Dark Sky iOS app will no longer work from Dec 31 | Hacker News Reader

Dark Sky iOS app will no longer work from Dec 31

blog.darksky.net

371 pointsSamuelAdams301 comments

Folks here said the new Weather app has the same info. I upgraded to iOS 16 about a year before I normally would just to check this. And nope, it doesn't have the one feature I use Dark Sky for – the one feature no other weather app has: the ability to see what the weather was yesterday.

It's what Dark Sky calls "Time Machine". (Can't believe Apple let them use this name this long, now that I think of it.)

(I supported the original crowdfunding campaign for Dark Sky in 2011.)

I always use this! Great for assessing business activity and comparing localized weather to activity.

Historical data is still available in the WeatherKit API at least: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/72581627/cant-find-weath...

At the moment it is not working for more than 7 days in the past.

At least it seems to be a known bug: https://developer.apple.com/forums/thread/708727

Carrot has it. It’s called Time Machine. I feel like it’s always had it.

Wow that’s what I call a fun app.

Weather app doesn't even show the hour before. I get it, less features = simpler user interface and less code maintenance... but they could at least start at current hour BUT provide ability to scroll back in time for a few days, perhaps showing that data with 0.5 opacity faded to indicate that the data is no longer relevant (past).

Otherwise I LOVE the updated weather app in iOS 16 where you can see many data points in a nice graph for the next week hourly for things like humidity, wind etc.

I’m not a big fan of this less features ethos. This feature anemic set of software that gets put out more often than not drives me bonkers. It’s as if they don’t want power users.

They want idiots. And then complain when their users are idiots.

I’ve been daydreaming about the possibility of OS support for semi-arbitrary plugins for apps and how those apps could expose certain things for the plug-in to utilize. It’s a very half-baked idea of mine but I’ve wondered if it’s possible to permit the baseline simplicity of an app while giving an outlet for power users to craft something useful atop them. I’m curious how certain apps even permit a plug in architecture in the first place like vscode extensions etc. What do these apps expose that makes it all possible and is there a way to generalize it to all apps.

You want open source software.

Like the sibling commented, that’s what open source is for.

BUT apple specifically has ExtensionKit, which is a library for arbitrary extensions in arbitrary apps. Of course, the host-app needs to support extensions and build it in. So your theorizing about a way for any app to have a plugin, its there. Many system apps in OSes have this feature, and many more apps (eg vscode) support it.

Realistically, web-apps are almost what you want too. Web-apps allow for pretty arbitrary extensions via browser plugins, which can modify the actual UI of the webpage, and make API calls to the backend (by acting as the JavaScript on the page). WebApps are basically open source though (or source available) by nature of how browsers work.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/extensionkit

More than that - apps start off with less features but after enough rounds of updates they grow into full-featured apps again, until some other app with less features (or a less-featured ground-up rewrite) kills it.

It's a really strange (and wholly unnecessary) cycle.

> Weather app doesn't even show the hour before

...which is a reason for people to buy a 3th party app (with a subscription + apple tax.)

Doesn't the graph show exactly what you're asking for? Anything before the vertical line showing the current time shows the historical data for that day?

Depends on which hour you check.

> I get it, less features = simpler

To be fair, this seemingly obvious feature is absent or buried in many/most weather apps and websites I've used. It's certainly not just an Apple™ simplification.

What do we expect from stupid Apple. They don’t even store more than the last 100 phone calls. It’s 2020. Their phone is more powerful than supercomputers from the 90s. It can’t store more than 100 phone numbers.

One of the reasons I built https://uw.leftium.com/ was so I could compare the previous two days' weather.

It uses the DarkSky API, but also supports other weather API's: https://github.com/Leftium/ultra-weather#readme

Really great. Thank you! And if you make it into an iOS app, I'll buy it.

Wunderground allows you to scroll 24 hours back.

I've noticed the Weather app to be pretty unreliable to be fair.

The amount of times I've looked out the window recently when my phone says it's raining but it's completely dry or vice-versa or it says it's definitely going to rain and it doesn't.

Perhaps no weather app is good enough to deal with Scottish (specifically Glaswegian-ish) weather :)

Same here in Stockholm! WeatherPro seems to hold up pretty well, but the built in weather app is mostly useless. Pretty though!

I'm in Stockholm too. I find klart.se, SMHI or yr.no to work pretty well.

In Gothenburg, I found weather apps pretty substandard compared to AUS where I lived before. I agree though that SMHI seems to be the best, google weather has often been comically off.

Apple Weather's forecast is unusable in the whole of Europe because of the data providers they use. Pretty disappointing to have such a US-centric view on an app that's so integral to a smartphone. They either should work with European data providers or make the app unavailable outside of those markets similar to how they do it with the "news" app.

In the UK it seems to be just about the most reliable for me.

I've always been confused by this, as a lot of European countries provide really good forecast data for free for anyone to use. You would assume that a company the size of Apple would be able to integrate with more than a single provider.

Norwegian: https://developer.yr.no

In Germany Apple lists the very reliable Deutscher Wetterdienst as one of their sources but both services seem to differ, at times quite significantly, in their forecasts.

Hi, I make Weathergraph, a visual weather forecast app/widget/watch complication, and as I am Europe based, the pretty good Finnish Foreca and Norwegian yr.no are among the data sources (along with Open-Meteo - a german, I think, indie project, and Apple Weather / Dark Sky):

https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1501958576

In the Netherlands we have an app called "Buienalarm" which uses radar to show actual rainclouds as they pass overhead and with predictions of direction. It's awesome with dealing with Amsterdam rain! It worked when I was back in the UK too (and I was just able to add Glasgow to it).

In Denmark, we have "Rainspotter". I believe it was developed by a Dutch guy, and you can see where he got his inspiration.

That was the best single feature in the UWP Weather app on Windows 10 Mobile. It allowed you to see past history data up to 25+ years I believe, hell, they even included a "Past highest/lowest" temperature for every single day so that you could see, that, for example, the lowest temperature on the 8th of August was in 1984.

Also the iOS Weather app uses Weather.com for its data, which is just plain unreliable in Europe.

Environment Canada publish historical weather [0] as do the Met Office [1]. I also recently discovered that the BC government have their own air quality monitoring stations - and that data is also available [2].

[0] - https://climate.weather.gc.ca/index_e.html

[1] - https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/research/climate/maps-and-data/...

[2] - https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/environment/air-land-wate...

Is it because they don't want you to know how bad their prediction was?

I really like timeanddate [1] website for looking at past weather. For most cities you can check up to 12 years before.

It's also useful if you want to check what's typical weather in some city.

[1] https://www.timeanddate.com/weather/france/paris/historic

What’s new is that you can tap the hourly forecast card, or the Today entry in the 10-day forecast and get a historical graph for the current day at least.

But yeah, not possible to check yesterday’s weather.

> one feature no other weather app has

WeatherNerd: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weather-nerd/id958363882

Has a calendar icon, tap it to see any actual day historically or, if more tham 2 weeks ahead, based on almanac type prediction. Used to be best out there for considering travel three months from now.

I’m a weather geek with ~4 folder panes of 9 apps each, and WeatherNerd is in the “must have” front pane.

Dark Sky used to be my #1, but was superseded by Carrot (which has a Dark Sky feed) for everyday use and Windy.app at storm-prone water front with microclimates and wind/wave/tide patterns, thanks to meteogram-style overlay of competing weather models for precipitation and wind.

Windy.app: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/windy-app-wind-weather/id99707...

iOS 16 Weather is remarkable though. It’s now easily third on my list, and would likely be first for most people especially since no subscription fee. For instance, try to use apps to look at UV graph for next Saturday — few can. The live background is fun, and the iPad layout is as much detail instrumentation as most people can handle.

But in my book, DarkSky started it all — the race for precise accurate practical usable micro cell weather, and happy for them they are now getting into so many more hands through the new iOS 16 app.

But Carrot is the spiritual successor.

Carrot: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/carrot-weather-alerts-radar/id...

It has TimeTravel too. And because Carrot has a fully editable UI builder, it transmogrifies into whatever weather app you like best.

