Introducing UV Forecast for Apple Watch
Earlier this year, I launched a new Apple Watch app called UV Forecast. It’s a simple way to keep track of the sun’s strength at your location right from your wrist.
The first tab is called Today: it shows the current UV index, today’s forecasted high, and an hour-by-hour timeline of sun strength. It even shows sunset and sunrise between days.
The Forecast tab gives the forecasted high for each day one week out, and gives the time of day that the sun is the strongest.
No watchOS app would be complete without great watch face complications. UV Forecast includes complications for every watch face1, and they look really nice. The app has a single option that lets you configure what complications show: either the high UV index for the day, or the forecast for the next hour.
SwiftUI
UV Forecast wasn’t the first time I had used SwiftUI, but it is the first app I’ve released using it. Overall, I have fun using SwiftUI. It makes typically complex things like building lists so much more straightforward than UIKit, but there are still areas that seem like significant oversights.
Early impressions of Xcode 12 make it clear that SwiftUI is still young, and this year’s updates continue to make SwiftUI more powerful and bring it closer to parity with UIKit. I’m really excited to see SwiftUI grow and continue to lower the barrier to building truly great experiences in more places.
Dark Sky and Apple
When I started working on UV Forecast, I knew I’d be using Dark Sky as my source of data. I’ve been a Dark Sky user for years, and their weather API is top-notch.
What I didn’t know is that the very day I released UV Forecast, Apple would buy Dark Sky. They’ve now shut down their Android clients, but the API continues to be available.
I’m not sure whether Apple will discontinue the API at some point, but it seems sort of un-Apple-y not to2. If/when that happens, I’ll have to see whether there are any suitable replacements.
I have plans to make a few small improvements to UV Forecast, but the app is essentially in its final form with its current design and features.
You can get UV Forecast for Apple Watch for free on the App Store.