Clear Outside Reviews

by DigiPay

I have never been able to enter a negative longitude number for locations in the west because they restrict the input keyboard to numbers and a decimal point. This means every US location that I can’t find in their small database can’t be added because it shows up in China.

This would be an easy fix, but in 2 years they haven’t done it.

by Snohnd

When entering the lat and lon for a location, there seems to be no way to make them negative. Since half of all lat and lon values are negative, this is a pretty big oversight. So far, the only way I have got a negative value entered is to use the current location abilities. But that obviously only works if I am in that particular place.

by G_ChipT

This developers website works well and is useful. So I downloaded ClearOutside onto my iPad and am disappointed. Firstly it isn’t truly built for the iPad. So the screen is built for the phone and doesn’t even pretend to use the entire screen. Secondly when I attempt to enter coordinates I can’t enter the longitude of the observatory because there is no negative sign or field to allow me to indicate the longitude is West. So wanting to evaluate sites in the West I can’t use ClearOutside . I’ll be deleting ClearOutside and sticking to the website. At least it was free.

by JustWorx

Over the past couple of days, ClearOutside gave a forecast for tonight (USA location) of zero cloud cover after sunset, which means zero percent of the sky should be cloudy. Right now ClearOutside is still showing the present time (a couple of hours after sunset) as zero cloud cover. But when I go outside, 50% of the sky is cloudy. This isn’t the first time this has happened. The whole point of ClearOutside is to know the prospects for shooting the night sky, so I’m disappointed.

When the sky is 0% cloudy, ClearOutside shows 0% as expected.

by Slater58

This is a great idea, but the execution is absolutely horrible. Next to no locations appear when I search cities, states, or anything. So when I go to manually enter gps coordinates it won’t let me put in a negative longitude (I’m pretty sure all North America is negative) so it’s absolutely useless. Occasionally the search will work and I’ll get good results, but it’s about a 1% chance the location search feature works.

by Dude0043

I’ve been using this application for years & will continue to do so, but if the bug & features reviewed here were actually fixed/implemented, I would actually pay for ClearOutside! It absolutely MUST have the longitude bug sorted, and for a C/F temp toggle. The Location search is terribly fickle - nothing like searching for a place & seeing a dozen identical results - “Chicago, Chicago, United States; Chicago, Chicago, United States; Chicago, Chicago, United States...” - all with presumably different coordinates.

by Brianfulda

This forecast app is usually accurate, but it can be difficult to find locations in the US. Since it’s a UK based app, it lists the county in the search function and can be difficult to actually select the right town you’re trying to search for. In addition, I don’t know why they didn’t include the seeing forecast from the Canadian astronomical forecast, which is where ClearOutside pulls data from. It would be so easy to implement, but seems like a big oversight. It would be even better if users were able to input their own coordinates of their location. Lastly, it doesn’t let you easily update your home location without deleting it and re-entering it again. If they fix these issues, it would be a much better app.

by Zoerein

ClearOutside uses the format of the clear skies astronomy calendar to communicate weather information in a compact form. Great idea—but the execution needs some more work.

Default for user’s home location seems to always be a site in the U.K. Searches for other locations many times return weird or useless results. Suggestion: provide an option for users to make their current location the default home location.

by CrustyPlunger

The weather predictions are very good but the UI has some serious issues. Adding locations for example is really hit or miss- the search function is super limited and janky, and adding places by coordinates literally doesn’t work.

by Fpsurgeon

A very handy app with some weird bugs. Biggest problem is that editing locations allows one to edit the latitude, BUT NOT THE LONGITUDE!

Tapping on longitude brings up a numeric keypad (just like with latitude), but keypresses do nothing and the iPhone just buzzes an error. Completely limits tweaking custom locations!

