Apple Watch complications question: Anyone know of a way to show the temperature in both Centigrade and Fahrenheit at the same time on the Apple Watch face? Either in two different complications, or maybe even in the same complication? In the current WatchOS? To clarify: right on the face itself; not by tapping to open more detail in an app.
I’ve tried. Closest I’ve come was with the temperature complication from the ‘Rain Viewer’ app in one corner, on my old Apple Watch SE (2020) running an older WatchOS, which successfully showed the temp in Centigrade in one corner while Apple’s weather complication showed the temp in Fahrenheit in a different corner. But on my new watch, that very same Rain Viewer complication (and its Watch app) always shows Fahrenheit … even though on my iPhone the parent Rain Viewer app itself is showing Centigrade.
As to why bother, the answer is that I live in America (ºF) but I’m trying to get used to Centigrade (ºC) for when I travel, without having to look it up or mentally do the Fº–32x5÷9 razzmatazz. My watch face is where I most frequently check the current temperature, and therefore is the best place for me to see both temps at the same time, to learn that X means Y. Thanks in advance.
Sure. Just have two weather apps that have complications for your watch face and set the units for one to be metric (you do that in the app on your iPhone). Then, display each complication on a watch face. For example:
In the upper right is the complication for Accuweather set to use metric units; in the bottom left corner is Apple Weather using imperial units. The watch face is one version of the Infograph face.
Here’s a page listing some free weather apps that also have watch complications:
I’ll just add that I use Carrot Weather on my phone/watch and it has some great complications plus smart stick widget, and could also be set to a different unit from the stock app. It does have a subscription, but it also has a very good privacy policy. Using one of the free weather apps with watch complications risks sharing your entire location history with data brokers, since weather apps are most useful to us if they track our exact location.
There is what I think will be a less expensive weather app with a watch complication coming soon in Hello Weather version 4. It’s currently in beta test but it now also will offer watch complications.
Interesting that I’ve spent all of 2024 using Celsius on all of my devices as I also want to get a good innate sense of the scale of weather in °C. The currently shipping Hello Weather is a good iPhone app as it can show both scales at the same time. (I haven’t been doing this myself, but it could.) But I think there is no watch complication for the current Hello Weather.
A free alternative is the Yr app from Norwegian Meteorological Institute and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation both owned by Norwegian government. They get their US data from the US National Weather Service. You use the iPhone app to set °C or °F. I use it here in Norway, but also while traveling to US. They are not selling your location data.
Hello Kenrk, kudos for thinking ahead on this! If you don’t need the precision of the razzmatazz, another simple approximation is
(C x 2) plus 30 (for example, 15C x 2 = 30; + 30 = 60F which is pretty close to technically correct 59 F)
or (F - 30) / 2 (for example 60 - 30 = 30; / 2 = 15C which is pretty close to technically correct 15.56 C)
which even I as a math challenged 60+ can handle! I’ve lived so often overseas that I now have a good feel of C and have to do the math to turn it into F!
So if you just want to have an idea of how the temperature feels, as opposed to doing scientific work, this is pretty good.
Another trick maybe for occasional swag conversion (maybe a methemetician could explain why this is):
commonly felt C temps at the 10s convert to Fs involving 1&4:
0C=32 (4 and 1 on either side)
10C=50 (5 is 1+4)
20C=68 (6+8=14)
30C=86 (8+6=14)
40C=104 (1 oh 4)
50C=122 (1 and 2+2 [4])
If you’re out and about beyond either end of this, please be prepared! and don’t use your Apple devices! ;-)
My hight school science teacher wowed the class with
Forget all that +/-32 stuff, just
Add 40 to the source temperature
Multiply by 9/5 or 5/9 for C to F or F to C
Subtract 40 to get result temperature
Hint: -40 F is exactly -40 C
I never could remember where that 32 was supposed to be used. But I understood shifting a graph origin. Twas like magic. But now asking Siri works as well.
I do that as well, but I’ll add that I find that (ºC x 2) plus 34 works better for below freezing (e.g., negative Celsius) weather temperatures.
So -6ºC would be 18ºF with your formula, 22ºF with mine, and the actual temp is 21.2ºF. -16ºC is -2ºF with your formula, 2ºF with mine, and 3.2ºF in reality.
Try making a spread sheet with an input column from -40 to +104. Then make two more columns with (add 40, scale, subract 40). The results match the previous ‘in reality’ results. Much better for checking fevers.
It’s 30C in Sydney now and that feels hot! Like nearly every other nation Australia changed to metric decades ago. My engineering calculations were so much easier with metric (the change was part-way through my degree - good riddance to British Thermal Units).
And thank you for using the correct SI term for degrees C: Celsius.
There is a Tidbits article about the latest X.OS that introduced calculations in Notes. For example, for oven temperatures (where recipes are sometimes in F):
Typing 450 F in C =
produces
450 F in C = 232.222 °C
(not sure if I need accuracy to 3 decimal places!)
The discussion makes me think about how the day to day temperature is for the most part really functionally a qualitative measure rather than a quantitative one. People don’t really need to know 72 vs. 73 or 98 vs. 99. They just need some gradations of cold, cool, warm, hot, really hot. The “multiplying C by 2 and adding 30” method works fine because precision isn’t really a goal.*
*obviously there are a number of exceptions to this general rule.
Which reminds me of a feature my HVAC’s thermostat offers. They have an optional feature called “True Temp”, where the system won’t display or be controlled by the temperature but will instead use a number that is a function of indoor temperature, outdoor temperature and indoor humidity.
The idea is that humid air feels warmer that dry air, and that a given temperature feels different in the winter than in the summer. Although I was skeptical when the unit was installed a few months ago, it has proven itself to work as advertised.
In the past, I always had to adjust the thermostat settings when switching between summer operation (primarily cooling) and winter operation (primarily heating), because a single temperature feels different during different seasons. But with this unit, I left the settings unchanged during the transition period and the house remained comfortable.
Of course, it does mean that when I read it to see the outside temperature, the number I see doesn’t match the local weather report (but it does come pretty close to the number they preset after adding in heat index and wind chill adjustments).
Having moved back and forth across the Atlantic with an American wife and Irish kids, I just double and add 30 or the reverse. It’s nearly automatic at this point.
Second the Yr recommendation but I’m a firm Windy fan for all the detail.
