The Apple Weather app is down yet again. This is the third outage the Weather app has suffered this week.
The Cupertino-based tech giant acknowledged the issue on its System Status update page, adding that the problem began at around 11:27 AM EST, and it continues to persists as of this writing. "This service may be slow or unavailable," Apple said.
Apple Weather app is having a bleak week
Apple admitted that two other outages affected the Weather app this week, including one on April 3 and another on April 4. The Cupertino-based tech giant classified these outages as "resolved," but unfortunately, a third outage has cropped up for the troubled Weather app.
Keep in mind that this Weather app doesn't affect all users. Only "some users are affected," according to Apple. Anecdotally, the Apple Weather app on my iPhone 14 Plus is operating just fine, although there is a five-second delay before the weather details populate. But the question is, why is the weather app suffering its third outage? We don't know for sure, but users on Reddit have a theory: the shutdown of Dark Sky, the beloved weather app Apple acquired three years ago, is to blame.
Long story short, Apple bought the ultra-popular weather app Dark Sky in 2020. It shuttered the Android and iOS versions of Dark Sky, and integrated its cool features into the stock Apple Weather app. At the end of March of this year, Dark Sky's API officially shut down and ceased to function.
"The Dark Sky API shut down on March 31," Reddit user -protonsandneutrons- said. "Apple Weather problems started a few days later." Another Redditor concurred. "They're most likely using some weather API which has been down."
Again, until we hear from the horse's mouth, we can't say for certain that a down API is to blame.
What to do if your Apple Weather app is down
Let's be honest. The Apple Weather app is decent, but it's not going to top a "best weather app" list any time soon. Check out the following third-party alternatives. Who knows? You may discover a new favorite.
If Apple reveals the cause of this third outage, we'll update this page as soon as possible.