It’s free, though.

by Jessicarnahan87

This is the only app that offers a forecast for low, to high clouds which is great but I do wish it was clearer on what the numbers mean. I think I have a basic idea but its not very straightforward. I would probably use it more if everything was more user friendly. Not sure how accurate it is partially because of this issue. ClearOutside has huge potential so I hope to see some improvements that would take fhis from ok to amazing

by Ulysses_2015

I love ClearOutside , the data seems accurate , but it does not let me edit the longitude of any location

It lets me edit the latitude but when I click on the longitude to change i, the phone vibrates and the numbers are not editable….! ( this is on an Apple iPhone 11 Pro)

Since most locations and small cities are not found in ClearOutside , the only alternative is to edit the GPS coordinates… but ClearOutside doesn’t even provide that which is a pity

by ISOnow

Regarding forecasting, in the NYC area... ClearOutside is way off. Anyone can look outside for current cloud coverage, but for future... ClearOutside isn’t accurate. I realize weather is unpredictable but then why make an app?

Stick with other weather apps

by GLS123

This is a good app for photographers. Paired with an app like Photo Pills one can get a reasonable estimate of conditions for landscape photography.

The problem with ClearOutside is that the developer isn’t very responsive. A comment was made a year ago about the inability to change the temperature from Centigrade to Fahrenheit and it hasn’t been implemented. I guess with Brexit they haven’t had the time to make a rather simple improvement.

Plus the documentation is totally lacking. I had to read the reviews to finally figure out how to change the default home location from the U.K. To my home in the U.S.

by Bari Veteran

Get cloud predictions at different altitudes, sky brightness, ISS flyovers etc. Just about any detail that would affect astronomy viewing is listed in a easy to understand format.

Selecting a location can be frustrating as there is a bug but it can be overcome by typing enough name detail to eliminate multiple possibilities. Otherwise ClearOutside works well.

by Wndsrfgrl

It’s a good app overall, but where are the settings? I want to change the degrees to Fahrenheit, but it doesn’t give me the option.
It would also be nice to provide the exact location (lat, long) because one city may be so large that the weather is a bit different.

by AstroGirlBunny

Just tried it out. Can't believe they didn't test their app. When you go to select a location, it actually selects the one below it. I tried a few different locations and they all did the same thing. So to add a location I have to tap on the one on the list above it.

Its location search itself doesn't always work. I looked for Salem and nothing showed up. Then I did a search of "Salem, M" only because I know what county it's in. And it finally brought it up as an option.

Buggy app which makes me distrust the weather readings it provides for an area are incorrect.

by FKComputers

ClearOutside is fantastic, it’s very useful and reasonably easy to use. Sure, the interface looks like it belongs on an iPhone 3, but the information is there.

The one major and infuriating flaw is that ClearOutside only allows you to enter *positive* latitude and longitude coordinates. So you can’t set locations outside of cities in all of America or the Southern Hemisphere. Pretty stupid oversight that demonstrates the Eurasian bias of the developers (lol).

by Idadoc

I don’t know why the low reviews. This weekend, it told me that there was a narrow 4 hour window of sunshine and clear skies near the South Fork of the Snake. It permitted me to miss days of coming clouds and nail some autumn foliage when I was free to shoot. This is really, really useful! I hope that it keeps being developed!

by Ios 5 Was The Best

THE only free app that give Dew Point forecast. At 500kB, ClearOutside is a gem and launches extremely fast.

Yes it has small issues but there are workarounds for every one so I find it very underrated!

I hope they update the forecast source after darksky shuts down, but keep the UI the same and app size low

by Badnick395

Search for "St. Louis, MO", get 10 results, all "Dallas, Dallas, TX", then ClearOutside crashes.

Try to use lat/long instead, except they force the numeric keypad which gives no way (that I can tell) to enter a negative sign to indicate west longitude.

I have no idea if the forecasts are accurate or not since I can't even get that far. Deleted.

by Odcinek63735

ClearOutside is simple and would be my goto weather app (and I would not mind paying for it), but it's terribly buggy.

Location search & selection barely works. Longitude input field is broken (Latitude works fine).

by Turf Lord

ClearOutside makes it very difficult to select locations, and it has some crash bugs that I’ve ran into. Useful for some things I guess, such as current locations.

by RDC44

I've gone through a few weather apps. This is just spot on. I can depend on this while planning a night looking at the stars. Just a wonderful app.

by Humble Iphone User

Unlike some other "handy services", this actually works for me here in Brazil.

Clear skys!

by GraveyardShiftAstronomy.org

Great astronomy weather forecast app with a modern interface and accurate forecasts.