Dark Sky Weather Reviews

by Jerryadelore

My favorite app for weather was suddenly not supported any longer. Opening it showed no data. So, I searched for a new one.

Dark Sky is not intuitive and the opening page shows me the temperature and if it’s rising or falling. I sort of knew that before I opened DarkSkyWeather . It then shows what the conditions will be for the next 16 hours. It also indicates what the sky will look like and in percentages. That’s good. At the bottom of the page there are switches giving you the choice of humidity, UV index, temperature, and wind speed, but it took a few times before I realized that you must scroll down to get the switches. Then, although it doesn’t tell me, you can sweep to the left or right to get more information. To the right, it give you the high and low for the next seven days. Again, okay, but just the temperature. I want see frontal systems, lows and highs. Having been an aviator, weather is important to me. I can’t do anything about it, but I like to be prepared. That left swipe gives me a monochromatic map of the western US. With only light blue blotches. Zooming in on my home, I get somewhat vague images of what appear to be rain - no clouds that I can determine. It’s an okay app, but I find when I pay for a app that is not as good as a free one, I’m irritated. $4.00 isn’t much since there are no ads, but here in the West I want to see where my mountains and deserts are if I am planning a trip to cross the Cascade in the winter.

by IdoReviews!

Trued to reinstall and still no notifications this is a big deal in a real event fix this NOW

Again for buying DarkSkyWeather these notifications not cominh through is a huge issue this is Only issue i see is their is no option to report ice and wintry mix also its not sending notifications i set up also your radar needs to show the different precip like rain snow mix ext like all the other weather apps

I purchased the dark sky weather app which said it was owned by apple and paid $3.99 for it less then 60 days ago and this last week everyday DarkSkyWeather turns to a white square like its not available and then you cant delete it and then it turns back into the regular app icon and will open. So 1 if you dont want it as an app id like my money back because it says its over the time for a refund and 2 its been less then 60 days so it should not allowed me to purchase if you were ending support for it. Also the notifications if you are fixing DarkSkyWeather do not work based on what I selected as I have a backup app u til I knew this worked. For an apple app i am very disappointed that you would 1 charge and 2 not update when you know there are issues but the biggest on being you cant meet to keep an app updated esp when warning matter please update this or refund my money and Ill just use the other app. It looked like DarkSkyWeather came highly rated but clearly that was a miatake

by Surfandjet

The user interface, cleanliness, and especially being ad free is excellent. The smoothest best looking weather app I've ever used. The information it provides falls short of what it strives for/promises.
DarkSkyWeather consistently contradicts itself, and changes its forecast on the regular. For instance right now the forecast is light rain (100%) for the next 8 hours, however the hourly graph shows medium to heavy rain now and for at least the next hour, the current weather description says rain, and the map is showing red/orange covering my location and a huge surrounding area. All different.
Another example: I've planned my day looking at the forecast that morning, chose to take the motorcycle bc it is supposed to be partly cloudy all day, and then got caught in the rain, to find a totally different forecast for the day an hour later. And this has happened A LOT.
To summarize, the different features on DarkSkyWeather contradict each other and the website very frequently, and the forecast isn't worth anything because they change it as the weather changes rather than accurately predicting it.
Dark sky, stop giving me all this detailed weather forecasting down to the minute as a false sense of knowledge. I had high hopes for DarkSkyWeather and over the past few months they have been crushed. I am giving one star because a weather app's aesthetics mean nothing if the forecast is usually wrong and/or misleading.

by An123456789

I’ve been using Darksky for many many years since i was referred to it by an IndyCar racing team who used it to plan for races up to two weeks in the future. It seemed like if they could use it reliably to plan for something so impacted by the weather, I ought to give it a shot. It was reliable and accurate, I’d never spent $5 on an app before and especially on one I could likely get similar information for free. Throughout the years we users have been prompted to give money, noting the cost to keep it running. I guess Apple has more money to give than the rest of us but didn’t give two f’s about honoring the integrity of DarkSkyWeather . Since they bought it, the once reliable forecasts are rarely if ever accurate, the location settings mess up constantly (as someone living in Indiana I do not need notifications of rain or snow in Berlin), the map and radar are always glitchy. Right now it shows me as “rain for the hour” without a cloud in the sky. Other apps are showing no precipitation all day. It’s very disappointing as this was one of my favorite, most used and most recommended apps. Now I will be looking elsewhere, figuring that a company as big as Apple wont care to take the time to make darksky right again. It’s a shame for the original developers whose once flawless legacy is now tarnished.

