The web is rife at the moment with experiences that Apple’s Climate app for the iPhone isn’t fairly working as designed. Whereas some encountered sporadic points over the weekend, it turned extra widespread this morning as people woke as much as House Display screen widgets reporting “No climate knowledge.”
It’s unclear precisely what’s occurring right here, however one prevailing principle is that this may very well be a difficulty in iOS 16.4, which Apple pushed out early final week. Nonetheless, the truth that it took every week for the issue to floor suggests there’s extra to it than merely an iOS replace.
Apple’s System Standing Web page confirms that there’s been an “ongoing” subject since final evening at 11:00 p.m. ET that impacts some customers, ensuing within the climate service being “gradual or unavailable.” Nonetheless, earlier this morning, Apple pointed to a extra particular space, noting that “next-hour precipitation could also be unavailable for Alaska due to a knowledge supplier outage.”
In an ironic twist, the Darkish Sky app, which serves as the muse for a lot of of Apple Climate’s coolest options, returned briefly to the App Retailer final week. Apple acquired Darkish Sky in 2020, shuttering the standalone app and rolling its capabilities into Apple Climate. Though the return of Darkish Sky was clearly an error on Apple’s half, many followers of the unique app obtained their hopes up solely to have them dashed when it disappeared just a few hours later.
From my expertise, Apple’s Climate app doesn’t seem like down totally, nevertheless it isn’t updating as rapidly as typical — and maybe under no circumstances within the background. Like others, I awoke this morning to a “No climate knowledge” message in my House Display screen widget, and once I tapped on it to open the Climate app, it took about 30 seconds for the present climate data to seem.
As soon as the info had been up to date throughout the Climate app, the House Display screen widget confirmed the proper situations. Nonetheless, it seems Apple has designed its Climate app to cache the newest climate knowledge for a while earlier than it discards it as too stale; opening Climate about 15-20 minutes after the final replace confirmed a “Loading…” banner on the prime that I’d by no means seen earlier than, displaying when the climate information was final up to date.
The banner disappeared after about 30 seconds, presumably after the app had downloaded the newest climate knowledge. Nonetheless, the widget doesn’t appear to be getting updates; it reverts to the “No climate knowledge” message after an hour, requiring the Climate app to be opened to fetch new knowledge.
Leaving the Climate app open leads to the “Loading” banner showing each 10 minutes. That’s probably the common auto-refresh interval for the app, though this banner doesn’t present up when every thing is working accurately. The refresh might often happen rapidly sufficient {that a} message isn’t wanted; nonetheless, the habits of the House Display screen widget suggests climate updates may sometimes be pushed out to the iPhone quite than ready for the Climate app to fetch them.
Is a Repair Coming in iOS 16.4.1?
Whereas the crux of this downside is probably going associated to Apple’s back-end climate providers, it’s additionally attainable one thing modified in iOS 16.4 that’s making issues worse.
In accordance with 9to5Mac, the Apple Watch app appears to work positive for a lot of people. If true, this could seemingly level to an issue particular to the iPhone software program.
Nonetheless, that hasn’t been my expertise. In actual fact, the Climate app on my Apple Watch Collection 8 is taking considerably longer to replace than its iPhone counterpart. I had initially thought it wasn’t updating in any respect, nevertheless it did finally present the present climate situations after I had left it open on my wrist for about 5 minutes. As with the iPhone House Display screen widget, the Apple Watch Face Issues are equally not being up to date till the watchOS Climate app is opened and has been given time to refresh.
However, a dependable supply instructed MacRumors that Apple is engaged on a “stopgap” iOS 16.4.1 replace that may very well be launched as quickly as this week. Sub-point releases like this are sometimes solely pushed out to repair particular bugs or safety points, however there’s been hypothesis that the Climate app shall be amongst these. Both approach, Apple’s software program engineers are undoubtedly onerous at work resolving this downside, however we’ll have to attend and see if an iOS replace is required.