5 ways that Apple can improve Apple Weather in 2022
Apple’s Weather app in iOS has gotten really, really good. Here’s how it can get even better.
Apple has had a weather app for iOS since the original iPhone shipped in 2007. Historically it was always an attractive app, but lacking enough in advanced features that it allowed for a flourishing industry of third-party weather apps. In 2020 Apple acquired the popular app Dark Sky and incorporated that app’s features into Apple Weather throughout 2020 and 2021. Apple Weather has grown to have the right mix of design and features to appeal to most iPhone users, but there are a few ways that it can still improve. Here are 5 things I’d like Apple to do with the app in 2022:
Advanced Notifications
Apple Weather can now send you a notification when precipitation is going to start or end. That’s really helpful, but it has room for improvement. I still find Dark Sky to be more useful for this even though Apple hired the Dark Sky team. Furthermore, Weather needs to do a better job of alerting you to severe weather. A push notification when a severe weather alert has been issued is great, but it would be even better if you could set your iPhone to emit a sound loud enough to wake you up in the event of a tornado warning issued at night. Maybe this could work in partnership with the sleep function in iOS to generate the sound when it knows you’re asleep, and just send a push notification otherwise.
Weather Map Defaults
As of iOS 15, there is finally a weather radar map built-in to Apple Weather. However, by default it shows you a temperature map. It will switch to a precipitation map only if you manually select precipitation each time you open the map or automatically when precipitation is imminent or present. I’d like to change the default to always show me a precipitation map. Personally I almost never need to see a temperature or air quality map. Just give me a weather radar map and let me choose the others manually if I want to.
Weather Radar Widget
You can add three different styles of Apple Weather widgets to your iPhone’s Home screen, but all of them are forecast widgets. I’d like to be able to add a weather radar map widget. Right now to get that I rely on an excellent third-party app called RainViewer, but that should really be an option from Apple Weather.
Apple Weather for iPad, Mac, and Apple TV
All these years later there is still not an Apple Weather app for iPad, Mac, or Apple TV. You can add weather widgets to iPad and Mac, but when you tap/click on them they take you to an ugly webpage from The Weather Channel, which is the main data source for Apple Weather in the U.S. We need a full Apple Weather app for iPad that has all of the data and tools that the iOS app has. For the Mac, Apple can simply port the iPad version using its Catalyst tools. For Apple TV I’d love the ability to pull up a large weather radar, particularly during severe weather alerts. And I’d love to get weather alerts while watching TV.
Weather Radar Data In Apple Maps
This one’s a bit of a cheat since it’s for Apple Maps and not Apple Weather, but I’d love to toggle a weather radar overlay in Apple Maps. Maps has long been able to display the temperature and air quality score. It’s even severe weather aware. Over the weekend I pulled up driving directions during a Winter Storm Warning, and the warning was displayed on my driving route. That’s really helpful. If I could just toggle a weather radar overlay on the map I’d have the perfect integration.
I don’t know how much of this we’ll get this year at WWDC. I think an iPadOS weather app is going to come sometime. Will it be this year? That remains to be seen.