> Used to be best out there for considering travel three months from now. --

While not directly comparable I love weatherspark for planning travel [0]. I first used it to help plan honeymoon travel.

[0] https://weatherspark.com/

it looks like weathernerd uses the darksky api, so it will have to find a new source for weather data or it’s also gone soon.

Last I subbed to Carrot it supported a few sources but the darksky API was the best there too. Apple pulling it out of community availability hurts.

Won't those apps be able to use Apple's WeatherKit framework to get the same data?

Of course it still affects other platforms like Android or web apps.

Got any Android recommendations? I've been using meteogram because I can configure it to be pretty close to what I want.

My ideal weather app would be able to tell me the chance of rain on a specific route at a specific time. Now that I'm no longer bike commuting, that's not so important. I still like to know chance of rain, per hour, for my location.

On iOS, there is the "Weather on the Way" app, https://apps.apple.com/us/app/on-the-way-road-trip-planner/i.... I bet there's something similar on Android: perhaps search using terms from this app's description to find the closest analog.

You can get weather on route from Climacell, now tomorrow.io, which offers delivery and logistics route planning based on microcells.

https://www.tomorrow.io/

Upsetting about the app, but the new iOS weather app has the functionality essentially.

The real gut wrencher is the darksky website going down. It’s how I check weather most of the time a no other browser weather site comes close to it in simplicity and features.

It definitely does not have the same functionality, you can only see the current temp/precip prob %/humidity/dewpoint/wind speed/etc, you can’t see the forecasted stats I listed in the iOS weather app, you can only get hour by hour temperature.

I’m very disappointed that Dark Sky is going away. If Apple added in the ability to see forecasted hour by hour wind speed/humidity/dew point/etc, it’d be a decent replacement.

In iOS 16 it’s greatly improved. You can now get the predicted hourly temperature, UV index, wind, rainfall, feels like temperature, humidity, visibility, and atmospheric pressure.

This has changed completely in iOS 16

Most of the functionality is coming in iOS 16: https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/08/ios-16-weather-app-upda...

> I’m very disappointed that Dark Sky is going away. If Apple added in the ability to see forecasted hour by hour wind speed/humidity/dew point/etc, it’d be a decent replacement.

In iOS 16 (and in macOS Ventura, which adds the Weather app), you can view hourly temperature, UV index, wind speed, precipitation, feels like, humidity, visibility, and pressure, on a graph. You can also tap and hold to view individual hourly data. You should see if the updated experience works for you!

Oh, that’s great news! Glad to hear that Apple included that in the iOS 16 version, I haven’t upgraded yet. Thanks for the info!

What about the "time machine" feature in Dark Sky? I really like being able to look in the past/future arbitrarily.

I really hope this add this in to the default app. I use it constantly!

100% to this. Apple weather has a lot of the functionality but it’s not close when it comes to the experience. For wet climates like the PNW this is a hard change.

That is great, because hourly dew point is so important to knowing how comfortable it will be.

Now we just need a lightening tracker in iOS weather…

If Apple can give me an allergen outlook similar to Accuweather I’ll finally be able to swap. This update was quite nice, but the allergy watch has helped me proactively respond to seasonal allergies which is hard to pass up on. A more granular detail of air quality would be nice as well, but I don’t need it to switch

I get migraines triggered by the weather and I can’t find another app with barometric pressure forecasts and history.

I wrote an app called Migraine Weather that was specifically for that. I ended up selling it and it’s now called WeatherX. I no longer have any connection to the app, but I do continue to use it myself.

Thanks for the heads-up, this looks good. I will try it out.

I've used the weather.gov site for the last ~5 years, and it has been great. I bookmark both the 7-day local forecast[1] and the hourly dashboard[2].

[1] https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.71234500000...

[2] https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?w0=t&w3u=1&w5=pop&...

Along these lines, I also really like the Aviation Radar maps

[1] https://aviationweather.gov/radar/plot?region=alb

(feel free to change, in the top left, Type = Comp Ref, and to Loop)

https://nasstatus.faa.gov - will give you exceptionally accurate information about flight delays unrelated to your aircraft. wx & airspace.

Another good one - https://www.1800wxbrief.com/Website/interactiveMap

They also have a really nice api.

https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api

It has a really nice design. Much easier to use than any other US government api I’ve used. Just some minor issues with upstream data availability leading to errors, as well as duplicate alerts.

I’m using it for a side project (https://ppg.report/41.876,-87.624)

The advantage of DarkSky was hyperlocalized forecast. I was able to time a walk between buildings dryly.

I’ll miss it as well, it’s been essential as I farm for timing. Particularly, the hourly rain rate. It rains all the time where I am and knowing when it’ll get above a certain threshold is key so I know when I have to pack up or get stuck

For the last several years I’ve been driving topless Jeeps most of the summer, and Dark Sky has been hugely helpful.

In hope that this could be useful to you: In Europe I had good success using AccuWeather for a similar purpose, the 60min forecast was almost always on point.

I'll give it a try, thank you for an alternative.

It's always worth a try. My father on the east coast reported similar excellent accuracy for hyperlocal precipitation forecasts from AccuWeather, but I've found the rain forecasts in TX little better than guesses (often going so far as to fail to predict what the rainfall will be in 15 minutes, much less in a few hours).

Accuweather in EU was a total disaster for me in the last months.

Doesn’t seem to have configurable units... They provide today’s temperature in both Fahrenheit and Celsius (as well as pressure in mb and inches [why mb instead of hPa I don’t know]), but wind speed is stuck in MPH (I prefer m/s) and future dates are always Fahrenheit. Also it is missing detailed forecast for future dates.

Overall pretty lacking in usability compared to dark sky.

I started using the weather.gov hourly dashboard when I started riding my bike 5 years ago. A couple weeks in and It really was very intuitive to read. I like that it also highlights the sunrise and sunset times.

Same, but since 2010 on iPad. When Dark Sky got popular, I looked at it, but I couldn't understand what the fuss was about. I'm sure the data is fine, but it is not an attractive app by any means, the graphics all look washed-out, and the data presentation is nothing special. Everything needed for local weather is provided by that free hourly dashboard on weather.gov. Because it is slick, I also use RadarScope on rainy days, and not as often for checking wind I'll use windy.com. On CLI I use py-metar to grab weather data from nearby NOAA stations, but I get those station IDs from weather.gov

Dark Sky had three big features:

1. Hyperlocal data which made it _very_ accurate in a lot of cases. Not flawless, but better than others.

2. Simple and fast. Sure, the UI wasn't fancy - but it loaded quickly. No bloat.

3. They had a really lovely API that was simple to use.

> They had a really lovely API

That is enough, and I personally wouldn't have noticed. Thanks for the clue.

Hi, if you like meteograms (I do, as you might tell :)), I tried to make them really really beautiful, and turn them into home/lock screen widgets and watch complications in Weathergraph: https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1501958576

I've found that the Weather app maps are lower resolution than the Dark Sky app, and still has the bug where large portions of the weather radar just.. disappears when trying to render the recent history.

https://open-meteo.com/en will let you create a very nice dashboard for yourself...very easy to use.

I usually used Darksky for the hourly percipitation forecast. It helped me time things out.

For fellow Canadians who used it similarly, the Canadian Gov't has a pretty handy hourly forecast[0].

The radar is also nice [1].

[0] https://www.weather.gc.ca/forecast/hourly/qc-147_metric_e.ht...

[1] https://www.weather.gc.ca/map_e.html?layers=radar&zoom=-1&ce...

Agree. I have trusted the Environment Canada forecasts for years. Web and basic app. The government-issued stuff isn't as featureful or pretty as some apps, but I go back to it every time because its track record here (Vancouver) has been good to me.

I wish there was an API or non-scraping approach to retrieve the daily & hourly forecasts. With the popularity of open data policies on tax-funded public data... it seems there should be.

I'm pretty sure this - https://api.weather.gc.ca/ - is what you're looking for. It looks like they expose lots of data via an API, including the 7 day forecast.

