Tap any spot on the map. ShadeSpot tells you exactly how long it stays shaded — so your car is still cool when you come back.
Open the map — it's freeNo app. No signup. Just a link.
Example verdict card:
You parked in glorious shade at 9 AM. You came back at 2 PM to a 140-degree oven, a branding-iron seatbelt, and that special two-finger steering grip every Phoenician knows.
The shade didn't disappear. It just moved — like it does every single day, predictably, following the sun. Which means it can be predicted.
Parking in shade keeps your dashboard up to 40°F cooler and your steering wheel 20°F cooler — measured in Tempe by ASU researchers. Shade isn't a luxury here. It's physics.
Any street or parking lot on the map.
"Shaded until 3:40 PM" — calculated from the sun's real position and actual building heights.
Drag the time slider to see where shade will be at lunch, at 5 PM, or any time until sunset.
We calculate the sun's path and building shadows in your browser. Heights use public measurements where available and estimates elsewhere.
Yes. The core verdict — tap a spot, see how long it's shaded — is free and will stay free. No trial, no account, no credit card.
No. It runs in your phone's browser. Add it to your home screen if you want the app feel.
The sun's position is exact (astronomy is reliable like that). Building heights are the variable — where the data is measured, verdicts are solid; where it's estimated, we label it. We don't give a margin of error, because we haven't found an honest way to measure one: checking how many minutes off a verdict is would mean watching the same spot from sunrise to sunset, over and over. We'd rather tell you what the uncertainty depends on than hand you a number we can't stand behind.
Three so far:
More as we grow — tell us where you park and we'll prioritize.
The app doesn't follow your location — it opens where it opened last, starting with Phoenix. To reach another area the first time, open it by name:
shadespot.app/?region=frisco · ?region=30019 (Gwinnett) · ?region=phoenix
It remembers where you've been. Once you've opened two or more areas, the chip at the top of the map — the one naming the area you're in — becomes tappable, and a card slides up with a button for each of the others. Tapping the chip never switches anything on its own; you always confirm in the card, so a stray tap can't move you somewhere else.
If you've only ever seen one area the chip stays plain, on purpose: we'd rather not show a door you can't use.
Why not just use your location? Because the answer would change under you — drive out of a covered area and the map would swap itself while you're reading a verdict. Choosing an area is a decision, so we let you make it.
Not yet — that data barely exists in public maps. Buildings only, for now. It's on the roadmap, and we'd rather tell you that upfront than pretend.
Yes — every verdict has a share link. Send "this spot is shaded until 4 PM" to whoever you're meeting.
Anywhere the data exists — and it exists for most of the US. Building heights come from public aerial laser surveys, so opening a new area means running our pipeline over it, not collecting anything new. Coverage and vintage vary though: some places were last flown fifteen years ago, which is why a new area can start out with estimated heights while we hunt down the best scan for it. Tell us where you park.