What do the bars mean on the new iPhone Weather app?

The total with of all the bars are the temperature range for the weeks 10-Day high and low.

Each day's colored bar shows its portion of that day within the week.

Maybe this markup will help show what's happening.

With so many people having questions on this topic it’s obvious that the design is not intuitive nor easy to understand.

The purpose of the weather display should be to provide a quick look at the current weather and forecast. The fact that there are different interpretations of what these bars convey means the designers failed. When I ask people what the bars mean nobody seems to know and I generally get a shoulder shrug.

A simple weather display shouldn’t need lengthy explanations. Why fix something that wasn’t broken in the first place.

Agree. It is not helpful and mostly confusing. Still not sure which answer is correct- is it a ‘range’ for the day or a range for the 10 day forecast? And how necessary is either piece of info. Seems like a waste.

These slider bars seem both redundant (we already see the hi-low temp range as well as the current temp) and useless (how to apply the info). Yes, it’s graphically pretty but is poor design, adding confusion instead of clarity.

Seriously this is so... Frustrating. If you're going to keep this "feature," it might be useful to have a kind of tooltip feedback if I tap on the bar, trying to figure it out.

I was hoping that it had something to do with the rain chance %, showing when, during the day to expect said rain.

Here in the Pacific NW especially in the fall, the intra-day temp differences are very small, so the bars are short. And the bar placement looks weirdly random.

Also in the PNW, we get a lot of rain this time of year (fall), and the temps are cool, so I just thought the blue bars were rain related, which would actually be helpful, to know when during the day one might expect precipitation.

I couldn’t figure out either, and the moving low-high arbitrary scale didn’t help, nor the lack of tap or any other feedback. Hopefully a designer will get this as a feedback and will update the design

@tommyo53 The daily morning and afternoon temps still appear. They're in the HOURLY FORECAST box that you see first. It's only when you scroll down to the next box (10-DAY FORECAST) that you see the new color-coded bars that add information in an elegant way.

It would be helpful if Apple provided a key to those 10-DAY FORECAST bars. Something like this:

• Length of the whole slider space = full range of temps over all 10 days
• Length of each colored bar within the slider = relative size of the temp range for that day within the full 10-day range
• Position of each colored bar = actual temp range within the full 10-day range
• Color of each bar = blue is coldest (I think), green warmer, yellow warmer still, orange very warm, red (I presume) hot

Agree. I’ve spent a lot of time trying to figure out the color bars by comparing different cities’ temperature ranges for the day (a 24-hour period). The problem seems to be that the variable color bar, both in length and placement, does not reflect a 24 hr period, which the numerical range does. 45 low—75 high for example represents the expected temperature range over the 24-hour period of that day. The color bar however is longer or shorter, but relative to what? Furthermore, the shift left or right indicates perhaps that the temperature range happens in less than the 24 hour time span. But why shift it left or right like it’s some kind of volume slider? Each bar should simply be colored in the full length of the bar and change as a gradient from coolest part of the day to warmest and back to coolest. That goofy little white dot should then be positioned along the 24-hour color bar to indicate approximately when the highest temperature for the 24 hour period will be reached. I’m exhausted just trying to write about this ineffective graphic.

The 10 day forecast has a range of temperatures from a low temperature for the 10 days to a high temperature for the 10 days. Each day’s individual temperature range will fit between the low and the high for the 10 days. If a certain day has a temperature forecasted low that matches the 10 day forecasted low the bar will start all the way to the left (matching the lowest temp forecast for the 10 days) and if an individual days forecast range has a high temperature that matches the the high temperature for the 10 day range the bar will end all the way to the right. The length of the bar for each day depends on the range of temperature change for the day. A large temperature range for the day means a longer bar. A day where the temperature range for the day doesn’t fluctuate much will have a short bar. Days that neither match the low for the 10 days nor the high for the 10 days then the bar will start not all the way to the left nor end all the way to the right. The colour of the bars matches the temperature based on the legend provided by the app. Dark blue is for temperatures below 0 Celsius, light blue 0-15 Celsius, green 15-20 Celsius, yellow 20-25, orange 25-30 and red 30 Celsius plus. Makes much more sense to me now that I figured this out!

I will say, it’s convenient for packing for travel. Before I go out of state I mentally map out each day’s weather, sometimes writing it down, since the weather can be particularly volatile depending on the state and time of year. That way, I know what outfits, jackets, umbrellas, tents, etc. to bring. This takes care of that for you. I don’t know if it’s worth all the confusion, but is cool for that use.

It’s comparative to the temperature range for that 10-day forecast.

Note that the coldest temperature amongst the 10 days has the slider touching the left; the hottest day to the right.

So the slider just shows that particular day’s range comparative to other days.

Hop that makes a little more sense?

The “day low” number is in the spot where the “week low” label should be. We read the numbers as the endpoints of the range, as we all learned was proper in math class.

Furthermore, the distances to the end of the range are inconsistent if you are looking at Celsius. Presumably the graphic is generated in Fahrenheit. That makes it even harder to decode.

They give a quick visual indication of how great the difference is between the low and the high temperature each day. On on the current day the white dot shows where the current temperature is within that range.

Blue is colder, green/yellow is warmer. On a day with a wide temperature range, both colors will be on the bar -- blue towards the left (the low for the day) and green/yellow toward the right (the high for the day).

Most of us are used to the daily temperature range being the early morning low and the afternoon high. This is not the case with the current app. The low temperature is often at midnight if a cold front has come through. This is confusing. I would much prefer the morning and afternoon tempertures that used to appear.