sun without protection, not even when most of it is covered: the remaining crescent is bright enough to damage the retina. Use eclipse glasses or a handheld viewer that meets the ISO 12312-2 standard, buy them from a known seller, because fakes are sold, and do not use them if they are scratched or damaged. Ordinary sunglasses do not protect, however dark.