(PS for anyone wondering the teams now use RadarScope)

by Commdoor

I liked DarkSkyWeather when I first bought it. Then they changed literally everything, taking away all the reasons I bought it in the first place. They gave it a whole new look which is OK once you get used to it. But they are not receptive to ANY suggestions to make DarkSkyWeather work for others. They are focused strictly and totally on temperature. I live in Florida where the temperature is always hot. I don’t need anyone to tell me it’s hot out today and it is going to remain hot… I already know that. I’m concerned about rain. The problem is when you change the selection to precipitation, you must do that on literally every screen you go through. If you want to check the days below, you have to change precipitation one day at a time on each & every day. If you scroll to a different city, you have to change precipitation on each and every area you want to look at. I suggested an update where you can choose precipitation as the default rather than default to temperature every screen, or to at least provide the option where once you choose precipitation it stays on that choice while you scroll other days and/or areas. All I ever got was a canned auto response “they forward to the developers.” Followed up two weeks later and got the exact same canned auto response. There is no customer service and they do not listen to any input once thy have your money.

by SmittyWerbenmanjensen

What happened to my favorite weather app? Why make it look like every other weather app? Now I usually have to click a “try again” link to launch DarkSkyWeather , or it simply hangs on a white screen until I relaunch DarkSkyWeather . Edit: Now it thinks I’m always in NYC. It’s not a hardware issue, as other weather apps have no problem launching or finding my current location. Edit v2: Found out two friends also have the NYC issue. Great job.

There are some cool new features, and the scroll down to see the upcoming 7 days, with the tap to expand to hourly view for any day within the week, is more fluid. But the experience of getting into DarkSkyWeather in the first place, as well as the lame new look of the interface, has me searching for a new app.

Edit: I now also feel like the accuracy of the forecast has also taken a major dive. The other day I was looking out the window at rain coming down; I opened Dark Sky to see when the rain would lessen or stop (one of my favorite features), and I was shown “no precipitation in your area”. Today, two other weather apps were giving the same forecast of a front moving in tomorrow with a tremendous temperature drop (from 83 to 59), meanwhile Dark Sky is still showing the earlier forecast of the same warm 80 degree weather for the next day. I have now deleted Dark Sky - RIP

by Tottenhamfan

After using DarkSkyWeather as the primary weather app for several months, I decided to delete it. It is just not good enough. It is not accurate. Built in Weather app and Wunderground are much better. One annoying thing is that for some mysterious reason it always shows nearest radar station offline. I even emailed the developers and they dismissed it as “can happen we cannot control it”. I understand it may happen sometimes but if it is happening all the time I suspect something is buggy with DarkSkyWeather and how it connects to the radar station. I think this is affecting the accuracy of DarkSkyWeather . In many instances it would not show rain or very low percentage for it but it would be raining. And please for the love of it fix this probability thing - hourly rain probability being low but daily probability showing 100%. I understand the math and the reason for it but from a usability point of view it is misleading. At the end of the day app is not delivering the relevant information to the user even though math behind it is correct. If you are simply looking for weather information, I suggest use the Weather app and don’t waste your money. If you need radar information and more fine grained weather forecast, use Wunderground and save your money.

by Hjw65

The folks at dark sky touted the new single page format of DarkSkyWeather but ignore the fact that users each have their own needs regarding what information is most important to them. The redesigned app necessitates more scrolling for me to get to the information that I am interested in. Additionally, the choice to put the hourly temperatures zigzagging horizontally in an attempt to “helpfully” mimic a bar graph is simply visually taxing. Charts graphing temperature over time conventionally put time across the bottom and temperature varying in height. The vast majority of the public expects that format. Switching the direction around and additionally scattering the actual data (temperature in degrees) by putting it at the variable end of the bar makes it infinitely more difficult to get a quick, clear, idea of the forecasted hourly temperature variations. I’d suggest putting the temperatures back on the left side of the screen, just after the hour and allowing users to customize the order of the modules on their page. These simple changes would go a long way towards easing users pain. St this point I have a hard time bringing myself to open the darksky app on my iPhone. Instead, I’ve reverted to opening darksky’s web page in safari.

