Settings

The Settings screen is the central place to configure your ARIS experience. Access it from the gear icon on the Home screen. Settings are organized into sections covering your account, appearance, equipment, display preferences, data management, and app information.

Account

Sign in to sync your settings, equipment profiles, and image library across devices. ARIS supports multiple authentication methods:

Google Sign-In
Apple Sign-In
Email and password

You can start using ARIS without an account. An anonymous session is created automatically and your data is stored locally. When you sign in later, your local data merges with your cloud profile seamlessly.

Theme Presets

Choose a color theme for the entire interface. Three presets are available:

Observatory (Blue) — The default theme. A cool blue palette designed for general use and daytime planning.
Night Vision (Red) — A deep red theme that preserves your dark adaptation at the telescope. All UI elements shift to red-on-black.
Nebula (Purple) — A purple accent theme for users who prefer a middle ground between the blue and red palettes.

The theme applies globally and takes effect immediately.

Equipment Configuration

This section shows your current telescope and camera as a pair of info cards. Each card displays the device name and key specifications (aperture, focal length, pixel size, sensor dimensions).

Below the cards, ARIS computes and displays derived optical statistics:

Image scale — Arcseconds per pixel.
Field of view — Angular coverage of the sensor.
Dawes limit — Theoretical resolving power based on aperture.

Tap Change Equipment to select a different telescope or camera from your saved profiles, or to define new equipment.

Equipment Inventory

Track your individual hardware units, rig combinations, and per-unit calibration data. The inventory goes beyond generic equipment profiles by recording:

Individual units — Serial numbers, purchase dates, and notes for each piece of gear you own.
Rig combos — Named pairings of telescope, camera, guide scope, and accessories that you use together.
Calibration data — Per-combo calibration frames, backfocus measurements, and tilt data tied to a specific rig combination.

INDI Driver Setup

If you run ARIS with a Raspberry Pi or Linux host, this section lets you load and manage INDI hardware drivers directly from the app.

Browse the available driver catalog (cameras, mounts, focusers, filter wheels, aux devices).
Start or stop individual drivers on the remote host.
Configure driver connection parameters (serial port, baud rate).

Display Preferences

Fine-tune how ARIS presents information on screen.

UI Scale — Choose between Compact, Normal, or Expanded. Compact fits more content on smaller screens. Expanded increases touch target sizes and spacing, which is helpful on tablets.
Temperature unit — Celsius or Fahrenheit. Affects all temperature readouts (sensor cooling, ambient conditions).
Coordinate format — Hours-Minutes-Seconds (HMS) or Decimal degrees. Applies to RA/Dec displays throughout the app.
Time format — 12-hour or 24-hour clock.

Image Library

Download DSO survey images and sky tiles for offline use. The library organizes downloads by survey and resolution tier.

Sky tiles — Background sky imagery at multiple resolutions (8K base, higher-resolution tile sets for zoom).
DSO survey images — Curated images of deep-sky objects from multiple astronomical surveys. These appear as overlays on the sky map and planning screens.

Downloads are large. A progress indicator shows the current transfer, and you can pause or cancel at any time.

Equipment Profiles

Save, load, and manage named equipment configurations. A profile captures your telescope, camera, and accessory selections along with all computed optical parameters.

Save — Store your current equipment setup under a name (e.g., “Wide Field”, “Planetary”).
Load — Switch to a saved profile with one tap. All dependent calculations (image scale, FOV) update automatically.
Delete — Remove profiles you no longer need.

Profiles sync to your cloud account when signed in.

Horizon Profiles

Define your local horizon to account for obstructions (trees, buildings, mountains) in planning and altitude charts.

Horizon Scanner — Use the in-app scanner to sweep your local horizon with the device camera and automatically detect the treeline or obstruction boundary.
Panorama Capture — Capture a 360-degree panorama from your observing site. ARIS extracts the horizon profile from the stitched image using sky segmentation.
Import — Load a horizon profile from a .txt or .json file. Standard altitude-azimuth tabular formats are supported.

Horizon profiles overlay on altitude charts and the sky map so you can see at a glance when a target rises above or dips behind local obstructions.

About

The About section displays:

App version and build number
Links — Privacy Policy, Terms of Service, and the ARIS GitHub repository.