AirQMinder Support
The Air Quality Health Index for wherever you are in Canada.
Questions, problems, or ideas? Email wjfrench@proton.me and you'll get a reply, usually within a couple of days. Answers to the most common questions are below.
Getting Started
What does the number mean?
It's the Air Quality Health Index, Health Canada's 1-to-10 scale for how much the current air quality affects health. Higher is worse, and anything above 10 is shown as "10+". The App colours the reading by risk band and shows the matching health message.
| AQHI | Risk | General population |
|---|---|---|
| 1–3 | Low | Ideal air quality for outdoor activities. |
| 4–6 | Moderate | No need to modify outdoor activities unless you have symptoms such as coughing or throat irritation. |
| 7–10 | High | Consider reducing or rescheduling strenuous outdoor activity if you have symptoms. |
| Above 10 | Very High | Reduce or reschedule strenuous outdoor activity, especially if you have symptoms. |
If you have heart or lung conditions, are older, or are with young children, the advice is more cautious at every level. Environment and Climate Change Canada explains the index in full on the Government of Canada's AQHI page.
Why is the App asking for my location?
To work out which air quality monitoring station is closest to you, since that's the reading it shows. It asks iOS only for kilometre-level accuracy, and only while you're using the App or its widget. If you'd rather not allow it, the App will still open but won't be able to find a station. See the privacy policy for exactly what happens with that location.
It says no station was found near me.
The AQHI is a Canadian index, so readings exist only near Canadian monitoring stations. If you're outside Canada, or somewhere in Canada that's too far from any station, there's nothing for the App to show. It's also worth checking that location access is allowed for AirQMinder in iOS Settings, and that you have a working network connection.
Readings and Refreshing
Why hasn't the number changed in an hour?
Environment and Climate Change Canada publishes new AQHI observations about once an hour, so checking more often than that won't produce a new value — it just confirms the current one is still the latest. The observation time shown under the reading tells you how fresh it actually is.
What does the update schedule do?
It sets how often the App checks for a fresh reading — every 5 minutes, 30 minutes, 12 hours, or once a day — in Settings inside the App. Those checks run while the App is open, and a check also happens every time you return to it. You can always pull down to refresh, or use the refresh button, to check immediately.
Does it update in the background?
The App itself doesn't — iOS suspends apps that aren't in the foreground, so the timer stops when you leave and picks up again when you come back. The widget is the way to get updates without opening anything: it fetches on its own and asks iOS to refresh it roughly twice an hour. How often iOS actually honours that depends on battery level, Low Power Mode, and how often you use the App.
The station shown is far away.
The App picks the nearest station that reported a reading, which in less densely monitored areas can be a fair distance off. The distance is shown beside the station name so you can judge how well it represents your own air. Conditions near a fire, a busy road, or an industrial site can differ sharply from a station reading.
The reading looks wrong.
Everything the App displays comes straight from Environment and Climate Change Canada's live feed — the App doesn't calculate or adjust the value. If a reading looks implausible, compare it against the Government of Canada's own AQHI page for the same station. If the two disagree, please email me, as that's a bug worth knowing about.
The Widget
How do I add the widget?
Touch and hold an empty area of your Home Screen until the icons jiggle, tap Edit → Add Widget (or the + button), search for AirQMinder, and choose the small or medium size. Open the App at least once first so it has location permission.
The widget is blank or stuck on an old reading.
The widget keeps the last reading it successfully fetched, so a stale value usually means its recent refreshes have failed — most often because location access is off, or the device has been offline. Check that Location Services are on for AirQMinder in iOS Settings, then open the App once to force a fresh fetch. Low Power Mode also makes iOS refresh widgets much less often.
Privacy
AirQMinder has no accounts, no servers of its own, and no analytics or advertising — nothing about you is sent to me. The full details of what it does with your location and what stays on your device are in the privacy policy.
Data Source
AQHI observations come from the aqhi-observations-realtime collection of Environment and Climate Change Canada's GeoMet OGC API, used under the Open Government Licence – Canada. AirQMinder is an independent app and is not affiliated with or endorsed by the Government of Canada.
Email wjfrench@proton.me — if you're reporting a problem, please mention your iPhone model, your iOS version, the station name the App is showing, and roughly where you are.