by Beer Can Chicken

Have had DarkSkyWeather for a long time (I actually like the redesign, btw) and it used to be really good at forecasting. Around 8-12 months ago though, the forecasting became horrible. I’m not naive, I don’t expect any weather predictor to be accurate all of the time but it’s nice to know if something like rain is POSSIBLY on the immediate horizon. I play a lot of outdoor sports and this has recently failed me so many times that I’m looking for a better option. real world example:
Have softball game at 2:00, check at various times in morning...cloudy but no indication of rain, like not even a 10% chance..... 1:00, same thing. Get in car, drive to game, stop at drug store, leave drug store and it’s pouring out, look at app again and it shows rain for next 3 hours. All of a sudden!? I’m not someone that looks at 7 day forecasts because I don’t believe they’re very accurate but I feel like 1-4 hours should be when the weather is most predictable. I don’t need real time weather, I can look out the window and see the rain. I simply want to be able to know if it MIGHT rain before I get in my car and waste my time. This isn’t an anomaly either, it’s happened often enough that I’m writing a review in hopes that the developers go back to what was working best.

by Ellusionx112

For years I’ve been staring at DarkSkyWeather wondering if it what worth taking the plunge. But I couldn’t justify myself spending $4 on a weather app. Eventually I dove in and bought it while reading all of the other good reviews. After spending some time with DarkSkyWeather , it’s mediocre at best and definitely not worth a $4 price tag. DarkSkyWeather does nothing different then any other weather app. You would think the shiny graphics would be interactive, have multiple features to play around with but it doesn’t do anything except tell you the forecast and let you know when it’s going to rain or snow. The big world map spins when you look at it and rotate it, and it’s not even a high quality graphic. It’s blurry. It also gave a “time capsule” feature where you can go back to a date 20, 30, 40 years ago to see what the weather was like then. And that is so inaccurate. I went back to a day that I remember nasty weather and it told me it was a sunny warm day. There’s also no iOS 14 widget. Also not sure why Apple took DarkSkyWeather over when they have their own weather app/widget. DarkSkyWeather shouldn’t be more then $.99 of that. There are just not enough features to charge $4.00 for it. Stick to another weaver app for free. They basically give you the same info with more interaction and features.

by EmiryB

the main thing that has held me back all these years from making Dark Sky, an otherwise wonderful app, my default weather app, has been the lack of barometric pressure info. I suffer from regular migraines and this is a critical part of weather forecasting for me and many others. please consider adding?

that having been said, the “otherwise wonderful” judgment is also based on the old Dark Sky app. this new one claims to have more info and to be easier to use, but I’ve found it to be a dramatically worse in terms of UI/UX. I’ve held off on reviewing until now because I wanted to be fair and make sure it wasn’t just a knee-jerk reaction to change on my part. but no — weeks later and I still have to spend way too much time processing the information presented to me every single time I open DarkSkyWeather , whereas before it was intuitive at a glance.

again, I very happily paid for DarkSkyWeather and have been using it for years without complaint, and would prefer to remain loyal. but right now I’m mostly sticking with it because my other currently-installed options are even worse. that’s not exactly a rousing recommendation. would love it if you’d reconsider, or at least have multiple UI options available to your users.

by Bklyn008

I’ve been using Dark Sky for quite a while and have depended on its accuracy and reliability when I want to know what it’s like outside. But with the last big update, I now find that checking the weather with DarkSkyWeather is totally unpleasant. The microscopic fonts, weird little balls with tiny numbers in them that I assume are supposed to indicate data by their position on a horizontal line is not not only esthetically displeasing, it takes more time to figure out what’s going on and what I’m looking for. I don’t want to spend more than a minute to quickly see what the temperature is and if it’s going to rain or now and when. But the visuals are so cumbersome that I find myself getting annoyed every time I open it. Don’t they have any graphic designers that could help with this? I tried downloading various other weather apps and even used the Apple weather app for a while because it’s easy to read. But I admit I trust Dark Sky’s accuracy more than anyone else’s. If they could find someone to redesign it, get rid of those silly black bubbles and wasted white space and make it easy on the eyes I would give it five stars for sure. Fingers crossed someone is listening...

