The official Apple “Weather” app (apparently only available upon the iPhone) does have a Weather Channel reference at the bottom once it’s opened. Probably tech from them and DarkSky, and maybe others?
I’ve always assumed that this link (to the Weather Channel) is acknowledging them as the source of the data. Probably due to a contractual obligation related to their use of this data in the app (vs. simply linking to their web site).
I really like the animated Home Screen showing weather conditions in the area you are in, and that it now has so much data consolidated in easy to understand blocks of info on the screen.
Apple’s support site has a list of the many varied sources the app uses, and the Weather Channel is among them:
A few years ago the Weather Channel TV station was split off from IBM, with IBM retaining the weather research and info division and the name, along with the website and its relationship with Apple. The App Store Weather Channel app probably comes from the TV station.
Hmmm, doesn’t mention Dark Sky, yet I hear the app will stop working in 2022. Did Apple buy them for their tech, or just to shut them down?
My guess is that Apple has been slowly and carefully incorporating Dark Sky into its own Weather app. And by purchasing the App from its developers, I’m guessing they might have discontinued, or will be eliminating, the Dark Sky Android app. That would not only bolster Apple’s services division, it probably leaves Android somewhat in the lurch, comparatively speaking. Once Dark Sky is gone, Apple will have the most reliable, informative and beautifully designed weather app on the Interwebs. And having the best weather app in its class, Apple’s services and hopefully hardware, can become more desirable to consumers and businesses.
As I said in the article, the Dark Sky Android app (and the other Dark Sky Web features) were all dropped in August 2020. The actual Dark Sky weather service still seems to be available for other apps to use, and there are quite a few that offer many more features than Apple’s, including CARROT Weather.
I’m not sure what the source is for the Dark Sky iOS app to stop working in 2022; I haven’t seen anything from Apple about that.
Thanks for the confirmation. And I see they’re linking to the horse’s mouth blog at
It’s a bummer that other apps won’t be able to use the API after 2022, but as CARROT Weather’s selection of services shows, there are plenty of options.
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I have not been able to change MY location. Is there a way? Weather says I am in Portland — that is my zip because my Post Office is a substation of Portland. However I live in a different place, Portland is NOT one of my locations. but can’t find a way to delete it.
Of course it could change again (it already has once), but the source I saw was Dark Sky’s blog.
If you’re talking about the automatic location (the arrow-shaped one), it is based on your device’s location services. The phone will get a coordinate from whatever it has available (GPS, Wi-Fi access points, IP address) and compute a location, usually in the form of a street address.
This location is never removable. It is supposed to auto-update as you change location.
As for why it’s choosing Portland, it’s because of your zip code. Most weather web sites (including the Weather Channel, which Apple uses for its back-end) seem to be indexed by zip code. Which of course is a problem if your physical location and your post office’s location are far from each other.
This problem is not unusual if you live in a rural area. My post office, for example, covers an extremely large area. I happen to live near it, so everything works fine, but there are towns 20 miles away that also use it and their weather is not always the same as mine. Especially for detailed forecasts like the time a rain storm will start and stop.
The best suggestion I can make is to not use the automatic location, but instead use a manually-added location. See if you can enter the name of your town or a nearby zip code to get something closer to you. Hopefully, there will be something usable you can provide. If not, you may not have a good alternative except to try a different app and hope its database is indexed on something more useful to you.
Thanks for your reply, David. I went to Settings to disable the automatic location and the Weather App is GONE!!! I used it about 2 hours ago.
Would it be in the APP store?
It has never been in the App Store. It’s always on your iPhone, but hidden if you aren’t able to use it for some reason. Not sure why it would disappear when you disabled auto-location. Did you give it a manual location before you disabled? Perhaps a restart will bring it back.
Since Apple allowed pre-loaded apps to be uninstalled from the phone, those apps have been added to the App Store, in case you change your mind and want the app back. The weather app is here: Weather on the App Store
But you’re probably right that the app is still on the phone; you need to actively remove the app to make it happen. One way to find it it is to search for the app by dragging down on an empty area of the Home Screen to reveal the search bar. Another is to slide past the last Home Screen to the App Library and search for it there. Of course, following that link to the App Store above will reveal an Open button if the app is still on the phone, so you could start the app that way as well.
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I am so embarrassed …. I was using my iPad when David’s email arrived and immediately went to Settings—-Weather. And it wasn’t there! BUT it is still on my iPhone.
Why isn’t Weather included in the update for the iPad??/ Just curious…
Me too. I keep looking for Apple’s Weather app in iPadOS or to download it from the App Store, but I’ve never found it. I cannot fathom why it isn’t available in iPadOS. Makes no sense to me.
Am I just not finding it? Does anyone here have any insight?
Thanks.
Apple has never commented why. There is a weather widget that matches the iPhone widget for functionality that you can add to the Home Screen on iPadOS 15, but tapping it opens a web site in Safari. The lack of a weather app and a calculator app are strange things missing from iPadOS that exist in iOS.
Two answers:
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Apple never got around to it. This is the story about why iPadOS doesn’t include a calculator.
Originally, they planned to ship the iPhone calculator (which would scale-up to the full iPad screen. Jobs thought (probably correctly) that the result was ugly and there was no time to redesign it before the release. And it’s been a very low priority task ever since.
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Apple won’t bundle an app that isn’t a best-in-class app (that can elicit a “Wow, this is the greatest iPad calculator app” response), and they haven’t yet come up with something that meets this criteria. This is what Craig Federighi said in June 2020.
I suspect the reality is related to both of these. Simply porting the iPhone apps to the iPad would be trivial, but the results wouldn’t be any better than the third-party apps people are already downloading and using today. It’s really hard to come up with a game-changing weather or calculator app, and may not be worth the engineering effort to work on one.
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Thanks for the explanation, David.