Thunderly Reviews

Not sure why this is getting such bad reviews? I only installed it because I couldn’t figure out what could possibly be so awful about Thunderly that sounded really neat and was one of the recommendations in Thunderly store. I have not encountered any glitches at all. Thunderly looks exactly like the pictures.

You can toggle various options to feel vibration for the lightning, have a flash from the iPhone’s camera flash, and/or play a little recording of thunder for each lightning strike that occurs in your visible area. The farther out you are zoomed, the more lightning strikes you will catch, I think. Maybe if there is a more active storm, it would be better to be zoomed in? I’m not sure, but I’m excited to try it in a month or so when the Midwest thunderstorm season starts!

I’m not sure what the person who only saw white and grey was talking about, there’s definitely a photorealistic globe. It’s pretty similar to Google Earth, but if you zoom in, you don’t see streets and such. Honestly that would just be distracting... You want to watch lightning, right? Why are you looking for streets all zoomed in?

[UPDATE]: Not even 2 days after my review the bug was squashed and I finally got to experience Thunderly in it's best light.
It's beautiful. Graphics and haptic feedback and spot on. Thunderly will in fact join my arsenal of weather tracking application. Great work team! 👍🏽👍🏽

If I may add one more note: when I'm playing music from my phone, the sounds of Thunderly forces my music to stop playing music during say, the opening graphics and even just the sounds within Thunderly itself. Is there a way to enable the sounds to just play over the music without interrupting? I'm not a fan of having my music shut off by any app.

Update April 22, 2018. Heard back from developer, App is now working on my iPad Pro 12.9, & my iPad Air as well. Looks great even at 2X which happily surprised me. Graphics with the audio are very cool! Found Thunderly works extremely well even showing storms/lightning where my family lives near Tokyo with me on the east coast of USA.

Thunderly was extremely accurate when checked against my lightning detector from AccuRite. I use it on my iPad Air when traveling in my car. When both the detector and the thunder sounds I pull over and can see exactly where the lightning is in relation to my location. Then I can drive where the storm is heaviest to photograph the lightning.

It’s a great App and the price is right, it’s not just fun it’s really useful too. You won’t be disappointed!

With a plethora of weather apps available for IOS, this shows some potential but nothing new or innovative in comparison which seems to be the same thing everyone is indicating.

The biggest issue is zero support for iPad and or landscape.
The second biggest issue is the workflow of using the various selections for cloud, lightning etc., is very slow and cumbersome.

The menu gives you roughly 5 choices for selecting on/off the various elements but that is it. The global aspect is nice but even on an iPad Pro (2017 model) it’s painfully slow to render. Since the 3D globe is the biggest selling point, to make the rendering slow it essentially makes Thunderly somewhat useless.
The zooming and selected level of zoom is somewhat cheap feeling. The lightning aspect is covered by so many apps now and as a normal function which works perfectly for most therefore if you are marketing Thunderly based on lightning detection and or zooming the globe, those two functions are in need of some serious development help.

In order to compete against other apps, you will need much faster rendering and redo the menu system to be more professional and or smooth otherwise I am uninstalling for now but will check back in 6 mos to see if you have improved Thunderly based on everyones comments.

I’m so incredibly disappointed. This is a beautifully designed app however extraordinarily inaccurate. I live in South Florida which is the lightning capital of the world. We were having a fierce thunder and lightning storm, right above us. There is a button on Thunderly click every time you see lightning or hear thunder. I click it and it would say there is no lightning in the area. But I was watching it and it was right over me.
It’s disappointing because I rely on lightning apps for my traveling because who likes to be outside when deadly electricity is bolting down from the sky?
Thunderly is beautiful. The controls are lovely. The phone vibrating and making sounds when it’s happening is fabulous. I just wish it worked when that was actually lightning striking…
If the accuracy follows the weather bug platform for lighting, I didn’t give this five stars in a heartbeat, or in a lightning strike…

Update!!! Well the day I got word things were fixed, there’s no lightning within 1,000 miles, but now I can see everything! Looking forward to the help this will provide in the future. Thanks to the developer for sorting this out!

