Ten years ago, I started building my Closures App for the iPhone. I failed then, and every year since, to get it to a place where I felt it deserved to be seen and used by others.
Today, I’m happy to announce that Closures is officially open for beta testing on iPhone and iPad via TestFlight. Anyone with an iPhone or iPad can help test it.
The project itself goes back even further, to 2013, when I started it in high school. Over the years, it became my guinea pig for teaching myself new programming languages and tools.
I shared the first sneak peek of a concept I had for an iPhone app in November 2016. In the years that followed, I built several versions of it that never made it past my own testing, and I rebuilt Closures from the ground up as a web app more than once along the way, moving from PHP to Next.js. Today, both the iOS and web apps are powered by Closures’ own Python server and API, built to push real-time data to millions of devices.
The idea is the same as it’s always been. Local news stations report closings, delays and cancellations, and Closures gathers them into one place. Closures requires no signing up, doesn’t track you, has absolutely zero ads, and is 100% free to use. It currently covers several states across the US, with more on the way.
Notifications, the moment it’s announced
This is the big one. You can follow schools, organizations, transit services, libraries, churches, and more, and get a push notification the moment a local news station announces a closure or delay. No more refreshing, watching the news ticker or listening to the radio to find out.
You choose which kinds of updates you get in Settings, and you can turn them off at any time. There’s still no account to create.
Everything in one Feed
Open the app and you’ll land on the Feed, with every reported closing, delay and cancellation, newest first or nearest first. You choose how wide to look: Near Me covers about 100 miles around you, or you can pick any state or the whole country. Filters narrow it down by status, whether something is closed, delayed or something else, and by category, from schools, places of worship and health care to government, businesses, community groups, libraries, child care and transportation. The places you follow stay pinned at the top, so you never have to hunt for them.
At the top is a large, animated Closures logo with today’s date, your area and when the Feed last updated. Pull down or tap the logo to refresh, and when new posts arrive, a button takes you straight to them. If there’s a weather alert for your area, a banner lets you know. Long-press any post to open its page, see where it came from, copy its status or share it. And if you lose your signal, the Feed still opens with the last one it loaded.
A page for every place
Every organization has its own page, starting with a card that shows its current status and when it was last updated. When it’s closed or delayed, the weather is right beside it: current conditions, snow, ice and cold, an hourly forecast with wind, and the full National Weather Service outlook, with a link to weather.gov. Any weather alerts for that place are there too, with their full text.
Further down, you’ll find a history of its past closings and delays, and the stations that reported it, with details about each one. You can follow a place with one tap or share a link to its page. And if it’s in a different time zone from you, its times are shown in its own.
Following and search
Following brings together every place you follow and where each one stands right now. Sort by status, by name or by when you followed it, and a symbol marks any place with an active weather alert. Swipe to unfollow, or tap Edit to unfollow several at once. If you change your mind, Undo puts them back.
To find somewhere new, search by name, city, county or ZIP code.
Widgets and dark mode
Closures supports light and dark mode, and includes Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, so you can check for closures without even opening the app.
Join the beta
The beta runs on iPhone and iPad with iOS 26 or later. To test the app, you’ll need to download TestFlight from the App Store. Then open closures.app on your iPhone or iPad and tap Join the beta.
Since this is a beta, things will change, and some things may break along the way. If something doesn’t work, you can send feedback directly through TestFlight. Closures is free now, and it will stay free on the App Store.
Thank you for trying it, and for sticking with Closures all these years.
Now, onward to a brutal winter.
Dalton Sutton
Creator and developer of Closures