The official app for the eclipse of 2 August 2027 is the same as last summer’s: IGN Eclipses, from the IGN (Spain’s National Geographic Institute), free for Android and iPhone, which according to its entry in the Spanish government’s open-data catalogue covers all three eclipses of the trio, this one included. If you want a voice to tell you about each contact, the Solar Eclipse Timer website says it is being updated for this eclipse. And for the basics you don’t need to install anything: your municipality’s times, the live view and the countdown are on this website.
The official one: IGN Eclipses
It is made by the National Centre for Geographic Information (CNIG) with official IGN data, and the weather forecast comes from AEMET, Spain’s state weather agency. According to its entry on datos.gob.es, it has an interactive map with the path and the good areas for observing, and the ephemerides of each eclipse: times, phases, magnitude, duration and path. Xataka Móvil, a Spanish tech site that reviewed it last summer, reported that tapping a point on the map gives the time of the start and the maximum, the eclipse percentage and the altitude of the Sun, that you can search by city or address, and that it includes a simulation of how the eclipse progresses. Neither source mentions phone notifications.
The government’s website for the three eclipses, trioeclipses.es, the official channel of the Interministerial Commission for the Trío de Eclipses, has no app of its own; what it offers is a path locator on the website itself.
If you compare the app’s times with ours, you’ll see that the IGN’s run about ten seconds ahead. We explain why in eclipse magnitude and obscuration explained. The durations of totality we give for Spain are the IGN’s.
A timer that talks: Solar Eclipse Timer
For totality, the most convenient thing is an app that talks, so you don’t have to look at the screen. In Ceuta totality lasts 4 min 48 s, and in Málaga, 1 min 49 s: not enough time to keep checking your phone. Solar Eclipse Timer calculates the contact times from the phone’s location and announces them out loud, for example one minute before second contact. It works on iPhone and Android, in English and Spanish. Its website lists six total eclipses seen with it, last summer’s included, and says it is being updated for the eclipse of 2 August 2027, with release planned for early 2027. Until it comes out, we don’t know what that version will be like.
Even with a voice to warn you, the glasses come off when you see the diamond ring go out and go back on with the first flash. The details, with the times for each municipality, are in when to take off your eclipse glasses in totality.
What the website does, with nothing to install
We also have an iPhone app, Eclipseando, but the version published today, 1.1, is the one for last summer’s eclipse: it doesn’t have the times or the alerts for 2 August 2027. For this eclipse, what we offer is on the website:
| Tool | What it does |
|---|---|
| Will I see it? | whether your municipality gets totality, how long it lasts and at what time |
| When is it? | times by city: partial phase from 09:40 to 12:15, and totality only in the south, with the maximum from 10:46 to 10:51 (mainland Spanish time, CEST, UTC+2) |
| Live | the phase in your municipality minute by minute: countdown, percentage of the Sun covered, seconds of totality and when to put your glasses on and take them off |
| Countdown (in Spanish) | full screen until the exact second of totality, to put up on the TV, with no sounds; the screen stays on if the browser allows it |
| Simulator (in Spanish) | the film of your eclipse in a minute, with your town’s times |
| Widget (in Spanish) | the code to put the exact time for your municipality on your own website, free and without cookies |
Before you trust an app
- Check that it’s for 2 August 2027. Many were made for last summer’s eclipse, and their times are no good for this one.
- The time has to be right: mainland Spanish time on the mainland, the Balearic Islands, Ceuta and Melilla, and one hour less in the Canary Islands. On that day, Morocco is also two hours behind Ceuta.
- It should say where its data comes from: the IGN, NASA or a calculation of its own that it explains.
- Open it beforehand, at home, so you’re not caught downloading data somewhere with no signal.
- And don’t mistake it for a filter. To look you need EN ISO 12312-2 glasses, and to take photos during the partial phases, a filter in front of the lens (which one, in solar filters for cameras and phones).
On Order your glasses you can ask for ours: cardboard, with the EN ISO 12312-2 certificate, along with the phone filter and packs for groups.
Sources: App IGN Eclipses — datos.gob.es (in Spanish: who makes it, where its data and its weather data come from, what it includes and that it covers the three eclipses); La app que recomienda el Gobierno para el eclipse — Xataka Móvil, Noelia Hontoria (in Spanish: what it does, that it is free and that it is available for Android and iPhone); Solar Eclipse Timer (voice alerts, automatic location, languages, previous eclipses and the version for 2027); Trío de Eclipses — Gobierno de España (in Spanish: the official website and its path locator); eclipseando data (times in Spain, skyfield + DE440s engine; IGN durations and the difference from their times; legal time in each country on 2 August).
If you would like something to keep from the eclipse, the shop prints T-shirts, mugs and posters with the name of your town, the time of its maximum and its seconds of totality. See the merchandise →
Remember: never look at the Sun without proper eye protection (filters made to EN ISO 12312-2). The official reference for safe viewing in Spain is the IGN (in Spanish): eclipses.ign.es.