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Start with the two that account for most of them: the session had already ended, or the pin was not where the vehicle actually was.

Then, in rough order of likelihood:

• Notifications are switched off. Check iOS Settings → Notifications → Top Down. Also check whether a Focus mode or Do Not Disturb was on. A session with no notification permission still runs, but it has no way to reach you — the app says so on the home screen when that is the case.
• The session expired. Monitoring stops at expiry, whether or not the top is back on. See how session expiry works.
• The pin was somewhere else. Top Down watches the coordinates you gave it, not the vehicle. If you flipped the switch before you got to the car, or after you left it, that is the spot being monitored.
• The forecast was wrong. Rain arrives early, stalls, shifts, or turns up where nothing was predicted. This is a real and permanent limit of precipitation forecasting, not a bug we expect to fix.
• The rain formed too fast. If precipitation appears over your spot with less notice than your warning time, there is no earlier warning to send.
• Delivery was delayed or dropped. Notifications travel through Apple's servers. Phone off, no signal, airplane mode and Low Power Mode all get in the way.
• Something on our end was down. It happens. If you think you hit this, tell us — we would rather know.
• You are outside the areas with precise timing. See where the detailed forecast is available.

One deliberate behaviour that surprises people: each session sends each kind of warning once. If a storm comes into range, backs off, and returns, the first warning does not fire a second time. That is a guard against a session that buzzes you all afternoon, and it is intentional.

Open Top Down → Settings → Default warning time, and pick 15, 30 or 45 minutes. The default is 45.

The change applies to sessions you start after it. A session that is already running keeps the warning time it was created with — turn it off and start a new one if you want the new setting to take effect immediately.

45 minutes is the maximum, and the reason is worth knowing: rain forecasts this precise only reach about an hour ahead, so a longer warning would have no room left to be right.

You pick how long when you start a session — a couple of hours, half a day, or open-ended. Open-ended is capped at 24 hours, so a session you forget about cannot nag you two days after the top went back on.

A session ends when:

• it reaches its expiry;
• you turn the switch off; or
• you start a new session — one vehicle spot is watched at a time.

When a session ends, monitoring stops and no further warnings are sent — whether or not your vehicle is still open. If the top is still off, start a new session.

The home screen shows the time remaining while a session is running.

Email [email protected] with your installation identifier and ask us to delete it.

Top Down has no account, no name, and no email address on file, so that identifier is the only handle either of us has on your data. Without it we cannot tell which records are yours.

Where to find your identifier

1. Open Top Down.
2. Go to Settings.
3. Under Your data there is a box containing a long string of letters and numbers. That is it.
4. Tap the box to share it straight into an email, or select the text to copy it.

Get the identifier before you delete the app. Reinstalling produces a brand new one, and we have no way to connect the two — which means that once the app is gone, the old data can no longer be identified as yours.

Deleting the app stops all monitoring immediately. It does not by itself erase what is already stored, but that data is on a clock regardless: ended sessions and their alerts are deleted after 30 days, and a device with no activity for 12 months is deleted entirely. Full detail in the privacy policy.

It shouldn't, and that is the point of the design. Your phone sends one message when you park — the position and how long to watch it — and then does nothing. There is no background location, no repeating fetch, and no service left running.

All the watching happens on our servers. Between flipping the switch and getting a notification, Top Down does not run on your phone at all.

No. Close it, swipe it away, lock the phone. The session lives on our side and is unaffected.

You do need notifications enabled for the warning to reach you, and the phone needs signal at the moment we send it.

Yes — tap My top is back on to end the session, then start a new one once you are at the vehicle. This is worth doing rather than shrugging at: Top Down has no way to sense your vehicle, so a session started two miles from the car will cheerfully report the weather two miles from the car.

The most common version of this is flipping the switch at home before driving out, or on the walk back from a car park you have already left.

Minute-level rain timing covers the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Japan and Australia. That is a limit of the underlying forecast data, not a choice we made.

Everywhere else, Top Down falls back to coarser hourly data. Warnings still work, but they are rougher and can arrive with less notice than the warning time you chose. The app tells you when you are in an area where that applies.

No. Your coordinates are rounded to a roughly 5 km grid square, and the forecast is requested for the centre of that square rather than for where you parked. The weather provider never receives your actual position.

Your exact coordinates stay in our database, because the app has to be able to show you your own pin. See the privacy policy.

Technically nothing stops you — it watches a spot on a map for rain. But please read the terms first, particularly the part where Top Down is not a monitoring, security or safety system. Do not put it anywhere a missed warning does more than inconvenience you.