Apple officially killed Dark Sky back at the beginning of the year, much to the dismay of the app’s biggest fans. Over the weekend, however, Dark Sky briefly came back to life in an apparent server error on Apple’s end.
Dark Sky fans flocked to Twitter and Reddit over the weekend to share screenshots of the app coming back to life. The app showed hourly and weekly forecast information, real-time precipitation data, and notifications. The only aspect of the app that didn’t come back online was the radar feature, which is what led many fans to believe the change was a mistake.
Unfortunately for Dark Sky fans, Apple flipped the switch on Monday morning and took the app offline again, likely for the final time.
Apple had previously planned to begin shutting down the Dark Sky app, website, and API at the end of 2021. This change was delayed until the end of 2022. Apple originally acquired Dark Sky in March of 2020 and has used the technology to make a number of upgrades to its built-in Weather app.
9to5Mac’s Take
Dark Sky clearly still has a lot of fans, even though many of the features of the app have since been integrated into the stock Weather app. As some Dark Sky fans have pointed out on Twitter and Reddit, there would be little overhead cost for Apple to maintain Dark Sky support using the new WeatherKit API.
Unfortunately, this doesn’t seem like something Apple is willing to do, and it seems unlikely that its plans will ever change. If you’re still looking for your new weather app of choice, check out our full roundup of Dark Sky alternatives for more details.
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