If you’re like us, one of the first things you do every day is check the weather app on your iPhone. If it’s back to a blank screen this morning, it’s not a problem with your Wi-Fi—Apple’s systems are having serious problems this week.
After more than half a day of intermittent outages, service was restored on Tuesday, although the problem returned on Wednesday morning. Apple’s status page says the app was fixed Tuesday afternoon and then Wednesday morning, and it appears the weather app needs a major fix to prevent the outage from recurring.
According to Apple’s system status page on Tuesday, the weather app has had “persistent” issues with “slow or unreliable” service since 11:00 p.m. Monday. According to Apple’s status update, the issue resurfaced overnight and was fixed at 3:45 a.m. ET this morning.
Apple notes that “some users are affected,” but based on that Storyline EvidenceThe problem was more widespread — including Macworld’s own experience. This affects the weather widget, which shows “no weather data” even though the weather appears correct in the app. On Wednesday morning, even after Apple said the problem had been fixed, we were still experiencing slow updates.
Apple responded to questions on Twitter, saying they are “currently working on a fix for the Weather app crash and will release an update online.” Later in the afternoon, Apple’s status page was all green and the alert indicator was raised.
Some Macworld employees have experienced on-and-off issues with the weather app over the past several weeks. Sometimes, the app is slow to load or doesn’t load at all. Quitting the app and restarting it is a quick fix, but it doesn’t always work. While Apple hasn’t given us the green light (it’s no longer yellow on Apple’s status page) it’s not clear that the app needs a major overhaul. Some reports suggested that the iOS 16.4.1 update might be imminent to fix the underlying problem. Apple doesn’t update its apps independently of the system, so any fix should come as part of any major iOS update.
Of course, it’s not the end of the world, as there are many ways to get weather and forecasts on your phone. However, after Apple shut down the popular Dark Sky app on January 1st, the stock iOS Weather app — which received many of the Dark Sky features in iOS 16 — may still be a source of weather information for many users.
