Strandline

Strandline answers one question: what is the sea doing at my beach today?

Pick your beach and you get the whole day at a glance. The tide curve, the moment of high and low water, sunrise and sunset, the wind, the air and sea temperature, and the official water quality rating. No dashboards, no charts to decode, no ten minute detour through a weather site that was built for sailors.

FOR PEOPLE WHO ACTUALLY GO IN It is built for surfers, swimmers, paddleboarders and families with a couple of hours and a car boot full of towels. It tells you whether the tide is pushing in or draining out, how hard it is running, and how long you have got before the water reaches the steps.

THE TIDE MATHS IS REAL Tide times come from harmonic analysis of Environment Agency gauge records, the same method the official tables use, computed on your phone from 38 gauges around the coast. Predictions land within a few centimetres of the live gauge. Sunrise, sunset and twilight use the NOAA solar algorithm rather than a rough approximation, so the numbers hold up at the edges of the year.

WORKS WITHOUT SIGNAL Tides and sun are pure computation, so they work in a car park with one bar of reception, or none. Wind, temperature and water quality need a connection, and the app tells you plainly when they are stale rather than showing you yesterday's number as though it were today's.

464 BATHING BEACHES Every designated bathing water in England, from Sefton to the Isle of Wight, each matched to its nearest tide gauge. Search by name or let the app find the coast nearest you.

NO ACCOUNT, NO TRACKING There is no sign up and no advertising. If you let the app use your location it is used on the device to find nearby beaches and is never sent to us, because there is no us to send it to. Nothing you do in the app leaves your phone.

Data from the Environment Agency (Open Government Licence v3.0) and MET Norway (CC BY 4.0). Strandline is not affiliated with either.

Tide predictions are for recreation. Do not use them for navigation.