Replacing the Dark Sky weather app
September 28, 2022 6:19 AM   Subscribe

Can you show me an iOS app that provides hourly forecasts of things like humidity, dew point and cloud cover?

Dark Sky was bought by Apple, and so the Dark Sky app now tells me it won’t work from the start of 2023. It also claims all its functionality has been integrated into the Apple Weather app — but it really hasn’t!

On Dark Sky I can get:
- a detailed precipitation map that I can scroll through time
- a whole week of hourly forecast estimates for ALL of the following data: temperature; feels-like temperature; precipitation probability %; precipitation rate in cm/hr; wind direction and strength; wind gusts; humidity; dew point; UV index; cloud cover; pressure.

I live in the UK and have a small yard, so I dry washing outside, and for that the rain, humidity, dew point, wind and cloud future estimates are really, really helpful.

Apple’s precipitation map is for some reason nowhere near as good, and the other things just seem totally absent.

I have tried Accuweather and Yr.no.

Thank you for any leads!
posted by lokta to Technology (13 answers total) 13 users marked this as a favorite
 
The iOS 16 version of Weather has finally adopted so many of the things I loved about Dark Sky, so I did delete the latter from my phone. Can get granular information by clicking on days and then selecting the down arrow to choose Temp, UV, Wind, Rainfall, Feels Like, Humidity, Visibility and Pressure. The radar is also better. Plus you can report weather at your location like one can/could with Dark Sky.
posted by terrapin at 6:28 AM on September 28, 2022 [8 favorites]


I've been a devoted user of Carrot Weather for years. If you're a paid user, you can choose your data source, of which one is Dark Sky (if you just want the info). If the data is there, Carrot will let you see it, and has some good customization options.
posted by cgg at 7:02 AM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


If it doesn't have to be an iOS app, then I think that the hourly forecasts on the Weather Underground website have everything you want with the possible exception of wind gusts & UV index. The 10-day forecast summarizes them in a handy graph as well.

Unfortunately, the free version of the Wunderground iOS app does not make all of this data available (as far as I can tell.) A subscription might unlock it, but I don't know for sure.
posted by Johnny Assay at 7:12 AM on September 28, 2022


I'm with you - I'm also facing growing pains while trying to transition from Dark Sky - but I do think Apple's iOS 16 Weather app has everything you listed (with the exception of dew point forecasts, unless I'm missing it). You can get the hourly forecasts by scrolling down to the humidity (or whatever), clicking on it, and then using the menu in the upper right to toggle between options.

I'd be surprised if the data is worse since theoretically it's supposed to be built on the same technology, but it's possible.
posted by mosst at 7:21 AM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


Yeah, it took a while for me to figure out the UX but the iOS 16 weather app does have most if not all of this.

Dew point forecasts aren't hour by hour but there's a sentence below the humidity detail that lists the range for that day. Wind gusts is the fainter line above the sustained wind speed in the wind detail graph.
posted by misskaz at 7:29 AM on September 28, 2022


I am crossing my fingers that they add the rest of the Dark Sky features to the iOS version by the end-of-year cutoff. I also found the hour-by-hour humidity and wind forecasts super helpful.

I have not found anything else that's more like Dark Sky than this.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:51 AM on September 28, 2022


Response by poster: Oh no, oh dear — I have the old original iPhone SE, which won’t get iOS 16.
posted by lokta at 10:59 AM on September 28, 2022


Lyn Never, to get hour-by-hour humidity and wind forecasts in Apple’s built-in Weather app:
  1. Upgrade to iOS 16.
  2. In the weather app, tap on the “Wind” or “Humidity” tiles to see hourly data, or tap on any day in the “10-Day Forecast” tile and then tap on the button with a ⌄ icon to change the hourly display from Temperature to your desired measurement.
(However, as far as I can tell, it can’t show hourly forecasts for Dew Point or Precipitation Probability, which I will miss quite a bit from Dark Sky.)
posted by mbrubeck at 10:59 AM on September 28, 2022 [1 favorite]


I've had Dark Sky for some years now. I've noticed it seems to be less accurate these days. And sometimes has no info at all. I remember Weather Underground being good.
posted by Liquidwolf at 1:12 PM on September 28, 2022


I agree that the precip radar map in Apple Weather isn’t as good as in DS though Apple Weather has improved in many other areas. I just recently submitted feedback to Apple regarding the map — maybe if enough of us do, they’ll do something about it!
posted by sriracha at 2:18 PM on September 28, 2022


Weather underground has, as far as I can tell, been left to rot by IBM, who owns it (and the weather channel). I certainly wouldn’t put money towards such an app.
posted by rockindata at 4:49 PM on September 28, 2022 [2 favorites]


Unfortunately, the free version of the Wunderground iOS app does not make all of this data available (as far as I can tell.)

It does make nearly all of the info from the hourly 10 day page version available if you know how to get to it: tap "more" right under the main "hourly forecast" display (or from the "more" under daily forecast, switch to the hourly tab), scroll sideways on the main graph to go through time. It's missing cloud cover and pressure from the page it looks like, but has humidity, feels like, wind speed/direction, and all the normal weather things.

However, I do agree that this app is pretty much abandonware, and since IBM bought the weather channel, the wunderground app has seen only UI disimprovements as far as I've ever seen, and it has ads. So maybe worth checking out, but not necessarily worth trusting in its permanent existence.
posted by advil at 5:47 AM on September 29, 2022


Late response, but I found Ventusky to be a pretty strong replacement for DarkSky.
posted by thandal at 7:16 AM on November 11, 2022 [1 favorite]


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