For example this should be the Vancouver forecast - https://dd.weather.gc.ca/citypage_weather/xml/BC/s0000141_e....

I think this is the hourly data - though in a slightly odd format - https://dd.weather.gc.ca/nowcasting/matrices/

Edit: Aha found the nowcast docs - https://eccc-msc.github.io/open-data/msc-data/nwp_nowcasting...

Nice! That hourly data link ("*matrices") looks easy enough to parse. Thank you!

Shortly after Darksky left Android, started using Windy. [1]

Not necessarily a simplest solution for weather forecast, but provides wealth of information to satisfy my meteorological curiosity as well. (I pay Premium for higher precision data, and I think it worth every penny IMHO.)

[1]: https://www.windy.com/

https://weatherflow.com/ is also good. I pay for their iKiteSurf product as a kitesurfer and it works decently well once you understand what "16 knots" at one spot vs another really means out on the water.

I use VentuSky. I pay for the premium layers. Happy customer

On android, I switched to the open source "wX" app, which uses NWS data under the hood. It's incredibly detailed and although the UX is a little rough it's because it's aimed at power users, so I figured the HN crowd might appreciate it.

Play store: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=joshuatee.wx

F-Droid: https://f-droid.org/packages/joshuatee.wx/

Source: https://gitlab.com/joshua.tee/wx

On Android I use Geometric Weather. I believe it uses AccuWeather.

https://github.com/WangDaYeeeeee/GeometricWeather

I use that too but on iOS.

https://apps.apple.com/us/app/wxl23/id1171250052

https://gitlab.com/joshua.tee/wxl23

Wow, it has super recent street cam images throughout my city. I had no idea this existed. Thanks!

The iOS weather app has the functionality, without selling your location data to data brokers, as has normally been the case with third party weather apps.

>Weather apps are secretly selling your location data to the highest bidder

https://thenextweb.com/news/weather-apps-are-secretly-sellin...

This looks like Dark Sky's response to that article.

https://mobile.twitter.com/darkskyapp/status/108135144619558...

So, not the case with Dark Sky.

>We still do not, and never will, sell your location data to 3rd parties.

They sold the whole company. If they had sold to a data hoarder like Google or Facebook, I have very little doubt that the data would have been included.

Who in their right mind thinks Google wanted to buy Fitbit for anything but their data?

Well, they also got the engineers.

I’m really tired of hearing everyone suggest Google is some boogeyman trying to do something subversive to get your data. Anyone who thinks this should grab their nearest google engineer and talk about privacy controls internally. Privacy is critical to the company and every product launch has a privacy review. In one of my launches we even had to add an opt in to allow users to share data with themselves because it crossed product boundaries.

All of the Google employees I've met have been incredibly vocal about security and privacy, really considerate about how technology should serve us, as well as being some of the kindest engineers I've ever met. I can't really square the HN attitude of Google being evil with my experience.

Some of them were kind enough to speak out internally about Google's terrible privacy settings, after Google was caught still tracking user location for users who had followed Google's advice on how to turn off location tracking.

>"The current UI feels like it is designed to make things possible, yet difficult enough that people won’t figure it out."

"Some people (including even Googlers) don’t know that there is a global switch and a per-device switch."

"Indeed we aren’t very good at explaining this to users. Add me to the list of Googlers who didn’t understand how this worked and was surprised when I read the article ... we shipped a UI that confuses users."

"I agree with the article. Location off should mean location off, not except for this case or that case."

"Speaking as a user, WTF?" another employee said, in additional documentation obtained by the Arizona Mirror. "More specifically I *thought* I had location tracking turned off on my phone. So our messaging around this is enough to confuse a privacy focused (Google software engineer). That’s not good."

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2020/08/unredacted-suit-...

However, the engineers at Google aren't in charge.

How does Google make money? Apple’s value proposition is very simple. I give Apple money and they give me goods and services.

> because it crossed product boundaries

Sorry, but I still remember Google pinky swearing before Congress that it would never combine the data it had on it's users with the advertising profiles it acquired with DoubleClick.

>In today's Big Tech antitrust hearing in front of a Congressional subcommittee, representative Val Demings questioned Google CEO Sundar Pichai about the company's merger with DoubleClick.

Specifically, the way Google combined data from the advertising company -- bought in 2007 -- with Google's own data. Founder Sergey Brin had told Congress it would not combine the personal information, but the company quietly did so in 2016 anyway.

https://www.engadget.com/google-antitrust-hearing-doubleclic...

>Google’s privacy policies as of March 1, 2012 established that no combination between DoubleClick’s advertising data and Google’s personally-identifiable information would take place without the prior consent of its users, but an updated version of those policies subtly allowed the integration of both databases regardless of prior consent of its users

https://www.promarket.org/2020/08/21/why-we-should-be-carefu...

People suggest that Google is a boogeyman because they have repeatedly broken their promises.

Except I can't set a home location in Maps without enabling location history. Neither can I limit location history to Maps. And if I've logged out of my account I can't access groups archives (but that works fine incog, so why am I being required to sign in?). And Google is damn aggressive about linking accounts with who knows what repercussions. Actually, I do know: get all your accounts nuked because of a clear false positive that Google will nonetheless uphold[1].

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32560361

> Anyone who thinks this should grab their nearest google engineer and talk about privacy controls internally. Privacy is critical to the company …

Better grab a top level business executive, who tracks company sources of income. Why engineer? He is far from money flows.

Oh wow I did not notice that the weather app has maps of all area thermometers now

Thats what I used wunderground and dark sky for

can finally uninstall wunderground for good, thanks!

Usually I use the default Samsung weather app, but when I'm on my PC https://wttr.in/ is a fun one, and you can even get terminal-readable output by using something like cURL!

Nice, I made something similar with https://github.com/ip2k/we4ther?files=1 a decade ago. It used to be up at we4ther.com but I hadn't updated the code in a long long time and didn't bother migrating it to my latest server. The free MaxMind GeoIP DB is def good enough to detect location (this was before the browser location API) close enough to give accurate weather.

For weather stuff, there are a lot of good resources. For current conditions, I use my state's mesonet: https://www2.nysmesonet.org/ (Specifically, I bookmark a nearby location: http://www.nysmesonet.org/weather/local#network=nysm&stid=bk.... This page also pulls in official National Weather Service forecasts.)

For radar, I just use GR Level 3. I was tired of the slowness of the web. I add shapefiles for mPING, lightning, NWS watches, NWS convective outlooks / mesoscale discussions, etc. Great piece of software, and lots of shapefiles available on the Internet to extend it.

For forecasting, I use the College of DuPage forecast tools: https://weather.cod.edu/forecast/. There is a learning curve, but the "simulated reflectivity" is a prediction of where it's going to rain. It predicts what a radar mosaic would look like at the forecast time. I like HRRR for "today" and NAMNST for "tomorrow". GFS is also a classic for longer-term predictions, but I don't have a good enough memory to tell you how accurate it is. (HRRR is some good tech, though. Predicting the future is tough, HRRR does a pretty good job.) These models also have decent surface predictions; temperature, dewpoint, winds, etc. If you're willing to step through some pretty pictures in a very nice web interface, you can get some great ideas of what the weather is going to do. Well worth a visit.

On NAM and some other models, you can also long-press on a point to see a forecast sounding. This is probably in the realm of too much information for the average person interested in weather (and using models to make your own forecast probably is too), but hey, they have some neat software and you should play with it.

Finally, I like the SPC's site for situational awareness of thunderstorms in the summer: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/. Their forecast tools are also excellent: https://www.spc.noaa.gov/exper/. Specifically, the mesoanalysis graphics can be interesting for anticipating exceptional events.

Anyway, I used to be a heavy user of Weather Underground. They got bought, then their parent company got bought, and now they have no actual weather information and just clickbait videos. It's very sad, but you can cobble together some tools that are freely available on the Internet and be aware of the current and upcoming weather, without being served a single ad!

Otherwise, iOS has a thing you can turn on that notifies you when it thinks it's going to start raining.

The iOS 16 beta Weather app has incredible features and down to the hour granularity even for future days.

