We’ve been saying it for years, where’s the iPad’s weather app? It’s been missing from the iPad since day one but many of us expected the app to eventually make its way over. It is one of the few first-party holdouts that haven’t made the leap to iPad, despite being an obvious addition. With the complete overhaul that weather received this year and the acquisition of Dark Sky, we have renewed hopes that the iPad will finally gain the weather app. We’ve thrown together a concept of what it might look like.
It starts with the essentials. At its core, the weather app on iPad should have the same gorgeous animations that make Apple’s iPhone offering so special. On the iPad’s large canvas, these animations could really shine. The new ones added this year in iOS 15 would look incredible on the 12.9″ mini LED iPad Pro’s display.
Like on iPhone, you could see a quick overview of the day’s weather. You can see the temperature, location, conditions and can scroll to see the forecast. But with the larger canvas comes lots of extra space – so we’ve added the same icons and data points that you can see on Apple TV when you ask Siri for the current weather. These include the chance of rain, humidity, wind speed, and pressure.
Scrolling will show you all of the same widgets that appear in the iPhone’s weather app, like the UV index, sunset and sunrise, visibility, and more. But you may notice there are two additional icons, one in the top left and one in the top right.
Tapping the icon in the top left slides out a sidebar with other locations. You can see various other animations, temperatures, and times. At the top of the sidebar is a search field to find other cities or airports.
Tapping the icon in the top right will reveal a sidebar on the right showing a map view. The map view displays the currently selected location. In the top left of the sidebar, you can see the temperature guide and in the top right you can see buttons for current location, other locations, and map layers.
Like on iPhone, you can change the map to show temperature, precipitation, or air quality. The guide will change depending on your selection. You can tap on a location on the map to see that place’s current weather conditions.
With the larger iPad canvas, users might want to create the ultimate weather dashboard, so you can choose to show both sidebars. You can scroll through the forecast and conditions of the currently selected location in the center of the screen while you see your other locations on the left side and the map view on the right.
With weather on iPad, users could choose to use something incredibly simple that just shows the main widget view with the current location’s conditions, or they can pick and choose which sidebars they want permanently visible. To hide the sidebars, you can just swipe them away.
What do you think about our ideas for weather on iPad? Do you want Apple to bring their new app to iPadOS? Let us know in the comments below!
