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Orbit is a private iPhone instrument that maps your relationships into four nested layers — 5, 15, 50, 150 — and shows the gap between who you said is close (the declared layer) and who is actually close, based on how often you talk to them (the implied layer).

It is not a contacts app, not a CRM, not a social network. There is no feed, no reminders that you should "stay in touch", and no streaks.

From the Circle screen, tap the person-plus icon in the top right. Add a name (required), a declared layer (the inner 5, sympathy 15, friends 50, or active 150), and optionally a photo, a relationship tag (family, friend, partner, colleague), and a short note on why this person matters.

People you share a home with are always in your inner 5 by definition — you don't need to log every conversation to prove it. Toggle Lives with me on Add/Edit Person, and Orbit will treat them as implied-5 permanently, and stop asking about drift for them.

No. Add the people you actually want to think about. Most users start with five to ten and grow from there. The point isn't completeness — it's clarity about the few that matter.

From the work of Robin Dunbar and colleagues:

• Inner 5. The people you'd call at 3am. Roughly weekly contact.
• Sympathy 15. Good friends and close family. Roughly monthly contact.
• Friends 50. Friends you'd grab a drink with. Every two or three months.
• Active network 150. Acquaintances you'd recognise and greet. At least once a year.

Alignment is the gap between the layer you declared for someone and the layer their actual contact frequency places them in. Orbit reports one of four states:

• Aligned. Implied layer matches your declared layer (or is more frequent).
• Drifted. Implied layer is one step outward (you said inner 5, behaviour says 15).
• Far drift. Implied layer is two or more steps outward.
• Dropped. No contact in the last 365 days — they have fallen off the map.

The dot colour on the Circle screen encodes this state.

Yes. The defaults come from peer-reviewed research (Sutcliffe, Dunbar et al., 2012). If your relationships move at a different cadence — say you have weekly catch-ups that you consider sympathy-15 rather than inner-5 — open Settings → Frequency thresholds and adjust. Reset to research defaults is one tap away.

It didn't — Orbit never changes a declared layer on its own. What you saw is a suggestion banner: if your contact behaviour is consistently more frequent than the declared layer requires, Orbit asks whether you'd like to move the person closer. You decide. Decline and the banner goes away.

Any meaningful interaction with that person. A text exchange, a call, a meal, a walk. The point is not to count notifications — it's to count moments. We do not distinguish a two-minute text from an hour-long conversation by default, though you can optionally rate quality 1–5 when you log.

Tap the floating + button, then tap multiple people in the list before pressing Log. A single contact is recorded for each selected person at the same timestamp. Ideal for "dinner with mum and sister."

An optional field when you log a contact: who reached out — I did, they did, or Mutual. Leave it blank if you don't want to think about it. Once you have ten contacts with this field filled in for one person, Orbit can surface the ratio on their detail screen.

Editing the date isn't in v1.0 — Orbit aims to be a behavioural record, not a meticulous diary. Log it today; the rolling 30 / 90 / 365 day windows will absorb the small delay without distorting your data.

You can tap the refresh button on the Reality Check screen at any time. The weekly notification (if you have it enabled) lands on Sunday at 18:00 local. Sections that have nothing to report — for example, no drift this week — are hidden so the report doesn't feel padded.

The headline number on the Reality Check screen: of the people you declared as inner-5, how many are actually inner-5 by behaviour. "2 / 5" means three of your declared inner circle are behaving like a more distant layer.

A person you declared in your inner 5 or 15 with zero contact in the last 365 days. Orbit flags them as ghosts not to shame you, but to ask: do they really belong here? You decide.

The migration map compares each person's implied layer at the start of the chosen period to their implied layer today. Orbit needs weekly snapshots, written automatically as you use the app. If you've only had Orbit for a few weeks, give it time to accumulate.

Two kinds, both opt-in:

• Weekly digest. Sunday 18:00 — "Your Reality Check is ready."
• Drift alerts (inner 5 only). If a person you declared as inner-5 has gone 14+ days without contact, a single gentle notification is sent at 09:00 the next morning. Never more than once every seven days per person.

No streaks, no "keep it up", no guilt-trips. Ever.

Three things to check, in order:

• The system permission. iOS Settings → Notifications → Orbit — make sure "Allow Notifications" is on.
• In Orbit. Settings → Notifications — confirm Weekly digest and/or Drift alerts are switched on.
• The threshold. Drift alerts only fire after 14 days of silence with an inner-5 person. If you've been in steady contact with everyone, there is genuinely nothing to alert about.

No. The people you add, your contact log, your photos and notes never leave your iPhone. We have no servers that store this data. Full details in the privacy policy.

iOS shows a system prompt the first time an app uses tracking SDKs. Orbit uses AppsFlyer to measure which marketing channel brought you in. If you tap Ask App Not to Track, AppsFlyer falls back to Apple's privacy-preserving SKAdNetwork and Orbit works identically. The prompt is a one-time decision — you can change it later in iOS Settings → Privacy & Security → Tracking → Orbit.

Both live in Settings → Data:

• Export to JSON. Writes a complete dump of your people, contacts, snapshots, and notes to a JSON file you can share or back up.
• Erase all data. Deletes every person, contact, photo, and snapshot stored locally. Requires a double confirmation. Cannot be undone.

The dot colour reflects alignment, which depends on (a) the person's declared layer, (b) their contact history, and (c) the current frequency thresholds. Open the person detail to see all three. If you recently logged a contact, pull-to-refresh or re-open the screen — implied layer updates immediately but the rendered colour can lag by a frame.

App Lock uses iOS's standard biometric flow. If Face ID fails, the system passcode prompt should appear automatically. If it does not, force-quit Orbit (swipe up from the home indicator and flick the card up), then reopen. Confirm iOS Settings → Face ID & Passcode → Orbit is enabled, and that Settings → Privacy → App Lock inside Orbit is on.

Orbit is built for hundreds, not thousands. If you're past ~500 active people and seeing lag on the Circle screen, archive anyone you no longer want to track (person detail → Archive). Archived people are excluded from the Circle, Stats, and Reality Check, but their data is preserved.

Orbit requires iOS 15.0 or later. iPhone only in v1.0 — iPad and Apple Watch are on the roadmap.