That’s all the hope I have left. Bring on iOS 16, I suppose. RIP Dark Sky

Is this the 16.1 beta, or the 16.0 release?

16.0 if you click on the day a pop up appears with an interactive graph broken down by hour on the x axis.

Does iOS do the freaky-accurate “light rain starting in five minutes, ending twenty minutes later” thing? If so, I’d love to know where, I’ve missed it.

I get that from the "Rain Parrot" app.

No, but it's currently in beta in the API, so possibly it will come in the future:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/weatherkitrestapi/...

i'm not running any betas, and i have this feature. i don't remember if it was the latest iOS or the one prior though

Yes. If there’s rain forecasted for the next hour, it’s displayed prominently on the top of the weather interface (it’s hidden if there’s no rain expected). It will also appear on your home screen if you add a weather widget.

FWIW, Google does that (at least on Android). You get a notification if it's expected to rain soon.

Honestly, Dark Sky had been my habitual weather app until Apple killed it, but it doesn't seem as accurate as I expected. I don't know if this means I've been in places where their data is less optimized, or if I'm just noticing it more now that I have to look at other options.

Dark Sky hyper-prediction is very location-dependent. In some places it’s spot-on, in other not even in the ballpark.

It depends where you are exactly, I had it available in the UK, but in Australia I haven't seen it

Recommend windy.com

The best weather website IMO is windy. I used it a lot when I was sailing/windsurfing, but you can also use it for general forecasts.

I like

- https://www.meteoblue.com - check out the multi model, the multi model ensemble , the meteograms and the weather maps! Sadly the app itself is not as good as the website.

- https://yr.no - One of the few "free" providers with ECMWF model data (Norway has open data, that's why the data is free)

- https://www.windy.com/ - ECMWF, GFS and ICON. I don't like their presentation, but the available data is quite nice.

If you want a DarkSky replacement API, then checkout out https://pirateweather.net/ (GFS only, sadly :/ )

I'm bummed about this. I've used the two side-by-side since I learned about this, and it seems like Dark Sky gives far richer detail.

In fact, sometimes, I've noticed that Dark Sky will accurately predict rain when Apple Weather doesn't. (I haven't ever noticed the reverse.)

I’ve noticed the same thing as well. I knew this was coming, but was nonetheless a bit gutted when I saw the headline - I just don’t think Weather is a perfect replacement (yet?) for Dark Sky.

Are you on iOS 16? iOS 15 doesn't fully integrate it.

I was describing my experience on iOS 15 for the past year or so.

The incorrect results I'm seeing are in-app—what do you mean that it's not fully integrated in iOS 15?

There's a brand new Weather app in iOS 16. It's (more or less) the same functionality as Dark Sky was.

Prior to iOS 16, Apple Weather was using 'The Weather Company' for their forecasts I believe.

Yep. I’m on ios15 and it says “weather channel” at the bottom

A platform buying up cross-platform apps and making them uni-platform really should be slam dunk anti-trust. It's obviously anti-consumer and concentration of market power.

fwiw it wasn't available in Canada, i'd been waiting years for it, and now via the apple weather app it will be.

It's a weather app. There is no monopoly on weather info. The data is pretty much public and anyone could start their own alternative.

In which case, it sounds like there was no need for Apple to buy this.

The reason seems pretty simple, because it was cheaper to buy it than to pay their own people to try and recreate it.

Funny, you just explained how easy it was. But now it's so hard that Apple engineers can't just rebuild the parts they need?

I think the simpler explanation is one you'll find in many comments here: Dark Sky was unusually good, and Apple bought it to get all that goodness to themselves.

This is just asking why acquisitions happen. There are plenty of reasons, and they typically don't demonstrate monopolistic behavior, certainly not in any legal sense.

Except for the sense where it's an anti-consumer concentration of market power. Something Apple is fond of. [1] Is this particular action currently illegal? Probably not, because in the US we're in an era of extreme friendliness toward companies from anti-trust regulators. But that doesn't mean no reasonable market regulator would ever frown on acquisitions like this.

[1] E.g.: https://www.theverge.com/2022/9/8/23343336/apple-tim-cook-im...

How is it anti consumer? What harm has a consumer suffered? It seems like your only answer to this is “there’s less weather apps”? If your viewpoint were the one used for antitrust then no acquisition ever would be acceptable.

Many people love Dark Sky, and Apple simply killed it.

Exactly. Comments here show that people had a good thing. Apple took it away from them to get a competitive advantage.

What did Apple take away here? The app icon? Android support has been gone since 2020 and most (all?) of the features of Dark Sky are integrated (and enhanced apparently) into iOS 16. So you have a situation where all the people that "had a good thing" now have it by default without an extra app they have to click on and now more people will have that good thing by default for free. If anything, this is anti-anti-competitive behavior because it's PRO-consumer. Apple is literally giving away a $4 app that was previously available ONLY to iOS users to all iOS 16 users.

If this is anti-consumer in your mind I would really like to hear what acquisition is not an antitrust problem from your perspective.

Android support was killed post Apple purchase so I'm confused as to how you could possibly _not_ see this as anticonsumer. Apple purchased Dark Sky and then they proceeded to remove access to it for the majority of the world's mobile users.

Apple produced a weather app and bought out a leading competitor. This hurts the consumer because there is a loss of consumer choice and competition in the space.

In a related vein, it's exciting that Apple is investing in Apple Maps as a competitor to Google Maps, especially since Google bought out Waze a few years ago.

So exactly what Anti trust regulations are they guilty of when they announced that they would support Android?

https://www.androidpolice.com/dark-sky-api-android-weatherki...

Be honest: would you start an Android weather app that's totally dependent on Apple's goodwill?

Apple has had a public documented API for its podcast directory since 2005.

Would I be better off dependent on Google? A company that has the attention span of a crack addle flea?

Would I be better off depending on a small private company?

> Funny, you just explained how easy it was. But now it's so hard that Apple engineers can't just rebuild the parts they need?

The parent said that the data Dark Sky uses is public and that anyone could start their own alternative. They did not claim that it would be easy to do so.

They also said that it was probably cheaper for Apple to buy Dark Sky than build it themselves. That does not mean that Apple can’t build it themselves if sufficiently motivated.

I don’t see any inconsistency here in the above statements.

> anyone could start their own alternative. They did not claim that it would be easy to do so.

Saying that anyone can accomplish a task posits some level of triviality or easiness that enables anyone to be able to accomplish it.

If I say anyone can lose weight, it is safe to assume that I mean losing weight is easy enough that anyone can do it.

> If I say anyone can lose weight, it is safe to assume that I mean losing weight is easy enough that anyone can do it.

I would interpret “anyone can lose weight” to mean that anyone has the capability to lose weight, not that it is easy. On the contrary, I find losing weight to be pretty hard!

I do recognize that the phrase “anyone can do x” can often carry the connotation of being easy. But it depends on context.

Since we’re talking about a proprietary weather forecasting model and accompanying UI, I see no reason to assume it would be trivial. But rather that the data is available for anyone to use, should they decide to attempt to build the next Dark Sky. This is in contrast to building the next Google Maps, for example, where just getting a hold of the necessary data would probably cost a good deal of money.

I believe the point of Dark Sky was that they used air-pressure sensor data from the phones they were installed on. That was the secret sauce that (used to) power their hyper-local forecasts.

Dark Sky did not explain themselves with the barometer data thing. Their actual algorithm did radar-based extrapolation, meaning they used statistics to 'move' radar features like rain into the future. This is why Dark Sky always had a problem with forecasting new rainfall and was better at forecasting existing rain moving into your location based on wind speed.

They claimed something about barometer data but I don't honestly believe that they used it to improve their forecasts. I worked on this problem at different companies for many years, and with academia, and found it to be quite difficult. Possible, doable, but very difficult to demonstrate actual improvement. Significant academic work was done after Dark Sky made their claim, and the papers published used ensemble kalman filters among other on-device data-cleaning techniques that I do not believe Dark Sky implemented. So I doubt their barometer claims.

I had never heard of this before, but a quick Google search did turn up a bunch of news stories from 2015 [1] covering the announcement of this feature. I'm not sure if it's something they still do, though, and I haven't really heard anything about it since then.

