For the press Until Arrival — press kit
Until Arrival is a small iOS Lock Screen and Home Screen widget that quietly tracks the flight of someone you're waiting for. Add a flight number once. The widget appears as a Certificate of Arrival — a paperback document that fills in as the flight progresses. Boarding. In flight. Approaching. Landed. The next morning, it clears. Made quietly by sthreelabs.
All materials on this page are free to use in editorial coverage of Until Arrival. Please credit sthreelabs.
i.Quick facts
- App name
- Until Arrival
- Maker
- sthreelabs (Christopher Doherty)
- Price
- $4.99 USD, one-time purchase. No subscription, no in-app purchases.
- Platforms
- iOS 18 or later. iPhone.
- Languages
- English
- Privacy
- No account, no analytics, no third-party SDKs, no ads. Only the flight number leaves the device. The traveler's name and the manifest of past arrivals stay on the device and in the user's private iCloud.
- App Store
- apps.apple.com/app/until-arrival
- Site
- sthreelabs.com/until-arrival
- Press contact
- hello [at] sthreelabs [dot] com
ii.One-paragraph description
Until Arrival is a flight-tracking widget made for the person at home, not the person flying. Type the airline + flight number + traveler's name once. A small Certificate of Arrival appears on the Lock Screen or Home Screen as a paperback document — typewritten serif on cream, ruled lines, an ornament — and quietly fills in as the flight progresses. When the wheels touch down, an imperfect ARRIVED stamp lands diagonally across it. The next morning, it clears. Inside the app, every flight you've tracked is filed in a Manifest of Arrivals, a longitudinal ledger of the people you've waited for.
iii.Longer description (for editorial use)
Most flight apps are built for the person flying — gate, seat, boarding group, baggage claim. Until Arrival is the opposite product. It's for the person at home: the partner waiting for the partner, the parent waiting for the kid coming back from college, the grandparent waiting for the holiday visit. The information you actually need when you're waiting is small. Are they in the air yet? When will they land? Is anything wrong? The whole product is one calm answer to those three questions.
The widget is the surface. It comes in three sizes — small (luggage tag), medium (boarding pass), large (full Certificate of Arrival) — plus Lock Screen complications. As the tracked flight progresses, the certificate visibly fills in: a partial fill at boarding, a heavier line as the plane is in the air, an ornament near the destination as the flight approaches. When the flight lands, an imperfect ARRIVED stamp lands diagonally across the certificate in stamp red. The user can opt in to a single quiet "Arrived" notification; the default is silent.
A Live Activity surfaces in-flight progress on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, and dismisses on landing.
Inside the app, every flight you've tracked is filed in a Manifest of Arrivals — a bound ledger view in the same paperback typography. After a year, the manifest is a small record of relationships: holiday visits, weddings, graduations, the friend who flies in for Thanksgiving. Each one filed.
Flight data comes from a small server that sthreelabs operates, which queries AeroDataBox for the public schedule and status. The server only ever sees the flight number — never the traveler's name, never the user's identity, never the device location. Traveler names and the manifest of past arrivals live entirely in the user's private iCloud, encrypted and inaccessible to the developer.
Until Arrival is part of the paperback family of apps under the sthreelabs label, alongside Tallies (habit counter), A Spell of Work (focus timer), One Line in Time (one-line journal), A Deep Breath (breathing app paired with public-domain literature), and A Place Recalled (field-recording memories of places).
iv.What's distinctive
- For the waiter, not the traveler. Every other flight app is built around the person flying. Until Arrival inverts the product: the user is at home, the flight is someone else's, the question is when do I leave for the airport. Genuinely underserved niche in a crowded category.
- The widget is the product. The app exists mostly so the user can configure the widget. Most days, the user never opens the app at all — the certificate on the Lock Screen is the entire interaction.
- The Manifest of Arrivals. Every flight ever tracked is kept as a paperback record. After a year of use, the manifest reads as a longitudinal ledger of the people in the user's life — visits, holidays, weddings, returns. The relationship between the user and the people they wait for becomes legible over time.
- Privacy-conscious in a tracking-heavy category. Only the flight number leaves the device. The traveler's name, the manifest history, the device location — none of it touches the network. The flight-data server (sthreelabs-operated, on Cloudflare) sees only the flight number and date.
- The paperback aesthetic. Cream paper, typewritten serif, ledger lines, ink stamps, ornaments. Same visual identity as the rest of the sthreelabs paperback family but routed through a 1928 ship-manifest reference instead of a notebook one. Often the most photographable feature for editorial.
v.Features (positive list)
- Add a flight by airline + number + date and the traveler's name
- Three widget sizes — luggage tag (small), boarding pass (medium), full Certificate of Arrival (large)
- Lock Screen complications in rectangular, inline, and circular forms
- Live Activity for in-flight progress, with Dynamic Island support
- Optional quiet "Arrived" notification, off by default
- Manifest of Arrivals: every tracked flight kept as a paperback record
- Detail view: full Certificate of Arrival with the imperfect ARRIVED stamp + per-flight event ledger
- Auto-clears the morning after a flight lands so the widget doesn't linger
- iCloud sync of manifest entries across iPhone via the user's private container
- Light, dark, and follow-system appearance
vi.What it deliberately doesn't do
- Not for tracking your own flight. There are excellent dedicated apps for the person flying — this one is for the people you wait for.
- No streaks, no badges, no analytics, no telemetry.
- No social features, no sharing, no public feed.
- No push notifications by default — the widget is the surface.
- No subscription, no in-app purchases — paid once, yours forever.
- No account, no login, no third-party SDKs, no ad networks.
vii.Screenshots
High-resolution PNGs at App Store Connect dimensions. Free to use in editorial coverage. Click any thumbnail to download.
viii.App icon
1024 × 1024 PNG. Two variants — light (default) and dark.
ix.Brand reference
Until Arrival (and all sthreelabs marketing) uses the paperback design language. If you'd like to color-match in editorial graphics:
Typography: Crimson Pro (300–600 weights, italics) for body and headings. JetBrains Mono 400 for numerals and small caps.
x.Pull-quotes (use freely)
Lines from the listing copy that are designed to drop cleanly into editorial.
xi.About sthreelabs
sthreelabs is a one-person studio making small, quiet iOS apps. Every app is paid once, has no notifications by default, collects no data, and is deliberately scoped to do one thing well. Until Arrival is part of the paperback collection — alongside Tallies (habit counter), A Spell of Work (focus timer), One Line in Time (one-line journal), A Deep Breath (breathing app paired with public-domain literature), and A Place Recalled (field-recording memories of places).
Made quietly by Christopher Doherty.
xii.Press contact
Christopher Doherty — hello [at] sthreelabs [dot] com
Press inquiries usually answered within 24 hours. Promo codes available on request for review purposes.
Made quietly by sthreelabs.