iOS 16 Weather App Gets Significant Overhaul With Deeper Dark Sky Integration

[MacRumors]

Apple is making notable improvements to the built-in Weather app in iOS 16, expanding the available data. You can now tap on any Weather module to get additional useful information that was not previously available in iOS 15.

Tapping on the main hourly or 10-day forecast, for example, brings up a more detailed forecast that lets you see the temperature for each day in a graph view, making it easier to visualize the temperature range and the weather conditions on an hourly basis.

Most of the modules provide additional information on an hourly basis. With the UV Index, users can see the UV estimates throughout the day, and get a visual of when UV exposure will be highest.

There are similar hourly graphs for wind, precipitation, humidity, visibility, and pressure. The sunset/sunrise module provides information on first light, sunrise sunset, last light, and total daylight, along with monthly sunrise and sunset averages. When rain is predicted, there is a rain chart with 10 minute intervals.

Apple offers the same precipitation, temperature, and air quality maps with no added function, but there have been some slight design updates to refine the look.

The updated Weather app also now provides alerts for severe weather, though this is limited to select regions. Apple says that not all Weather features will be available in all countries.

To provide more information through the Weather modules, Apple is leveraging data from Dark Sky, the weather app that it purchased in 2020. Dark Sky on June 6 updated its blog post to clarify that the Dark Sky forecast technology is enhanced and integrated into the Weather forecast, powering the new Weather app.

Dark Sky technology is also behind WeatherKit, a new API for developers. WeatherKit is designed to allow users to incorporate Weather forecast data into their apps. According to Apple, WeatherKit allows apps to offer current weather conditions and 10-day hourly forecasts for temperature, precipitation, wind, UV index, and more, along with minute-by-minute precipitation for the next hour and severe weather alerts in select regions.

As we highlighted earlier this week, Apple with iPadOS 16 is bringing the Weather app to the iPad for the first time. It is identical to the iOS 16 Weather app, but more information is available on one screen thanks to the larger display.

There's also a dedicated Weather app on macOS Ventura, identical to the iOS and iPadOS Weather apps, bringing feature parity across Apple's device lineup.

Article Link: iOS 16 Weather App Gets Significant Overhaul With Deeper Dark Sky Integration

 

[Neepman]

Lets make something quick and simple, bloated and complex.

 

[moabal]

Great. I will have to consider not renewing my Carrot subscription. Granted, Carrot has way more info. I think this might be enough for me.

 

[xxray]

This is awesome. Apple’s weather app has always been the best designed imo, and now there’s really no reason to go with any other third-party app with ads or a subscription.

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Sheeeeeeesh! It's just beautiful. Nicely detailed. The weather app has come a very long way. This weather app makes me want to live somewhere with higher weather activity instead of living in the desert, Las Vegas. I want to see all the weather animations 😍

The iPad weather app is a nice bonus added by Apple. Good stuff!

 

[WarmWinterHat]

I still hate hate hate the the radar. Why not the option for a standard-color (green, yellow, red, etc.) nextrad?

 

[TheDailyApple]

Great! I’m one step closer to letting go of dark sky altogether. (There might not even be anything left in dark sky that isn’t reflected in Apple Weather)

 

[macduke]

As a weather geek, I've been wanting to build a weather app for years and have mockups from ages ago that I designed. And after they announced WeatherKit so I wouldn't have to pay for API access I was leaning towards beginning development. But this app looks great. I can't imagine there will be much of a market for weather apps going forward, so I doubt I'll bring my project to life. The main difference in my app was the way I designed it with an interesting vertical sliding interface that lets you quickly dive deep into the nitty gritty weather details. IDK if I can compete with this, especially since there are already more well-known apps on the market.

 

[Mick-Mac]

Is there any reason this has to be an iOS16 only thing? Why can't it just be an app also available to earlier versions of iOS once released?

 

[TheDailyApple]

Lets make something quick and simple, bloated and complex.

If you don’t want more information, just don’t tap on a day for details. Nothing has to change for you.

 

[McKodiak]

This is good. I had to keep the darksky app on my phone because the current weather app doesn't provide enough data.