[1] https://www.zdnet.com/article/dark-sky-weather-app-iphone-6-...

On the other hand, since there are presumably more Apple Weather users than Dark Sky users, by moving the functionality of Dark Sky into the Apple Weather app, more people will benefit from the features than when Dark Sky was independent.

It was available on IOS. Why would non-users on IOS be an argument for the power of capital to diminish other platforms?

Because even though it might dimish the experience for a relatively small number of Dark Sky users on other platforms, the move can still be a net gain for consumers as a whole due to the large number of iOS users who can now benefit from improvements to the default weather app.

Dark Sky wasn't even available to purchase in my country previously. But now, thanks to this investment by Apple, I get access to a bunch of great new features in the Weather app via a free software update. Calling this "anti-consumer" and declaring that it should be illegal is, in my opinion, an over simplification.

So you are saying that folding in a cross platform company into the platform is a platform advantage... but not a concentration of market power? Apple changed the price of Dark Sky on other platforms to infinity but on it's platform to zero.

I agree that it's a concentration of market power. I disagree that government intervention is necessary or beneficial here.

One example should be enough to see a problem. Do you not see a problem of Apple denuding other platforms all independent applications? They've taken what... Siri, Shazam, NextVR, Dark Skies off other platforms. How would you quantify your limit if not one?

They block Firefox/Opera in preference to their own, they impose undue costs on Spotify etc. I see a need for separation of pipes and content. Break up the apple App business and it's platform otherwise the market abuse will continue.

> Do you not see a problem of Apple denuding other platforms all independent applications?

There are ~3.3 million apps on Android. So no, I do not see the possibility of Apple denuding Android of all independent apps as a realistic concern.

> How would you quantify your limit if not one?

I don’t think setting a limit on the number of companies that Apple can acquire is the correct way to frame the question. Instead I think you need to take a look at each acquisition independently and look at things like the percentage of market share they are acquiring, what alternatives exist in the market, etc. I’m fairly sure Dark Sky never had a dominant market share, and plenty of alternative weather apps exist, so I really don’t see this as an anti-trust issue.

Shazam is still available on Android and Apple announced that WeatherKit will be available for Android.

But more to the point, Android is backed by Google - a company with a 1T+ market cap. If Google can’t keep up with Apple, it’s not because of lack resources. It’s because Google has the attention span of crack addled flea.

Even if google keeps up, which would negate the "platform advantage" part of the equation, that's still a concentration of market power into just two companies.

Right. Just like how we all benefitted when they bought Lala :(

> By purchasing Lala, Apple acquired technology that would enable it to bounce everyone's iTunes libraries to online servers, so iTunes users would be able to access their collections from a variety of Apple's devices: laptops, desktops, Apple TV set-top boxes, iPads, iPhones and iPod Touches. [1]

I never used Lala, but I have used the iTunes "Sync Library" feature. So, in my case, yes I suppose I benefited from that acquisition.

Not claiming that "we all" benefited. But this seems to be another case where Apple bought some company for its technology, folded it into its own service and made it available to a much wider audience, and then killed off the original service. If you were a happy Lala user, then I think your disatisfaction is justified, and you certainly have my sympathy. But also need to recognize that Apple was able to reach a far wider audience with that technology than Lala did.

[1] https://www.wired.com/2010/04/apple-kills-lala-music-service...

Definitely. I've used iTunes Sync Library and iTunes Match since the day they were released by Apple. Never heard of Lala until today.

Lala was great, you could upload your own MP3s and stream them or you could purchase them directly (for download or streaming as a "web song"). If you were a registered member, you could listen to any album/song once at no cost (not just on their platform, embedded in web sites too).

The streaming purchases were the killer feature to me. It was the a la carte alternative to the subscription models that wound up winning.

More than a decade ago, I blamed the victims. I still do, in a way. When you build on top of someone else's platform, you are engaged in digital sharecropping. The platform owner acts like they own your customers, and you are tilling the landlord's fields in exchange for 70% of what you can earn selling your app.

You may think the landlord is taking an outrageous cut of "your" sales, but the landlord thinks they own the relationship with their customer, and you only exist to do product/market fit and sizing research for them.

Joel Spolsky put it extremely well way back in the day in his "Strategy Letter V:" All else being equal, demand for a product increases when the prices of its complements decrease... Smart companies try to commoditize their products’ complements.

(Link: https://www.joelonsoftware.com/2002/06/12/strategy-letter-v/ Recent HN discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26657166)

Platforms always want to commoditize the apps that run on top of their platform. If they don't buy you and bundle your product, they'll do everything in their power to drive your revenue down until you are living on ramen noodles.

Anti-trust might help stop them from turning cross-platform apps into uni-platform apps, but the larger problem that remains unsolved is that platforms are powerful and it is in their best interests to drive app revenue down to zero.

Has anyone who is doing arm chair legal analysis on HN actually been following the entire thing where Apple announced support for Android for WeatherKit?

https://www.androidpolice.com/dark-sky-api-android-weatherki...

Yep, they offer pretty nice REST API with quite generous rates.

Apple announced that it would support WeatherKit on Android based on the Dark Ski API.

https://www.androidpolice.com/dark-sky-api-android-weatherki...

Even if it didn’t, it’s not like little old Google doesn’t have the resources to give Android a similar capability.

Reading the Apple apologist replies to this, is a lesson in why arguing with cultists or any other religious types, is pointless.

"It's not true because X!"

"Here is something that is a fact, which we all (including you) agreed is true. It demonstrates why X is false."

"It's not true because X!"

Jesus.

It's funny how this is posted two days after I finished my Weather web app which uses Dark Sky's free API:

https://weather-dj.netlify.app/

Let's hope that in the future Apple continues to deliver the same API structure as Dark Sky did, because it will be a big shame if they did some changes or limitations to it. Although I only use this app mostly for my personal use, the effort that I've put into this would be for nothing's worth.

Apple's replacement for the Dark Sky API is here:

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/weatherkitrestapi

Is this free? Seems like big news if yes.

Edit: it’s not. See https://developer.apple.com/weatherkit/get-started/

From the blog post: "The Dark Sky API and website will continue to function until March 31st, 2023."

"Developers, Apple’s new WeatherKit API lets you incorporate Apple Weather forecast data into your app and is available for iOS, iPadOS, macOS, tvOS, and web."

Sorry for your loss :-/

Sorry to say – the Dark Sky API will shut down end of March next year[0].

Apple recommends switching to WeatherKit's API. It is not free, requiring a paid Developer Program membership, which is $99/year.[1] That includes 500k API calls/mo.

On that linked WeatherKit page, they include a DarkSky migration guide. There are fields that are no longer being offered. (The fact that `temperatureHigh` doesn't have an analog makes me wonder if the table isn't telling the full story)

[0] https://darksky.net/dev

[1] https://developer.apple.com/weatherkit/get-started/

I use the Dark Sky API on a weather site that I have been running since 2014. Thinking of switching over to Openweathermap, but would welcome other suggestions if anyone is in the same situation.

https://openweathermap.org/api

Try Open-Meteo https://open-meteo.com/en

Apple announced the purchase of DarkSky back in 2020. The API was originally scheduled to be killed off sometime at the end of 2021 but that got extended. You also haven't been able to signup for a Dev account since May of 2020. There has been a lot of news about this which was kinda hard to miss.

And no, Apple is not interested in sharing its API's with anyone.

... they announced WeatherKit https://developer.apple.com/weatherkit/

> You also haven't been able to signup for a Dev account since May of 2020.

Dark Sky has been exceedingly clear about this for a very long time.

I don't know how the parent commenter missed it, unless they started the side project several years ago and never went back to check the API docs.

But today's announcement has nothing to do with discontinuing the Dark Sky API. They gave ample warning about that as well as replacement guidelines long ago.

> And no, Apple is not interested in sharing its API's with anyone.

Funny how people will state ‘facts’ that match their internal perceptions, regardless of what’s been publicly stated over and over again.

