What is it? A slick weather app from the makers of Dark Sky
Who is it for? Anyone not happy with their current weather app
How much does it cost? $25/£25 yearly (free trial available)
What makes it special? Predictions that show you a range of possible futures
Acme Weather is made by the same team behind Dark Sky, the beloved hyperlocal forecast app that Apple acquired in 2020 and eventually folded into Apple Weather. For many users, that was a sad day. This might just be the replacement they’ve been waiting for.
The headline feature is Alternate Possible Futures: rather than serving you a single forecast and hoping for the best, Acme shows a spread of prediction lines from different sources alongside the main one. A tight cluster means the forecast can be trusted; a wide spread is a heads-up that there’s no real consensus on what’s really going to happen. It’s an idea I haven’t seen before, and it’s a really elegant way to display this info and avoid overcommitting to a single weather source.
The rest of the app is equally thoughtful. Maps are embedded contextually throughout the forecast rather than siloed in their own tab. There’s a community reporting feature for real-time conditions on the ground. Notifications are comprehensive and customisable, with custom alerts for UV index, wind, heavy rain, and even rainbow sightings. The interface itself is confident and gorgeous, with the app doing a smart job of surfacing the most relevant data for the current moment rather than dumping everything on you at once. The less said about the app icon, the better.
Trade-offs? There’s no free tier, and if you’re the type who likes to obsess over custom layouts and widgets, CARROT Weather is still the more powerful option. But at $25/year, it’s a reasonable ask – weather data from multiple sources isn’t cheap, and this team clearly knows what they’re doing. It’s a very solid v1.0 release and we’re excited to see how it gets refined further.