Apple Shuts Down Popular Weather App 'Dark Sky'

[Bryan Bowler]

RIP Dark Sky. Thank you for being the absolute best and providing years and years of great weather info!

 

[nostaws]

I use Hello Weather which sources their data from Dark Sky. What will happen?

Apple has a “weather kit” (basically new api), that developers can use if they want. Or they can seek data elsewhere.

 

[IT Provisor]

Honestly, I’ll miss the sound that Dark Sky made whenever rain started and stopped. From personal associations and experiences, it reminded me of Japan. I would love to have that sound come back rather than be the generic sound for calendar, voicemail, etc.

Otherwise, I like Apple’s new weather app better, even if it has some room for improvement for decluttering. I also like that I can see the same info on my Mac in an app. There, I said it!

Also, the website no longer shows forecast information, either.

 

[Will Tisdale 🎗]

That is neither intuitive nor useful. I cannot see how the dewpoint changes throughout the day as I could on Dark Sky.

Yes you can - although you’re right that it’s not intuitive as it’s hidden. Just drag your finger across the graph and the dew point is below the relative humidity percentage:

 

[zapmymac]

🍺

 

[The-Real-Deal82]

It was the best weather app of all time and one I found very accurate with our ever changing British weather.

Sadly Apple bought it and the accuracy died and the app became rather rubbish. Reminds me of Siri where it was good, showed promise and then Apple didn’t develop it for over a decade and it is still rubbish to this day.

 

[Aeeelex]

The problem is not which app Apple buys, but the correctness and reliability of the weather forecasts. It may be true that they are correct in California, but here in Europe, for example, you can simply forget about Apple's own weather forecast. "Windy" is the benchmark! Dear Apple weather team, there is still a lot to do!

 

[mickf]

Me as well. I live in Scotland and the Apple weather app is utter crap here, and that's no joke because the weather can get dangerous rather quickly, particularly if you do a lot of hiking as I do. People have literally died from weather exposure yards from their front door in the Highlands (rare but true).

My guess is that Dark Sky used data from user reports to make better forecasts. Weather sensors are few and far between, so on-the-spot user reports of the weather can be used to train an algorithm to take distant weather measurements and turn them into accurate local forecasts.

Interestingly, Apple's weather app also has a user facility for submitting local weather reports, so we have two choices:

1. 😇 Take responsibility as users and feed Apple accurate data when their dumba$$ forecast is wrong, in the hopes the accurate data will refine their lame forecasting model. This assumes there actually is an active team at Apple trying to refine forecasts, which I doubt.
2. 👿 Act like tantruming infants and feed Apple inaccurate data as a protest until they reinstate Dark Sky. Say, always reporting it's sunny with no wind and 72°F.

As a mature educated adult, I should choose option 1, but .... 😈

EDIT: Anybody notice how many newbies posted in this thread? Welcome to MR!

Have you looked at Ventusky? Seems to work well in Northern England, and gives a two-week overview. No Watch App, but it works on phones and they have an interesting website.

 

[gri]

There are other weather apps in the store.

Tried many and always returned to Dark Sky. Was the only app that warned me that there would be heavy rain in 5' and yes it was heavy rain 5 minutes later...

 

[DocMultimedia]

😥

 

[msackey]

Well that’s two Apps that I really liked that Apple killed off, Aperture and now Dark Sky.

Not only did I prefer the simplicity of Dark Sky, where I live Bristol, UK - Dark Sky was more accurate predicting rain than Apple’s new Weather App.

I was a user of Aperture too! I was surprised they abandoned that application after having put so much development on it. Too bad.

 

[msackey]

 didn’t screw up Shazam when they acquired it, why did they do that to Dark Sky?! I also made it the prime weather app on my Apple Watch, and set up a bunch of complications to use it as well, because its data was more straightforward and intuitive than ’s weather app

Is it just me or is SoundHound better than Shazam? With SoundHound, I can hum a tune and it’ll identify the song but Shazam often doesn’t.

 

[Todd.Isler]

I'm missing the Dark Sky Apple Watch middle complication... any suggestions for an app that provides a good replacement for Dark Sky's Apple Watch middle complication?

 

[msackey]

I really like Carrot but hate that so many apps do subscriptions now. It's almost always a dealbreaker for me.

Same here. Subscriptions are almost always dealbreakers for me too

 

[hudson1]

One of 's best purchases ever. The weather app (esp. on iPadOS) has never been better.

The App is dead. Long live the App!

 

[Shasterball]

If Dark Sky had bought Apple they could have taken small parts of the weather app (10-day, for example) to add to their own and then toss the rest away.

Correct. But I do not get your point. I did not say Apple was not allowed to do this.

 

[CarAnalogy]

Are Dark Sky features limited to iOS 16? If not, why would those features in Weather app be limited to iOS 16? Lots of people are using Dark Sky on iPhones that cannot upgrade to iOS 16, now they will lose those features, even though those features work today.

Ever since Tim Cook said “buy your mom an iPhone” it’s become pretty clear that they are open about this strategy of artificially limiting software features to push hardware sales.

 

[frenchcamp49er]

Not news.

 

[Mate1M]

And I regret a lot that Dark Sky has disappeared! I bought an upgrade from the Premium Plus plan yesterday, at the Ultra Premium at the Carrot application and I want to make sure everything is fantastic, it has a lot of beautiful settings, the complication on my new AW Ultra is gorgeous, a single click on it, after It is open and a lot of information is displayed! Widget on the iPhone can be customized. I was paying a lot for the plus plan, but the ultra plan is fantastic!
I know the price is too high, but please believe me it is worth buying the ultra plan, of the Carrot Weather application

Sorry for my bad english!

 

[Mate1M]

Carrot Weather on my iPhone

 

[_Spinn_]

Makes sense. I like Apple's new app.

Same here. I’ve been very happy with the improvements that they’ve made to the weather app in the past few years.

 

[waqas]

Sad day. I'm comparing what the Dark Sky had to what Apple has now. Dark Sky was so much better! Features that are missing are:
4-h forecast only vs week-ahead forecast for temperature on globe map.
Menus are more hidden for map-view.
Color scheme isn't quite the same as Dark Sky's for the globe map.

I'm sure there are more.

 

[Mt44]

Loved Dark Sky's radar and predictive radar. Now I like Ventusky a lot and highly recommend it.

Apple's weather app predictive / future radar is total garbage.

 

[ipedro]

This isn’t going to be popular with the people replying to this thread but the truth of the matter is that Apple didn’t just acquire the Dark Sky technology, they hired their team.

The folks who designed Dark Sky had an opportunity to redesign their app to fit beyond a niche. The iOS 16 Weather app was built by the Dark Sky team. Give it a chance. I have and it’s really damn good.

 

[kevinws]

Dark Sky was great. One of the few apps I actully paid for... Twice iOS and Android.