Apple has released the WeatherKit API, which is privacy-first, and pretty much provides what Dark Sky did.

The API is only for apple devices, right? Web apps that uses Dark Sky's API (like the gp's webapp) will absolutely get killed.

Edit: I was wrong. It has REST API and access from other platforms are allowed.

REST API is available. Up to 500,000 API calls a month.

https://developer.apple.com/weatherkit/get-started/

nope, it has a REST API. https://developer.apple.com/documentation/weatherkitrestapi

I know people who are already using it in random python scripts and whatnot, e.g. https://sixcolors.com/post/2022/06/adding-apple-weatherkit-d...

Nope. Should be able to use it as a REST API on other platforms too.

> It’s easy to use WeatherKit in your apps for iOS 16, iPadOS 16, macOS 13, tvOS 16, and watchOS 9 with a platform-specific Swift API, and on any other platform with a REST API. [0]

0: https://developer.apple.com/weatherkit/

I stand corrected on WeatherKit API.

My "internal perceptions", as you called them, was based on Apple's history. Not any Apple hate. The fact that they are opening something up is very cool, I'm glad to hear it. But a single open API does not address an overall very closed ecosystem.

I like the aesthetics of your app! Nice responsive design, too.

Some suggestions:

- The hourly forecast icons are hard to tell apart. They're small, and blue raindrops blend in with the blue gradient behind the icon.

- The checkmark button on starred locations is hard to understand. It looks like it should confirm something (especially beside the red X), but it I guess maybe it selects the default location? The button could use alt text, too.

- The 7-day forecast feels busy. Maybe de-emphasize the date (lower font weight or smaller size for the calendar day, and maybe a shorter date format)

- The search box would benefit from suggesting places. Less to type (especially on mobile), and weather apps are inconsistent about what location queries they support and suggestions give confidence I'm using a new app correctly.

Slick app, mate.

> It's funny how this is posted two days after I finished my Weather web app which uses Dark Sky's free API

Err, dark sky announced this well over a year ago, and was acquired 2 years ago - this is not news.

I’ve been on the iOS 16 beta for a while now. The Weather app is still hot garbage compared to Dark Sky:

1. It’s never up to date, and there’s no way to tell when it last updated. This has always been an issue, and it’s still not fixed in iOS 16. As I write this, Dark Sky says it’s 70°F outside, while Weather says it’s 68°F. Dark Sky is closer: it’s 71°F. There’s no way to get the Weather app to refresh. The temperature predictions in Weather are out-of-date. In a few minutes, it might randomly update.

2. There’s no way to see the precipitation probability in the Weather app, despite that being a very basic feature. Apple brands themselves as an outdoorsy lifestyle company. As someone who actually spends a lot of time outside, I consider this an essential feature.

3. Custom alerts are gone. Really, most alerts are gone. “Next-Hour Precipitation” alerts exist as an option but don’t work. Dark Sky’s precipitation alerts are almost always correct, but I rarely get alerts from Weather, and when I do they’re unhelpful.

4. Historical weather is missing from Weather.

I’ll be going back to using the NWS website once Dark Sky is gone. At least it’s better than the Weather app.

I don’t understand how a company that brands themselves as an essential component of an outdoors lifestyle could ax a feature like Dark Sky’s precipitation notifications and replace them with “next hour” notifications. That might make sense if you’re just using the app to decide whether it’s a suitable time for a jog, but that’s about it. If you’re going to be outside regardless of the weather, and you want to know whether to cover your backpack or temporarily take shelter, sorry, you’re out of luck.

I’m curious whether they made similar mistakes with the new Apple Watch Ultra. Once the cool factor wears off, is it actually going to be as versatile as Apple claims? Is it really for use outdoors, or is it just for showing off at parties? Anyone who’s tried to use an Apple Watch in the rain or water on a regular basis has probably experienced usability issues at one point or another; for example, if you’re swimming, Apple Watch might repeatedly prompt you to select your type of exercise, despite the fact that you’ve already enabled water mode and can’t interact with the screen. Rain can land you in a similar situation.

Edit: Reworded some excessively snarky comments.

> There’s no way to see the precipitation probability in the Weather app,

This is the #1 thing I use Dark Sky for. I powered up the Weather App to look for this feature, and yeah... not there. Boo.

What weather app are people using on Android?

I'm currently using Geometric Weather + MyRadar:

https://f-droid.org/packages/wangdaye.com.geometricweather/

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.acmeaom.an...

- wX (based on NWS data): https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=joshuatee.wx / https://f-droid.org/en/packages/joshuatee.wx/

- weawow: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.weawow / https://weawow.com/

I also use weawow ... with darksky as the provider. The other providers (at least the free ones) seem far less accurate (for Seattle anyway).

I've started using willyweather for higher-fidelity UV data, and its forecasts (from NOAA) seem reasonable and I like the forecast-vs-actual graph. Though the UI requires some extra clicks to get all the info that weawow manages to get onto a single user-friendly page. (First-world problems....)

wX is truly amazing. I don't understand why it's not more popular. I guess the UX is focused on nerds and power users so it may not get a lot of love from those just looking for a quick forecast at a glance.

Exodus Privacy gives wX a clean bill of health, but weawow seems to contain a tracker, which is unfortunate given that it will need access to my location to be useful.

I've been using Today Weather for years and it's been amazing.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=mobi.lockdown....

I've been using Overdrop.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=widget.dd.com....

Used to use wundergound but it got very slow, now I use Foreca and it's great

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.foreca.and...

yr.no

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=no.nrk.yr&hl=e...

They've also got a rather nice API - https://api.met.no/weatherapi/documentation // https://api.met.no/weatherapi/locationforecast/2.0/

In particular, I like the detailed info on clouds:

        <time datatype="forecast" from="2022-09-13T00:00:00Z" to="2022-09-13T00:00:00Z">
            <location altitude="986" latitude="45" longitude="90">
                <temperature id="TTT" unit="celsius" value="8.9"></temperature>
                <windDirection id="dd" deg="353.8" name="N"></windDirection>
                <windSpeed id="ff" mps="10.6" beaufort="5" name="Frisk bris"></windSpeed>
                <humidity unit="percent" value="55.5"></humidity>
                <pressure id="pr" unit="hPa" value="1020.1"></pressure>
                <cloudiness id="NN" percent="78.9"></cloudiness>
                <fog id="FOG" percent="0.0"></fog>
                <lowClouds id="LOW" percent="0.0"></lowClouds>
                <mediumClouds id="MEDIUM" percent="46.9"></mediumClouds>
                <highClouds id="HIGH" percent="64.1"></highClouds>
                <dewpointTemperature id="TD" unit="celsius" value="0.5"></dewpointTemperature>
            </location>
        </time>

The difference e between low, medium, and high clouds is useful for deciding "where may there be a good sunset?" Most other services just offer the general "cloudiness".

I like yr - they have a really great UI. Pretty sweet example of what proper government funded agencies can achieve. The forecast is only OK in areas that aren't Norway, Sweden or Denmark though. It's about on par with what I get from the default iOS app though, so I end up using yr anyway.

I’ve used yr the past few years, too (learning about it from HN). Glad to hear that the forecasts compare to the stock weather app, since that’s something I’m always wondering but I’ve never tried anything else.

This one is by far the most accurate!

As an Aussie, I use the BoM app. Has everything I need and being government supported is not driven by "for profit" motives.

Yeah the BOM website has also been the same design for so long and is great.

Example forecast: http://www.bom.gov.au/wa/forecasts/perth.shtml Observations: http://www.bom.gov.au/wa/observations/perth.shtml

Still seems outrageous to me that BOM doesn't support HTTPS...

Windy.com

To be honest, I was using bookmarks to the darksky website, that way they were synced between desktop and phone.

I've been using tomorrow.io. It's pretty good, overall. I think they're launching their own weather satellites.

https://www.tomorrow.io/

https://play.google.com/store/search?q=tomorrow.io

weawow weather

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.weawow&hl=...

Free, and Ad-free. And nice UI.

Donation-ware.

