How to set up custom alerts in Dark Sky

Dark Sky, the best radar app for iOS, is a mainstay on my iPhone home screen. I’ve preached its down-to-the-minute rain notification magic to people for quite some time, regardless of how crazy their local weather can be. Over time, though, it’s also become a much more fully-featured weather app.

One of my favorite new features is custom notifications for various weather alerts. This allows you to be notified at a certain time of day when a certain weather pattern occurs. Being from the southern US, I’m not terribly concerned with snow (and our news media goes crazy when it’s in the forecast). I am concerned with rain, though. I have a notification set up to send me an alert at 7:00 am if the chance of rain is greater than 20% for the day.

To set up a custom notification, tap My Notifications on the top left part of the main window. Then, tap Add New under custom alerts. You can then set up whatever scenario for which you want to be notified. The available options you can monitor are Temperature, Feels-Like Temperature, Precipitation Probability, Snowfall, Wind Speed, UV Index, and Humidity. After you select one, you can specify what time you will be notified, what time of day to monitor, and the condition that will trigger a notification.

While you’re in the Weather Notifications area, check out the other great options, like the Daily Summary — this will send you a daily forecast alert at the same time every day. This is great because you always know the forecast before you leave the house without having to remember to open the app.

We have more helpful tips right here.