OpenWeather

Very very happy with OpenWeather. I'm coming from Dark Sky and this app is the spiritual successor as far as I'm concerned. CARROT Weather is trying hard to scoop up Dark Sky users but CARROT is a beast of an app with so many unnecessary features and a dizzying number of customization options. Plus it would be $40/year for my wife and I just to get the cheaper subscription tier. CARROT can be customized to look exactly like Dark Sky (if you pay at least $20 per person per year) and they have the best radar by far but I much prefer OpenWeather. CARROT may have a sassy talking robot but OpenWeather has more personality in the sense that the app designer had a strong opinion of what the app should be rather than just throwing every conceivable feature and customization option at the wall. OpenWeather has almost no settings (just units and favorites) which is unheard of in apps today but I really appreciate that minimalist decision. Fewer settings is easier for devs to improve upon and much more user-friendly so long as the app has been thoughtfully designed. Just like Dark Sky, OpenWeather is a very good weather app that made a conscious decision to stay simple instead of giving in to feature requests and scope creep. One last comparison, OpenWeather lets me see the weather from earlier in the day and even CARROT can't do that.

Was sad to hear that Dark Sky, who was bought out by Apple, is to be closed down by end of 2022. I’ve looked at many different weather apps, they are mostly too complicated and confusing; also most have gone to a monthly charge for their service or ads. “Openweather app” is clear, uncomplicated, and highly localized. There are limitations like only allowing six locations, and less than clear rain notice like Dark Sky has (had). However, on balance this is the best I’ve found with good localized accuracy (did I mention NO adds)!

After the announcement of Dark Sky shutting down I started looking for a new more minimalistic weather app. Was surprisingly hard to find but finally stumbled upon Open Weather and it was a perfect fit. Well almost perfect… the only addition I would like to see is push notifications for severe weather alerts. That is the only downside I can find with this app. I have to keep apple's default weather app installed just to make sure I get those alerts.