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Start with the two that account for most of them: the session had already ended, or the pin wasn't where the car 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, and the app says so on the home screen.
• 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 car. If you flipped the switch before you got to the car or after you left it, that's the spot being monitored.
• The forecast was wrong. Rain can arrive early, stall out, shift, or turn up where nothing was predicted. This is a real and permanent limit of forecasting rain, not a bug I 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 my end was down. It happens. If you think you hit this, tell me. I would rather know.
• You are outside the areas with precise timing. See where the detailed forecast is available.

One thing that surprises people: each session sends each kind of warning once. If a storm comes into range, backs off, and returns, the first warning doesn't fire a second time. That's deliberate, so a session can't buzz you all afternoon.

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 apply now.

45 minutes is the maximum. Rain forecasts this precise only reach about an hour ahead, so a longer warning wouldn't have 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 can't 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, since only one spot is watched at a time.

When a session ends, monitoring stops and no further warnings are sent, whether or not your car 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 me 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 I 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 there's no way to connect the two. 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's the whole point of how it's built. Your phone sends one message when you park with the position and how long to watch it, and then it does nothing. There is no background location, no repeating fetch, and no service left running.

All the watching happens on a server so it doesn't drain your battery. Between flipping the switch and getting a notification, Top Down doesn't run on your phone at all.

No. Close it, swipe it away, lock the phone. The session lives on the server so closing the app doesn't affect it.

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

Yes. Tap My top is back on to end the session, then start a new one once you are standing at the car. It's worth doing: Top Down has no way to sense where your car is, so a session started two miles away will report the weather two miles away.

The most common version of this is flipping the switch at home before you drive out, or on the walk back from a parking lot you've 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 I 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 center of that square rather than for where you parked. The weather provider never receives your actual position.

Your exact coordinates stay in the database so the app can 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.