Automatic pacing, the Time-lapse timer, and battery.
When you're Live, nothing on the map moves fast enough to see — the Sun line crawls at real speed — so the map redraws itself only about once every three minutes. The clock keeps its own seconds ticking independently, so it stays lively without waking the whole map, and touching the map — pan, zoom, switching views — always responds instantly. This is why Sunline is quiet and battery-friendly as an always-on display.
During a time-lapse, the map animates continuously so the Sun line glides rather than jumps. The frame rate is matched to the speed you've picked: 20 frames per second at gentle speeds (up to a minute per second), 24 in the middle range (up to ten minutes per second), and 30 at the fastest settings, where the world is really flying.
There is no setting for any of this. If you're looking for the Smooth Animations toggle from earlier versions: it's retired — the app now makes the choice itself.
Under sustained load the time-lapse frame rate also steps down automatically to protect your battery and your device's thermals — see E4.
A time-lapse doesn't run forever unless you ask it to. On the Settings → Location and Time tab, just below the Start and Speed controls, the TIMER — HOW LONG section has an End time-lapse after dropdown:
When the timer runs out, a running time-lapse returns to Live. Thirty seconds before that, a banner appears at the top of the screen — "Time-lapse ends in 30 seconds." — with three buttons:
The warning appears even in fullscreen — a fullscreen time-lapse ending unannounced would be worse than the interruption. When the timer fires, a small "Time-lapse ended — back to Live." snackbar confirms what happened, and the speed you'd chosen is remembered for your next time-lapse.
A few details worth knowing: the timer counts wall-clock time from the moment the time-lapse starts, and keeps counting while the time-lapse is paused; picking a new duration mid-run restarts the countdown; and Never does what it says — the time-lapse runs until you end it yourself.
(Mobile only.) If a time-lapse is running while your device is on battery (not plugged in), a banner appears — it can take up to a minute, since battery state is checked periodically: "Time-lapse running on battery power. This may reduce battery life." It has two buttons: Continue (dismiss the warning, keep the time-lapse running) or Exit Time-lapse (return to Live).
The warning shows once per session. Plug in, or go Live, and it goes away.
If a time-lapse is heavy — lots of layers on, political timezones, a big window — Sunline watches its own frame timings and, under sustained load, steps the frame rate down a notch at a time (30 → 24 → 20 → 15 frames per second). When the load drops, it steps back up and the cap comes off. You never configure this; it's how the app protects your battery and thermals while keeping the animation going.
The tell that it's happening is a small orange FPS box in the bottom-left corner of the map, sitting just above where the activity LED lives (H1) so the two never hide each other. It shows the measured frame rate and the cap currently in force — for example "🎬 22 fps · cap 24". It appears by itself only while the throttle is active — including in fullscreen — and disappears again once the app has recovered. Long-press the box for a frame-rate breakdown: the measured rate, the base target, the current cap, the effective target, and the average cost of a frame.
Seeing the box occasionally is normal and nothing to fix. If it's a constant companion, J1 has practical ways to lighten the load.