This is awful. I see maybe the bottom fourth of the earth and the upper edge is blinking in and out. No amount of messing with it makes it better..... sure doesn’t look anything like the pictures I see here. I have an iPhone 7 that is up to date on software. Maybe I missed something saying it only works with 8 and above? Nope. Looked back and it should work. But I am up to about 1/3 of the earth now....

The reason I’m giving it a bad review is that I get less than 1/2 of the Southern Hemisphere and that’s it. There is no way to measure distance to strike or anything else advertised other than flash and thunder. If this can be fixed I will be happy to change my review. Perhaps that will answer the person’s question as to why some reviews are bad. It apparently works on some phones and not others.

UPDATE: As promised, the issues appear to be resolved, and Thunderly is now working fine. Thank you for not just shrugging your shoulders and ignoring our comments as many developers seem to do. Well done and many thanks again!!

I’ve had a few close encounters with lighting before, and wanted to get Thunderly to see why lightning likes to strike all around my house.

Thunderly doesn’t fail to do its job. No in-your-face ads, a very interesting way to customize your experience, top of the line graphics that I’ve seen in awhile.

Pulls from reputable sources, seems to be updated regularly, very easy to use and read.

It updates in real time with at worst, 8 seconds of lag, but normally it is only 1.5-2.1 seconds of lag here.

If I could suggest adding an ability to see past lightning strikes, or a log rather than just the color coded dots, that would be amazing.

That or an alert to notify you of when there is a lightning storm that is heading your way. I love to watch all the strikes while sitting in the storm.

Also love the fact that Thunderly uses a geofence rather than active tracking for your location!

Love it, keep up the good work!

I love lightning, I’m an electrician by trade and I’ve always been fascinated with lightning and thunderstorms. Love Thunderly , it looks beautiful and the realistic planet with accurate day/night rotation is awesome. There seems to be a problem with Thunderly however, right now there is a supercharged atmosphere across the Western Hemisphere and I’ve been catching bolts all night but as soon as my count goes over 800, Thunderly crashes ☹️, I’ve reloaded it many times tonight to keep watching and it keeps crashing right after 800, truly my count should be about 7 or 8 thousand and I would love to capture a screen shot that says that, so please help!!!

October 4, 2018: I don’t understand how Thunderly made it to App of the Day, but then again, a lot of blahhh apps make it there too. I installed on my iPad Air 2. Thunderly “caught” over 79 lightening strikes, made cool sounds, then nothing...then it crashed. Maybe Thunderly starts up like this each time? I don’t know. I do know that Thunderly was showing new strikes, but there was no sound.

DATA SOURCING: In one of the developer’s comments (month of May 2018), I read that Thunderly relies on one person (he) for data. One? Maybe he was asleep when I downloaded app?

APP ISSUES: Apple released another update yesterday, and I think Thunderly needs another update to fix the way Thunderly does not stretch to full screen size. Annoying. Option for Landscape mode is not available, which I also find annoying.

I noticed every time u get a review with problems you respond and fix the issue.
Really don’t find that an awful lot these days and it means a lot.
I do like Thunderly I was able to roam around and enjoy for a little while but I did get booted off three times and it seemed to be lagging when I’d try to move around it would take a bit to move so normally I’d delete but I see u are really working hard to fix things so I’ll stick around for awhile. Hope to see updates soon and I’ll give another star.
Thx

I installed this based on Thunderly of the Day advertisement from Apple App Store. It looks great and was stable until it reached some activity threshold, then would crash out of Thunderly . Recently, there’s significant lightning in the eastern US where I live and Thunderly just doesn’t seem to be able to handle it. It appears to crash even before it fully loads up as I can’t even get to the controls. I love watching lightning and it’s interesting tracking the activity world wide, but Thunderly just won’t stay up when there’s a lot of activity nearby. I have an iPhone 6 and just updated to IOS 12 and have the newest version of this app.

This is the best app I have ever seen in my entire life! But... it keeps crashing. I have the iPhone XR and it’s brand new so I don’t think it would be struggling with trying to run Thunderly yet it keeps crashing. I am a 19 year old storm chaser just coming out into the storm chasing community so I would love if I could actually recommend Thunderly to friends that need this type of information. I use apps like these to warn them and save their lives from dangerous weather so the last thing I need is for Thunderly to crash on me while I’m giving them live streaming information to them as storms approach. Otherwise I would give this 10 stars!

