From a Skyward login to a dashboard, step by step
No magic and no mystery: Skylight signs in to Skyward as you, reads the pages you can read, and does the arithmetic in a nicer place.
You give Skylight your Skyward login
The same username and password you use for Plano ISD Skyward (Qmlativ). Skylight uses it for exactly one thing: signing in to Skyward on your behalf. It is not used for anything else.
Skylight signs in and reads your pages
It follows the district sign-in chain and then reads the same screens you would: grades, assignments, attendance, schedule, academic history. No browser extension, no screen scraping of your screen — it talks to Skyward directly.
The numbers are recomputed, not copied
Assignments are grouped into their categories and weighted the way your course weights them, so Skylight can show you a grade that moves when you change an assignment. That is what makes what-if work.
You choose what is kept
Guest mode keeps everything in the browser tab and stores nothing on the server. An account keeps your Skyward login and grades encrypted, and you can additionally let a background job check for you. Each choice is spelled out in plain language before you pick it.
Changes come to you
Each sync is compared with the last one. New grades become one-line summaries in your activity feed, a desktop notification while a tab is open, and — if you opted in — a push notification on your phone.
Your Skyward login is the proof of who you are
You sign in to Skylight with a Skylight username — it defaults to your Skyward username — and there is no email address and nothing to verify. A working school login is better evidence than an inbox, and it is the thing the app needs anyway.
Signing up
Creating an account signs in to Skyward once. If that fails, the account is not created. You pick a Skylight username and password, and there is one Skylight account per student.
Forgot your password?
Sign in to Skyward again. Skylight recognises the student behind that login and lets you set a new Skylight password. No email round-trip, because there is no email.
Changing your mind
Turn background alerts on or off in Settings whenever you like. Turning them off deletes the extra key copy, and Delete everything hard-deletes all of it.
What happens on a refresh
A sync signs in, reads the small screens first and then the grade detail, and reuses everything that has not changed since last time. A routine refresh is a fraction of the work of a first load.
- A first, cold sync may run in two parts; you see it happen
- Unchanged courses are skipped entirely
- Everything new is diffed against the last snapshot to build your activity feed
- With background alerts on, the same job runs for you every 15 minutes
- 100 on Unit 2 Exam AP Calculus BC · Ovr 90.3 → 91.5 2m
- 44/50 on Derivative quiz AP Calculus BC · Ovr 91.5 → 91.1 1h
- 96 on Lab report AP Physics 1 · Ovr 87.4 → 88.2 3h
- New grade posted English III · Ovr 95.4 → 95.8 Yesterday
Every change also lands in your browser or on your phone, with the same one-line summary.
Where this can go wrong
Skylight reads Skyward's own website. If the district changes how that site works, Skylight can stop working until it is updated. It is an unofficial project, it only supports Plano ISD Skyward (Qmlativ) logins, and it cannot do anything your own Skyward account cannot do.
It also inherits Skyward's security ceiling: anyone who knows a student's Skyward login could already read everything Skylight shows by signing in to Skyward directly — and could use that login to reset that student's Skylight password.
Ready to see your own grades?
Sign in with your Skyward login, or try guest mode, which stores nothing on the server.