I use the premium (not the new Premium+ subscription) version of Accuweather. It has hyper local forecasts which I have found highly accurate in predicting local precipitation.

Hello Weather is pleasant to use, and supports several data APIs.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.helloweath...

I was using Dark Sky till apple killed it. At the transition they had a unit conversion bug, and the team were simultaneously super helpful and fixed it immediately, with a palpable air of sadness that they knew the android efforts were wasted in just a few weeks.

I'm very happy with the unofficial NOAA app by graniteapps: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.nstudio.we...

It gives a graph of the % chance of rain on an hourly basis.

I have used the WeatherBug app [1] on my most recent three or four Android phones. It provides tabs for the current conditions, hourly and 10-day forecasts, and a radar map.

They also have a website [2] and an IOS app [3]. I haven't used either of these.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.aws.androi...

[2] https://www.weatherbug.com/

[3] https://apps.apple.com/us/app/weatherbug-weather-forecast/id...

Exodus Privacy reports 29 (!!!) trackers in WeatherBug. I hope you didn't give it location access, but even if you did you might want to reconsider your choice of weather app.

I literally have never seen a number so high.

Exodus Privacy gives Geometric Weather a clean bill of health, but MyRadar is not something I would ever touch given that it will need access to my location to be useful.

Weawow for Dark Sky data source, which is most accurate for Prague, Geometric Weather with AccuWeather would be 2nd most accurate for Prague. I fear the time Dark Sky will be shut down and there won't be replacement available (I thought there should be just under different name), if I have to resort to AW or Wunderground. :-(

The app doesn't really matter, what matters are the data sources which are most accurate for your location, Weawow, Today Weather and Weather Mate provide the most sources, so you can compare them over span of few weeks to see which one is the most accurate and has the least amount of false negative/positives based on your preference

Personally I don't really care whether the real temperature in the end is 19, 21 or 23C, it makes small difference, but it's big difference whether app tells me it's gonna rain and then it doesn't rain or vice versa when planning my schedule. Problem with most of the apps/sources I compared is they give too many false positives for rain.

For radar I just use home screen link to local Czech radars (provided either by Meteopress or CHMI), no point to have app for that.

My girlfriend uses Apple’s Weather app and I still use Dark Sky. My anecdotal experience is that Dark Sky is significantly more accurate than Apple’s Weather app, especially when it comes to rain. Anyone have any insight into why this is the case, especially considering Apple bought Dark Sky?

iOS only seems to be taking Dark Sky weather as of iOS 16, so guess start comparing them again as it was released today!

I wonder if you can source that. I am pretty confident Apple Weather has the same back-end data since iOS 15 a year ago, at the least.

https://www.macrumors.com/2022/06/08/ios-16-weather-app-upda...

Does anyone know if Apple is actively using the barometer data from iPhones to work on improving weather forecast accuracy? Dark Sky claimed they were doing this but offered no information about it, so I am skeptical that they actually did work on this.

AFAIK they were not weather nerds / atmospheric scientists, and did not work with researchers on the use of the data, or do any work on statistical verification to know if their barometer data was helping or not, so I expect that they just collected some data but didn't use it.

But Apple could be in a prime position to use the barometers to make weather forecast accuracy improvements.

Google too, of course, but AFAIK they are not working on this.

DarkSky has a very nice UI... but the actual weather data and predictions seem lackluster at best.

If they were confident in their predictions, they'd compare against competitors - for example, "If you use our 3-hour weather prediction to decide the best time to go for a 20 minute jog each day, you'll stay dry 16% more of the time than using NOAA weather predictions".

Agreed, maybe it was great in some places but in SoCal it was always wrong.

It's usually worked for me but sometimes it's wrong. Is there a better option you know about?? I love the concept of seeing if I have time to walk somewhere before it rains.

In the UK, I use netweather which has an atrocious UI, but displays the raw radar data on a 180 meter grid. Using that and a regular untrained eyeball just looking at how the rain is forming seems to make far better predictions.

Whereas darksky seems to use a 1km+ grid and very crude predictions like 'the rain will move in the same direction as the wind'.

It's significantly less user-friendly, but there's always https://www.weather.gov/ (if you live in the US).

I like weather.gov but it doesn't show the "next hour" precipitation prediction that I like from dark sky.

Probably depends on location? Its amazing in NYC.

I can understand their rationale - who wouldn't want to be bought up by Apple, and the system app integration was likely Apple's decision - but the press release's attempt at rationalizing still makes for some hilarious corpospeak:

> Our goal has always been to provide the world with the best weather information possible, to help as many people as we can stay dry and safe, and to do so in a way that respects your privacy.

There is no better place to accomplish these goals than at Apple. We’re thrilled to have the opportunity to reach far more people, with far more impact, than we ever could alone.

...

> Service to existing users and subscribers of the Android app will now continue until August 1, 2020, at which point the app will be shut down. Subscribers who are active at that time will receive a full refund. Weather forecasts, maps, and embeds available on the Dark Sky website will also shut down on August 1, 2020.

Even if you follow their reasoning here, apparently blessing new iOS users with their technology who have never asked for it (by integrating it into the system app) is more important than keeping the tech available for old Android users who did ask for it.

I love DarkSky. It's the first app I paid for. I'm going to miss it, it's API, and it's approach to making weather data quick and easy to comprehend. It's how I felt the first time I used Hipmunk and it's gantt chart approach to finding a plane when sorted by "agony". Sometimes, the right UX on the same basic data can make all the difference.

I’ve used this app for years. I will have to check out the new iOS weather app.

Honestly the Dark Sky rain predictions are usually wrong more often than not.

I use it to monitor rain to keep my zoysia nice, but it has been disappointing me recently.

It must vary by location. Dark Sky is usually right on point for me.

I was pissed when they cut off Android support. I eventually got over it and subscribed on my iPad so I could continue using it, because nothing else I've tried comes close.

Check what their source is: surely, they don't compute the forecast themselves.

They do. That was the selling point.

The data is public and comes from NOAA but they are doing their own forecasting.

Here is a blog post from one of the devs about their process (2011): http://jackadam.github.io/2011/how-dark-sky-works/

The predictions used to be dead on. it was crazy weird how accurate. But shortly after apple purchased they started slipping. Now rarely accurate.

This was my experience as well, but a confounding factor is they bought Dark Sky 2020-March-31, which coincided with a drastic change in how I used them.

Before COVID / Apple's acquisition, I had a 10 minute bike ride from my place of work to where I lived. I could use the hyper-local predictions to stay out of the rain, and it almost never failed me.

Either way, because the install base sensors powered predictions, I suspect the acquisition is what killed its utility. I can't count on the accuracy any more.

For me they were on point, sometimes down to the minute. That is, until Apple bought them.

The Apple Weather app UI has far less granular detail than Dark Sky iOS app for hourly predictions. I liked the hourly view of temp, humidity, precipitation. We lose that in Apple Weather and its the main thing I check in the app.

But the rain predictions have been wildly inaccurate in Dark Sky lately, including an incident last night where it told me I was in a rain storm when I was not...

the iOS 16 weather app finally has the hourly predictions in it, which is why they are now ready to remove Dark Sky entirely

So sad, I use this app every day!

Just downloaded the new iOS weather app and it has all the features I use from Dark Sky.

I even prefer the interface!

For what it's worth, I often enjoy when Apple absorbs apps. I thought they did a fantastic job with Shortcuts.

Isn't the Weather app pre-installed?

It is, but it's also removable. They probably uninstalled it before Apple started to reimplement Dark Sky in Weather.

Same, it’s literally my most used app. I’m growing container figs in a low-soil medium, so if they go even an hour too long without water they freak out.

While we’re on the topic of weather apps - can someone explain why the radar view is often choppy, with random incomplete tiles, weird zooming, and just generally feels janky? Just opened the weather app (ios) and the radar view seems clunky and incomplete. I know the answer must have to do with weather radar / nexrad data feeds, just wondering why we haven’t figured out how to reasonably smooth it out.

Can someone explain what was great about dark sky? All I really know about it that it was an weather app acquired by Apple from some other discussions about it. It seemingly had a "Time Machine" feature to see the past weather but is that really a game changing feature? Was the UI good ?