 

[Realityck]

I liked how everything in the app allows you to look at a specific perimeter over the course of the days timeline. UV index curve really helps show you in advance how good or bad the current day is, or anything so many days in advance. So yes this is way more comprehensive that what the previous weather information provided.

 

[TheGeneralist]

I really hope they change their primary source of information, at least for europe.
Currenty, although the iOS15 redesign looks already quite nice, the information here in Germany is so inaccurate compared to other weather apps that it renders the whole app useless on iOS / watchOS.

 

[ttyRazor]

Nice, a graph or bar chart view of temperature and other forecasts was what I’ve kept Dark Sky installed for, and wasn’t looking forward to finding a replacement once they retire it. Now if they’d just do something about the barely comprehensible clock thing on the Watch weather app, I might switch over completely.

 

[macsplusmacs]

As a weather geek, I've been wanting to build a weather app for years and have mockups from ages ago that I designed. And after they announced WeatherKit so I wouldn't have to pay for API access I was leaning towards beginning development. But this app looks great. I can't imagine there will be much of a market for weather apps going forward, so I doubt I'll bring my project to life. The main difference in my app was the way I designed it with an interesting vertical sliding interface that lets you quickly dive deep into the nitty gritty weather details. IDK if I can compete with this, especially since there are already more well-known apps on the market.

You should check into the weather kit API, I believe you, as a dev, get 50K API calls a month for free. Which even if you never ship, you can still have the ultimate weather app for you. personalized since YOU made it!

If I have free time later this summer I may do the same. Never was a weather geek until the apps on the iPhone opened my mind.

 

[macsplusmacs]

This is good. I had to keep the darksky app on my phone because the current weather app doesn't provide enough data.

Me too.

 

[TheDailyApple]

Is there any reason this has to be an iOS16 only thing? Why can't it just be an app also available to earlier versions of iOS once released?

Built in iOS apps are part of the operating system. Making a stand-alone app that is compatible with older iOS versions would be a lot of effort for no benefit to Apple.

 

[turbineseaplane]

Is there any reason this has to be an iOS16 only thing? Why can't it just be an app also available to earlier versions of iOS once released?

There is no good reason

They really need to divorce the first party App updates from iOS software updates

 

[Libertine82]

Sheeeeeeesh! It's just beautiful. Nicely detailed. The weather app has come a very long way. This weather app makes me want to live somewhere with higher weather activity instead of living in the desert, Las Vegas. I want to see all the weather animations 😍

The iPad weather app is a nice bonus added by Apple. Good stuff!

I’ll swap I’m in Scotland and get 4 seasons a day regardless of time of year 😭

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

Is there any reason this has to be an iOS16 only thing? Why can't it just be an app also available to earlier versions of iOS once released?

It's a stock app and Apple don't like when people refer themselves to previous versions. Regardless if it's, it's software or hardware.

 

[macsplusmacs]

There is no good reason

They really need to divorce the first party App updates from iOS software updates

As a dev, it makes total sense, they get to start with a fresh set of API that are new and to the point. Look at the Charts API that they are using in this new version of Weather. Why in the world would they waste time supporting ios 15 when this time next year 90% of people will be running iOS 16?

 

[turbineseaplane]

As a dev, it makes total sense, they get to start with a fresh set of API that are new and to the point. Look at the Charts API that they are using. Why in the world would they waste time supporting ios 15 when this time next year 90% of people will be running iOS 16?

Well - it'd be nice to see given the cutting off of iOS16 they did for a lot of devices

 

[jonnysods]

I would love to get precipitation data by the hour, or a summary of precipitation data for the day here in Canada.

 

[Realityck]

Is there any reason this has to be an iOS16 only thing? Why can't it just be an app also available to earlier versions of iOS once released?

Thats always the case, it's part of the next OS's. The app is in iOS16, iPadOS16 and MacOS Ventura. Below is it on MacOS 13

 

[TheYayAreaLiving 🎗️]

I’ll swap I’m in Scotland and get 4 seasons a day regardless of time of year 😭

So lucky! We have boring weather in Las Vegas. It’s either too hot or too cold. On top of that, it’s dry. So annoying.

You are lucky, you get to see all the seasons. The weather below is in Fahrenheit. 🥵