Getting the Most From the iPhone Weather App

Hi, this is Gary with MacMost.com. Today let me show you how to get the most from the iPhone Weather App.

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So the most recent version of the Weather App on the iPhone in iOS 15 has a lot of great functionality in it. It's still a relatively simple weather app. Apple has to walk the line between making it easy to use and also having advanced features. So go on the Weather App and you should get the weather for your current location. So at the top you get your location. You get the temperature. You get the High and Low for the day and a basic weather forecast like mostly cloudy. You also get these beautiful animated backgrounds that reflect the current conditions at this location. 

Underneath that you'll get a little more detail in the weather forecast for the day followed by a hourly forecast. So you'll see Now and then you'll see each hour moving forward throughout the day. It will give you a temperature, a chance of precipitation, if any, and whether it's snow or rain or cloudy or sunny. You can scroll over to see more. It will even show you the sunset time for the current day and then the sunrise for the next morning. If you scroll down you'll see the ten-day forecast. So the ten-day forecast is actually pretty detailed. There's a lot of information here. So you'll see Today at the top and then the next nine days after that. You'll see a little weather icon with the forecast and then the low and high temperature and this line in-between. 

Now the line actually contains a lot of data. To the left side you'll see the low and to the right side you'll see the high. That's the low and high for the day. However, each one of those bars for all ten days is actually the same bar. So the left side is actually the lowest temperature that you would see for the entire ten days. So it represents, in this case, 2 degrees. The right side is the highest temperature for those ten days. So in this case 55 degrees. Now the colored area of the bar shows the range for that particular day. So you can see in this case where today I've got the range from 2 degrees to somewhere in the middle right there. Whereas the range for Wednesday it goes from the middle all the way up to 55 degrees. So the bars are consistent for all ten days. The common area shows you the range for that day. It also uses colors to give an indication of the temperature. So here everything is pretty cold so you see everything from dark blue to the light blue. Of course that will go into green and reds for higher temperatures. 

You'll also notice there's a dot for today. That shows you the current temperature. So you can see, where within that range, you are right now. Now let's scroll down and you're going to see a lot more information. The next thing you'll see is Air Quality. You'll see an actual little chart right there for Air Quality that's similar to the bars above. So green, of course, is good and all the way to the dark red which is very bad. You'll see a dot indicating where you are right now and the numbers above that. You can tap See More to get more details. Now below that you're going to get a Temperature Map. So a quick look at the temperature from your area. You could tap it to go into the maps. We're going to take a look at the Maps a little bit later. Below this you can see UV Index with a similar bar right below it. You'll see a different type of chart there for Sunset. So you could see there the sun rising above the horizon and below it you could see its position right now and you could see the sunset time. That curve is going to change throughout the year depending upon how high the sun rises. Then you're going to see Wind. The current direction and the speed. You're going to see the current precipitation. Right now it says wintery mix. The total amount of snow that is forecast. 4 ½ inches in this case and what's going to be expected next. So you could see here the snow that I'm getting right now isn't quite over yet. You're going to get your Wind/Chill or feels like temperature below that so it says it feels like 8 degrees and it's actually similar to the current temperature. Then you're going to get a humidity reading and also the dew point below that. There's actually even more data because you get visibility as well as air pressure.

So for a basic weather app there's actually a lot of info here right here on the main screen. You just have to scroll down to see it. Now at the bottom you can tap here to go to the Map. So now once you're in the Map you can see it's going to show you the temperature in this case and it's going to use color to show you the temperature. Everything is blue or dark blue. It's pretty cold right now. You can tap on any location and you can actually view the weather for that location. You can use the Add button if you want to add this location to your list or you can just view that one location right now and dismiss it. You can tap here to change between temperature and precipitation and it's going to show you this little animation of the next twelve hours. The prediction right now. So it goes back a little bit in time and then through the current time and forward some amount and you could see whether or not the rain or snow is moving in your direction. You could also go and look at air quality as well. So you could see colors here representing it. You also could see the numbers. You could tap in an area and get air quality information for that particular area.

At the top right you have the button that will take you to your current location or below that a list of the locations you have stored so you could jump right to the map location for one of those areas. For here we could jump to, let's say, Philadelphia for precipitation and you could see there a little forecast for Philadelphia and it doesn't show any precipitation in that area.Then we can tap that button there to go back to our current location. Now you'll get, sometimes, weather alerts at the top. You can tap right there and it is just going to take you to weather.com for more information. Now at the bottom you can also tap here and this is another way to add locations. You can see all these dots here. Each one represents a location and you can tap there and see the locations. You can actually see forecasts and current temperatures for all of those locations in a list now. You can go up to the settings there  and this is where you can select and Delete or Rearrange some of these locations. Of course you can just Search here at the top for a name of a location and add it to the list. Now you can just look at the weather there if you want and cancel or you can Add and it will add that to the list of locations. So now with your list here you can tap on anyone you want to go to that location and see the weather forecast for it. Here, back in Notifications, this is where you can set Notifications for your location or you could set it for multiple locations. So if you want to get notifications for weather somewhere else as well as your current location you can. 

Here's another cool thing that you'll find sometimes. If it's raining in the location you're looking at you're going to get this chart here predicting the precipitation coming up over the next hour. Now you can also swipe to the list of Widgets on your iPhone and there should be a Weather widget there by default. You can set that to show you the forecast for your current location. There are three different sizes of widgets. So if you go to Edit and then Add, you can then go down to the Weather App and add one of those three sizes of widgets. So you could see the current forecast. You could see the forecast with the precipitation and you can get this widget here that gives you the forecast ahead a few days. That way you can view some of this information as a widget along with your other widgets. Anytime you want you could tap it and go to the Weather App.

Now you can also Add a Widget onto your Home Screen. So we can add one of the weather widgets right among your icons for your apps. Let's add the medium size widget right here and it's just part of that particular screen of your Home Screen. 

So there's a look at using the Weather App on your iPhone. Take a look at it now. Take your time to add the locations that are important to you to it. Play around with some of the data that's further down on that first screen. While a lot of third party weather apps have more details, maybe weather from different sources and maybe funny little things they say everyday, the basic weather app is probably enough for most users. Hope you found this useful. Thanks for watching.