Hyperlocalized weather forcasting down to the street address, wealth of information laid out in an accessible way with a clean UI.

I live in the PNW and love that I can see the hourly forecasted rainfall for the day.

I really don't care about the UI, just the data. And Dark Sky data was superior to anything else I've seen.

Just a question: Is dimming the launch screen on dark mode gone now? I can't find it and my new launch screens look like fisherprice toys with black holes (the widgets)... Where is my nicely dimmed Marshian surface stock photo that allows focus on the app/widgets without blinding me?

I like the new lockscreens, especially the one where you see the earth and where there is still sun and where it is night, beautiful! Unfortunately the Sleep focus I use for it completely blurs it away... No setting to change this... It feels like it's not really finished.

Link should be https://blog.darksky.net/dark-sky-has-a-new-home/

My $500 backpacking satellite communicator, manufactured by a 17B company, uses the Dark Sky api to get weather forecasts. They've got a hilarious FAQ saying basically "Apple won't talk to us either, but we hope they don't shut it down soon".

Sadly exactly what I've come to expect from any software written by Garmin. It's all incredibly half-assed compared to their hardware and actual satellite/gps algorithms.

They can use Apple's WeatherKit REST API which is the replacement for the Dark Sky API.

Garmin really doesn't seem to understand that in this day and age they are supposed to be a software company as much as they are a hardware company.

They don't. I developed and now maintain a weather app for Garmins, and the state of firmware is really bizzare. You can see individual device team merge patches from some kind of core, and then eventually releasing them - so the new bug appears in a simulator, then slowly makes its way to various devices during the next 1-4 months, and then, if you complain loud enough, the same process happens again with a fix.

Long gone are the days where you purchased an application and it was yours.

Software is eating the world indeed.

There's however the tiny, pesky detail that it's getting increasingly harder to own things.

I'm waiting for the day your Tesla car will gently inform you that it's been decommissioned, or that Tesla has unilaterally decided that you weren't - for some reason - a worthy driver, and will refuse to turn on.

Interesting times ahead.

I had home automation based on Dark Sky API. Sad to see it go.

(mental note: make sure there are always alternate solutions and manual over-rides for external resources.)

They will have a REST api again.

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/weatherkitrestapi

The API is replaced by https://developer.apple.com/documentation/weatherkitrestapi which is available as a REST API and can be used on non-Apple platforms.

its not free like darksky was for small personal apps

500,000 free requests per month

Maybe check out https://pirateweather.net/, I think the author had similar ideas.

Care to share what kind of automation you had?

cyclone house prep (sump pump, shutters, top off battery backup, exercise backup generator, generator fuel messaging to top off, notifications, etc.)

delay watering if rain is coming

warn of weather change so do not get caught in open waters

That is all I have now.

Many thanks to the developers over the years! The app saved us all from getting drenched at a wedding celebration. I'm forever grateful for that.

All I can say is that at least Macs show the weather in Celcius when you are in the correct region. We have Windows 11 systems here that no matter what we do show the weather is in Fahrenheit on the Windows taskbar, which is utterly useless to us.

I guess it is region dependent or language dependent or both. My win 11 showed me the temp in Celcius for me though.

It needs to be independently settable, or it's useless.

It is. If you open the side panel. And click the three dot on the tile of weather. There is a setting option.

I am using rainviewer[1] that also uses radar to give precipitation forecast.

[1] https://www.rainviewer.com

It has been really inaccurate for me the past 6 months. I’ve gotten wet a couple of times when I trusted it. It was great, but Apple has killed it. R.I.P Dark Sky.

Is anyone applying deep learning to weather forecasting? Seems like there might be a disruption opportunity there.

Yes, there have been many ML efforts in weather forecasting, but I'm not sure many/any have been successful. The bar for success is pretty high, because you have to beat raw data collection and real physics equations that model the atmosphere. Generally, the physics and raw data with models are beating the ML. At least, last I checked - some years ago.

I use Klara on android, seems much better than Dark Sky from what I see in the screenshots.

I am a long-ago purchaser of Dark Sky. I find I never use it on my iPhone. Carrot Weather is always superior in both the forecast and Radar. Dark Sky's "it will rain in 5 minutes" was hit or miss.

I live in the mountains, so perhaps, Dark Sky works well in a less difficult environment.

That said, if it disappears tomorrow, I won't miss it.

I used Dark Sky on iPhone until they redesigned the Weather app. Then the stock option became an immediate drop-in replacement.

I wish the API remained open so others can use it but as far as the app itself, it was never really that good.

Apple now offers a WeatherKit REST API

https://developer.apple.com/documentation/weatherkitrestapi

I did not know that! Thanks!

I'm picking up Carrot Weather now. Its "Editors' Choice" description says it draws data from Dark Sky, though?

Edit: disregard the source comment. It draws from multiple sources, like Foreca.

You can pick your data source from a list...it also has a nice function that will use your weather station for local conditions within a given radius. That said you need to use a specific brand of weather station for that to work.

Carrot just pushed an update that switches the Dark Sky source to Apple weather.

I also second the recommendation for CARROT Weather [0]. I switched to it a few years ago from Dark Sky and never went back.

[0] http://meetcarrot.com/weather/

> Carrot Weather

I don't know about the iOS app, but at least the Android version has a few trackers: https://i.imgur.com/qyRL4jf.png

From here: https://reports.exodus-privacy.eu.org/en/reports/com.grailr....

Carrot is a great app. However, it's expensive and massively overkill for people living in the Bay Area. $40 a year for a warning the 10 times a year it rains is a bit much.

Still, until iPadOS 16 brought a native weather app, Carrot was the best alternative for using the same app across all my devices (Mac, iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch). I'm glad the built in Weather app is sufficiently good that I can drop that subscription.

I want to like carrot, but agree it’s too expensive. I use apple weather/weather.gov and MyRadar.

MyRadar is the best weather radar app I’ve found and once little league season starts it’s an essential.

I sold so many copies of Dark Sky at Little League games. “Huh, it’s going to rain in 7 minutes.” “LOL, that’s awfully exact!” 6:45 later, it starts to sprinkle. “What was that called again?”

I hope Weather proves to be as reliable.

You made me question myself if we're looking at the same app... in the "Premium Club" section of the Android Carrot app, I'm reading "Three day free trial, 3.89€ per year after that." This unlocks the Widget, the time machine (past weather reports), removes ads, and saves a kitten. All good things!

You have to be on the "Premium Ultra" tier for rain, lightning, and storm notifications: http://support.meetcarrot.com/weather/

It didn't occur to me until they were gone, but I wish I'd asked my roofers what they used. I had my roof replaced a couple years ago in early March. Here in the Puget Sound area by than the winter rain has fallen off, but February and March still average about 6 inches each, so the schedule was "we'll do it when it isn't going to rain".

I got a call one evening saying they'd be over at 8 AM the next day, unless forecasts changed before then. That surprised me because all my weather sources were saying there was a high chance of rain after noon.

They showed up at 8 AM and promptly got to work removing the old roof. I'd expected them to work in sections, taking off the old roof in a section and then putting the new on up to the waterproof underlayment. (The shingles were due to be delivered that evening, so would have to wait until the next day). That way if the rain came earlier than expected they would be able to waterproof whatever section they were on in time.

Nope. They took it all off. They were confident that whoever was doing their forecasting was right that they had enough time to get the whole thing waterproof before the rain started.

As they started putting on the new stuff the clouds were darkening and it sure looked to me like rain was imminent. But they just kept going at the same pace.

As they put the last of the waterproof lining on and started coming off the roof, it started pouring. They packed up, told me they would be back tomorrow at 8 AM to put on the shingles, and left.

Anyone knows how Dark shy was able to do hyperlocal weather prediction?

The UI is amazing but the forecasts they use are the worst.

I used Dark Sky, but MyRadar is my favorite.

Where does Dark Sky get the raw data from?

Largely governments: https://darksky.net/attribution

good, im glad iOS users are feeling the pain that android did when apple bought them

Well, that sucks.

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