Just downloaded it and opened it and it was nothing but glitches. Needs major updates before I reinstalled it again. I could not even see the complete globe, just glitches. Don’t download it!

Thank you for listening to my concerns about your app and that you took notice and gave it an upgrade and now it works perfect on my iPhone 6 Plus. I love Thunderly and I’m now giving it a five star rating!! Thank you so much for caring and again listening to feedback from others like me. 👍

I think this is really neat to see where lightening is going off... The earth looks really cool & the Aurora is neat to see!!! I just wonder is this real time lightening? Like from real storms around the world? How accurate is it??? Just wondering... Maybe would be nice to see more options like weather & radar? Maybe some extra features??? Would be nice to have an Apple TV version??? That would be nice as like a screen saver kinda thing... Wouldn’t be able to do much on Apple Watch... But Apple TV & maybe for their Apple laptops/desktops too??? Thanks!

So this was a recommended app that Thunderly Store “loves”! 😳

After reading the info about it. It has potential. And that will make me come back to it, BUT only after you fix the issues.
I downloaded and right off the bat, it would load properly. Exited. Reloaded, same issue. Deleted app!!!

Work on the issues and will try it again once you get a updated version!!!

UPDATE!
Received an email from the developer indicating the update to their software. They indicated they had resolved the issue of the missing earth that was the biggest glitch.
I am happy to now update my review and say that they HAVE resolved the issue and Thunderly works really well. Graphics are great! Interface is simple user friendly! So as promised, I’ve upgraded my star rating to five stars from one star. You earned it! Congratulations!!

App forces closed when opened. I literally just downloaded it and can’t even get into it long. When I finally made it to the map, it was all white and glitches out. I exited then reentered and once again, forced closed. I have high hopes so I’ll try again tomorrow and hopefully fix my review, if not, this’ll stay. I wish you guys luck though... Thunderly is a great idea

Update: actually enters Thunderly now and looks amazing. Lasted a solid minute before crashing once again. I’ll give it a 3 though bc like I said, it’s a great concept and I’ve got to see it work in the second it stayed open and it wasn’t bad.

First version launched to a white screen clearly messed up graphics on my iPhone. Now fixed in current version.

Thunderly does in a fairly nice GUI provide a display of current cloud cover and lightning activity, albeit at lower resolution than other data sources used for the US. That said, the coverage appears to be worldwide. I wonder what the lightning data source is since most other apps require in-app payment to see lightning data due to subscription costs.

Edit: it is an incredible app. Not quite sure if it’s 100% accurate but it’s exciting to see lightening and thunder on other sides of the planet and see that the same moment I occupy is being experienced differently where these lightenings strike. Thank you for fixing the bug and I am excited to see continual upgrades on this if there ever is more to come!!

Really would want to see it working since it does seem fascinating.. however.. Nothing seems to show and it’s very pixelated zoomed in or out..

So, when I saw Thunderly on the “Today” feed, I instantly clicked. I saw that it had close to 4 out of 5 rating, but realized people had Thunderly much earlier than me. I was immediately impressed by the simplicity, but complexity of Thunderly and how neat tracking lighting/thunder really is, especially around the globe. Love Thunderly. Download it if you enjoy great app development.

Side note; if you guys do read this, would love if you implemented like the sound of rain if it’s raining in certain areas (if that’s even possible) as an option(on/off feature).

Ambient music (also an on/off feature) would be cool too to have more of an experience to search an track lighting or hear thunder.

A ranking system would just be neat to see how many people caught lighting or thunder.

Something to consider

While the concept of Thunderly is amazing, I wish there was a way to track the lightning you’ve seen on Thunderly . You could have one section that shows a count of all lightning strikes you’ve seen on Thunderly anywhere around the world, and a count of all lightning strikes that occurred within a 10 mile radius of your current location (that’s the distance the sound of thunder travels). It would game-ify Thunderly , promoting its use during a storms. Also, the thunder sound effect doesn’t have the beautiful rolling/rumbling sound that follows the initial ‘Crack!’ sound. It would be cool to use as a white noise app when I’m trying to fall asleep, due to how realistic it is.

The potential for Thunderly is awesome. But I’m also experiencing visual issues. The only thing showing when zoomed out is a white square, with a glitchy earth appearing as I zoom in.