Manual
How to read the globe and use every control. The app needs no account and stores nothing about you beyond your own preferences, kept 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
The dark band is where the eclipse is total or annular; the dashed line is the centre of that band. The thin rings around it mark where 20, 40, 60 and 80 percent of the Sun is covered. A soft blue veil marks night, and everything is drawn for the moment on the time slider.
Choosing an eclipse
The eclipse list holds every solar eclipse in the catalogue. Past events keep working but move behind the upcoming ones.
Choosing a place
Click or tap the globe to pick a point, or type a city in the location field. Coordinates work too, as "52.37, 4.90". The lock button keeps your point in place while you drag or zoom the globe.
City seeker
The City seeker lists every known city and town where the umbra or antumbra passes.
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. The button beside the slider switches 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 the day after the eclipse begins carries +1.
The graphs below the map
The panel at the selected point holds four pages; the bar underneath shows where you are, and a tap on it or a swipe moves on. The first page is your own point: how much of the Sun is covered there, with the start, the maximum and the end below the graph. The other three follow the shadow along its path and not your point: how long the central phase lasts at each moment, how high the Sun stands there, and the average cloud cover. Under each of those three stand the extremes, and the place name behind them jumps to that spot and that moment. 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. On the graph of the Sun's height a dotted line marks ten degrees: below that, haze and anything standing on the horizon usually spoil the view. The cloud figures are a monthly average over twenty years, worked down to the date and the hour, and never a forecast. What holds for your own place stands in the watch guide.
Follow the shadow
Follow shadow keeps the camera on the moving shadow instead of on your point. Your chosen place stays selected, so the watch guide keeps describing that place.
Watch guide and selected point
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. The panel at the selected point shows the Sun as it stands there and the coverage in percent, and leafs through four graphs.
Globe view and zoom
Scroll or pinch to zoom, drag to turn the globe. Under the gear you can switch between satellite imagery and a plain map. Satellite is the default; if the imagery cannot be reached the app falls back to the map on its own.
On a phone
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 panel of the selected point at the right, with its four graphs 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 the selected point become two tabs at the edges of the map that slide in, and the graph travels with the selected point. 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. Under the gear you can 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 selected point panel. An embed never starts moving by itself: one click starts it.
Embedding on your own page
Any site may embed Totality Trail as an iframe. Set up the view you want in the app (eclipse, place, time, zoom), open the gear and choose Embed: the code below the form is ready to paste. The address carries two things: ?embed= names the shape, and everything after #tt= is the view itself, the same hash 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). One click starts the animation; the camera stays on the moving shadow.
<iframe src="https://totalitytrail.com/?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/?embed=fixed#tt=eyJ2IjoxLCJlIjoiMjAyNi0wOC0xMiIsInAiOls0MS42NSwtMC44OF0sImMiOiJaYXJhZ296YSAoRVMpIiwidCI6NjIsInoiOjEuNywiZyI6WzQxLjY1LC0wLjg4XSwibCI6dHJ1ZSwiZiI6ZmFsc2UsInIiOjY0LCJ1Ijp0cnVlLCJxIjoiRXVyb3BlL01hZHJpZCJ9.3pmd79" width="640" height="400" title="Totality Trail" loading="lazy" style="border:0;max-width:100%"></iframe>Only the panel of the selected point (point): the Sun as seen from that place, the countdown, and four pages you leaf through with the bar underneath, from the obscuration at your point to the duration, the height of the Sun and the cloud cover along the path. 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/?embed=point#tt=eyJ2IjoxLCJlIjoiMjAyNi0wOC0xMiIsInAiOls0MS42NSwtMC44OF0sImMiOiJaYXJhZ296YSAoRVMpIiwidCI6NjIsInoiOjEuNywiZyI6WzQxLjY1LC0wLjg4XSwibCI6dHJ1ZSwiZiI6ZmFsc2UsInIiOjY0LCJ1Ijp0cnVlLCJxIjoiRXVyb3BlL01hZHJpZCJ9.3pmd79" width="420" height="380" 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. An embed never starts moving by itself, stores no preferences for your visitors, shows a small link back to the full app, and does not download the city index, so it loads light. If you change the 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.
Installing as an app
The site can be installed from your browser menu and then opens without browser bars. The map and city data stay in the browser cache, so a second visit starts faster.
Safety
Never look at the Sun without certified eclipse viewers. Only remove them during locally visible totality; eye protection is always required for annular eclipses.