Apple acquires popular weather app Dark Sky

Dark Sky, a popular weather app for iOS, Android, and the web, has been purchased by Apple.

The announcement was made by Adam Grossman on Dark Sky's blog on Tuesday and reads,

Today we have some important and exciting news to share: Dark Sky has joined Apple.
Our goal has always been to provide the world with the best weather information possible, to help as many people as we can stay dry and safe, and to do so in a way that respects your privacy.
There is no better place to accomplish these goals than at Apple. We're thrilled to have the opportunity to reach far more people, with far more impact, than we ever could alone.

The post then goes on to discuss what will happen to the existing Dark Sky products. The iOS app will continue to be available for purchase in the App Store. The Android app, however, will shut down after July 1, 2020. Android subscribers who are still active will receive a refund.

The website will continue host weather forecasts, maps, and embeds until July 1, 2020. Afterward, it will remain active for API and iOS App customers only.

The API is no longer accepting new signups, but will continue to function for existing customers until the end of 2021.

The terms of the deal are not yet known. However, this may mean some changes to the Weather app are finally coming in a future release, likely during the iOS 14 cycle this fall.

In January of this year, Apple had obtained edge-based artificial intelligence startup Xnor.ai for $200 million. The move suggested the machine learning tools developed by the company may appear natively on iPhones and iPads in the future, with processing on-device instead of in the cloud.

48 Comments

ben_lawson 1 comment · 4 Years

About 4 years ago

Big fan of this app, but in Canada we have to rely on just the web interface...

Hope this gets fully baked-in soon!

Beats 3073 comments · 4 Years

I wonder why? Is it more accurate or?

Will Yahoo do anything right in the future?

snow66 15 comments · 6 Years

My favorite weather app. When I was shopping around for a weather app that was very accurate over the next hour or so, Dark Sky was the most reliable. When Dark Sky says it is going to rain about 40 minutes from now or the current rain is going to stop in 20 minutes it is usually right on. Very valuable when deciding when to talk a walk outside. Hopefully Apple will improve it's integration within iOS.

Eric_WVGG 969 comments · 8 Years

Beats said:

I wonder why? Is it more accurate or?

Normal weather apps will give you pretty-good predictions over 5-7 days.

Dark Sky gives you very, almost frighteningly accurate predictions over about an hour. I use it during rainstorms to determine where there will be, like, a ten minute gap in rainfall to bicycle home. It's amazing.

Take a closer look at that screenshot for Cape Canaveral, FL. That graph shows moderate rain for about twenty minutes, then a light drizzle, then no precipitation. Whenever that screenshot was taken, you can bet that's exactly how the next hour panned out.

cpsro 3235 comments · 14 Years

Love Dark Sky! I've read elsewhere Carrot Weather used its API and will be discontinued. Never been a fan of Carrot's subscription model, and hearing Carrot used the Dark Sky API, I'm even less of a fan.