by Qazwe32

I don’t write reviews a lot but this one is soo good I had to. Let’s start off by saying it is worth paying 3.99 dollars on this one the first thing that made me get DarkSkyWeather is the accuracy it’s 80 to 85 percent accurate Number 2 is the design I like that there’s a simple but intuitive chart that covers the next 24 hours and I thought it was per 2 hours and going to be a minus but before when I did not have DarkSkyWeather yet you made an update where if you press the next 24 hours graph each hour will appear that’s very cool Number 3 Reason is the the layout I like that it’s not cluttered and very readable Last Reason is there are no adds and protects your privacy which is #1 Reason why I got DarkSkyWeather. Thank you 😀 and I hope you don’t take off the features while still improving DarkSkyWeather . I forgot to mention the maps, notifications, and reporting the weather. The maps are there for you to understand the current weather other maps confuse you all the time. The Notifications are extremely helpful as no weather will catch you off guard I got notified of today’s forecast as I enabled notifications it said possible drizzle this evening which I like. The Report feature is cool because you make the accurate forecasts even better. Thank you again 😀😀

by Phfeenikz

This was the hands-down best weather app a few years ago, but has declined in usefulness recently. It was perfect in every way, especially after it became available on the watch. However, last August they overhauled the interface when there was absolutely nothing wrong with it in the first place. I hate pretty much everything about the new interface. It’s more confusing to look at, some of the fonts are too small, and I preferred swiping to see the maps and long range forecast. Worst of all though is that the watch app no longer works since the August update, and I’ve now reverted to using Apple’s inferior weather app complication instead. The notifications remain super timely though, which was always the feature that differentiated them from all the other weather apps, but given that they no longer appear on my watch I often miss them entirely. I’d still recommend Dark Sky for use on iOS for the timely notifications, but look elsewhere for the time being if you want a working watch app.

by AMSisme

There are very few apps that I actually feel improve my life and I have such high quality and thoughtfulness that I actively recommend them to people. Dark Sky is one of those. In addition to as much accuracy as you can get, it provides hourly predictions, ‘feels like’ options for things like windchill, and one particular feature which actually might have saved my health once or twice: UV Index. I had never even heard of that before but I get sunstroke allllll the time and that feature is fabulous. The hourly precipitation prediction is both attractive and insanely useful in places like New York, allowing you to time a mad dash during a lull in the storm. DarkSkyWeather has features that no other application for tracking the weather has: it’s in my top five apps that I use and I use it every day. It works just as accurately in every country that I go to and every state that I go to, all with different types of weather challenges. I just love it. Please keep up the good work, its truly a rare product of worth and quality, like lace, or a pocket watch. Weird analogies but hopefully they get the point across: DarkSkyWeather shows craftsmanship, not commercialism.

by Ipanacea

Fantastic weather app and the Apple Watch support is a great bonus. This is my hands down go to weather app I check thirty times a day. Ok, a little exaggerating but you get the idea. The precipitation alerts are so amazingly accurate its like Back To The Future. It'll alert you when rain is about to start, when that rain is going to end, and has beautiful graphs indicating how hard the rain is going to be coming down during those periods. I've used tons of other weather apps and most are just sugar coated graphics that developers have pulled together to not be nerdy developers. Don't waste your money on that stuff. The only other time I reference another weather app, Wx Alert USA, is when we go out sailing and I need more info pertaining to wind speed and direction. That app is the more written description of weather. Dark Sky is far and above anything else out there. Again, the Apple Watch feature takes the cake. You see the graphs and alerts on the watch just as you would on the phone. DarkSkyWeather should get a "best of" award from Apple it's so well done.

by Asflj

Dark Sky is definitely the most accurate weather forecast app and I have tried many. The new user interface is a bit more complicated, not difficult, just a little more cumbersome. But it’s very easy and intuitive unlike many other apps. I do wish the humidity icon was closer to the temperature icon as it used to be but my complaints are very tiny and because I did like the old interface very much and haven’t gotten used to the new one yet. However it has even more information and has some added text which is nice. I have been recommending it to all of my friends for years and I rely on it totally. I supplement it with NOAA for the detailed special weather conditions like severe thunderstorm warnings for the big picture but for local weather conditions Dark Sky is much more accurate. I also appreciate that one can give feedback on the local weather conditions. It lets you know that it’s going to start raining in half an hour for example. And it is incredibly accurate about that. Whenever possible I always time my walks and errands according to this forecast. All in all a great app!!

by Zupert.Ego

I got DarkSkyWeather years ago when I was getting rained on and my two weather apps were telling me that it wasn’t raining and that there was a zero percent chance of rain all day.

