Lightshadow

Nikita Khromushkin

About this app

Walk in the shade.

Tell it when you are leaving and Lightshadow picks the route and the side of the street with the most shade, and tells you how much of the walk is shaded compared with the fastest way.

Free, no account, no sign-up. Works in Valencia and in el Port de Sagunt.

WHAT IT DOES

Shade for the hour you leave, not for right now. Pick the hour you will actually be on the street and the route is worked out for that sun. If you leave in a while, the shade will no longer be where it is now.

The side of the street, not just the street. On the same street one pavement is in the sun and the one opposite is in shade. Lightshadow tells you which one to take, stretch by stretch.

You decide whether it is worth it. Next to the shadiest route you see the fastest one, and how much of the walk is shaded on each. Sometimes it is a few minutes more; sometimes it is the same route.

The routes you look up are saved on your phone, and only on your phone.

IT COUNTS THE TREES

A model that sees only buildings misses the shade of the trees. Lightshadow counts them: it measures the tree crowns of the whole city from the national LiDAR survey, and takes the buildings, with their height, from the Catastro.

The shade is calculated, not measured on the street: we have not yet checked it by walking. It is computed for a clear sky; clouds are not in the calculation. It cannot see awnings, parasols or temporary structures. How it works and what it does not do: lightshadow.app/method/

Your city is not there? Ask for it from the app: we count the requests.

PRIVACY

The points you choose and the piece of map you look at reach the server. The points are kept rounded, without the exact time and with nothing that identifies you; the piece of map is not kept. No account, no identifier, no advertising. The map is Google Maps and the search, today, is Google's too: Google receives your IP address, the map area you look at and what you type in the search box, under its own policy. Privacy policy: lightshadow.app/legal/privacy/en/

DATA AND LICENCES

Street data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL). The routing graph is a derivative database of OpenStreetMap; the method by which it is built is published at lightshadow.app/method/graph/en/

Derived from LiDAR-PNOA-cob3 2022-2025 CC-BY 4.0 scne.es — Instituto Geográfico Nacional.

Dirección General del Catastro. Data obtained on 11 August 2026, transformed. All rights reserved (licencia-tipo, Ley 37/2007). The derived product shown is not cartografía catastral and not información catastral.

What’s new

First release on Google Play. Pick the hour you leave and Lightshadow works out the walking route and the side of the street with the most shade, and compares it with the fastest one. It counts the trees. Free, no account. València.