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

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.

Thank you for shedding some light on this display. I would definitely prefer a color bar that goes all the way across, showing the color for the entire 24 hours. This is less informational and so very un-obvious. But maybe there's someone out there who finds it REALLY useful, who would share how exactly it helps them, then maybe I could see the point. Maybe it's supposed to stimulate one's imagination by NOT showing information for the uncolored hours? It is stimulating my imagination to wonder why anyone thinks this is better, but so far I can't come up with any answers. Thanks anyway.

I agree. I got around this by using the widget instead of opening the app. If you just use the widget (swipe right from the home screen), you can choose from 3 different display sizes, where it will only show the simple info like current temp, rain/snow, etc.

I had no trouble understanding what the widget was telling me. Objections primarily seem related to it being new/not asked-for feature. But, I agree, daily temp range is not info that’s critical to have in my day-to-day life.

All of this interesting noodling about what the bars mean reinforces the old adage that less is more. The temperature bars are really not needed. It’s also counterintuitive starting with the top temp range listing which is listed as Hi to Low (left to right) and then In the temperature bar section below range is listed Low to Hi. That subtle inversion is just enough to add another layer of confusion. Better to keep it simple. I wish the person who designed it would tell us what it means rather than letting us all speculate.

Thanks for solving this puzzle guys. But this shouldn't be a puzzle, Apple.

Indeed!

Did Apple really think the casual user could understand all of that by just looking at the bars??

Worst design ever.

I have to say the weather app in the previous OS system was brilliant, simple, clear, accurate. Now it’s a mess, like many things, it’s been over engineered.

So true, poor design

Thanks that’s the best answer here!

It’s not very helpful to have to scroll for the low morning temp and the daytime high temp. This information should be the first thing you see at the top.

That makes absolutely sense. Thank you so much for this markup as it explains very understandable and much more than all the explanations I read so far.

This is confusing and needs attention so it is clear in the app without having to google to find an answer and then still being confused

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.