It has rarely let me down over the years. I’ve always used it with the Apple Watch and the notifications are excellent. Another thing I like is that it breaks down the hourly forecast for the entire seven day forecast, something other services provide in website form but I’ve never seen on a subscriptionfree app. While dark sky is very good in the short run, I don’t trust it much a few days out, but the hourly stuff is still useful. I have apps that say 100% chance of rain on Saturday and then I check dark sky and it says that that 100% chance is at 4 am but no chance in the afternoon. That detail is very nice to have.

A request to the developer: please allow customization for the different aspects of the forecast. I live in Florida, so right now, I want heat index, chance of rain, and UV index. Nothing else is relevant for 95% of the time I open DarkSkyWeather . But instead, it goes temperature, heat index, precipitation probability, precipitation rate, wind speed, wind gust, humidity, dew point, then, finally, UV index.

by Toy Dogwatch

First of all I love the Dark sky weather app but one thing I would really like to see get added to the Dark Sky Weather app is the ability to use DarkSkyWeather as a widget in iOS 14 I would really love to add DarkSkyWeather to the widget stack but I have been unable to do that in iOS 14 and now I am on iOS 14.6 and you developers still haven’t added the ability to use DarkSkyWeather as a widget on the Home Screen on iOS 14 so if you developers have the time to do it and add this feature in your next update could you please add that. I feel it would really come in handy and Dark Sky Weather app has saved my back so many times it would be a bigger help if DarkSkyWeather had the ability to do widget stacks. I understand if the answer is no we are too busy to do that but I am asking when you developers feel up to it could you please add this to an update sometime in the future. But hands down this is the best weather app I own on my iPhone XR so if anyone hasn’t purchased DarkSkyWeather yet please do so you won’t regret it and take this advice from someone who has owned DarkSkyWeather for years now DarkSkyWeather has never failed me and it will never fail me!

by Zcoqui

My subject line pretty much covers it. I live in Georgia. Weather here can be anything from the most beautiful sunny day to an absolute nightmare. Weather forecasting has improved by leaps. However, even with the National Weather Service located here they can be sometimes challenged by the timing of these atmospheric changes. Not so with Dark Sky. The precision of the global radar map, which can be almost zoomed in on to my neighborhood and local surrounding area, is by far one of the greatest tools available to assist and help us prepare for any inevitability Mother Nature may have in store for us. From being able to determine my work route, plan and protect my garden to advance preparation for the possibility of tornados, thunderstorms, hurricanes...Well, I am truly amazed.

Recently with the catastrophic hurricanes it allowed me to know just what my family was about to experience in Texas, Florida and Puerto Rico. I was able to communicate with them before the fact to make the necessary arrangements for after the fact.

Do yourself a great favor and get DarkSkyWeather. You will be pleased, surprised and as grateful as I am. Many thanks and my deepest appreciation to the developers.

by Michael094

Not sure how much of a fan I am of the recent changes to the interface, but this is a pretty awesome app. I spend a lot of time outdoors for work and while it’s about as accurate in the mountains as most weather forecasts in predicting weather, but once it starts raining I think it has always accurately predicted when the rain will intensify and stop. The biggest grip I have with the new interface is how difficult it is to find the humidity (also, don’t tell me it’s humid if the humidity is below 75%, cause that is lovely). It used be be a quick click, but now I have to scroll down and then over on a tiny little menu. It isn’t user friendly, and I live in the south, so the humidity is way more important than the temperature in the summer (we know it’s going to be hot, but will any of our sweat evaporate???). Thanks for a great app. This would be a 5 star review if finding the humidity is made easier or there is an option to go back to the old interface.

by DaveOnTheRoad

I tried at least a dozen weather apps after Weather Underground took a turn for the worse and destroyed their app with a horrible update. Most of them were little more than advertising platforms with a little weather thrown in for effect, or they required onerous subscriptions to make the ads go away. Even without the ads too many of the apps were bizarre one-off user interface experiments gone horribly wrong. Then I gave Dark Sky a look and immediately recognized how intuitive and straight to-the-point DarkSkyWeather was for delivering weather information. I like it. Money well spent.

The only nit I’ve discovered so far is that the daily summary notification on my iOS 13 devices is not based on my actual location but some other location, either one that I was in the day prior or the location of my ISP or some other nearby location. Not sure whether it’s an iOS 13 issue because everything seems to work fine with iOS 12. I have location always enabled for Dark Sky on all of my devices. I suppose I could tell Dark Sky to always present the daily summary for a specific location, but that would not help me if I’m traveling. In any case, I think something funky is going on between Dark Sky and Location services on iOS 13.