Weather is the most common reason people check their phone. Not messages, not social media — weather. Apple knows this, which is why the Weather widget has been a default on the iPhone home screen since iOS 14 introduced widgets in 2020. But Apple's built-in widget is just the starting point. Third-party weather widgets range from gorgeously minimal to absurdly information-dense, and the best ones tell you exactly what you need to know without opening an app.
iOS Widget Sizes Explained
Before looking at specific apps, it helps to understand what you're working with. iOS offers four widget placement options:
Small (2x2) — a square that replaces four app icons. Good for a single data point: current temperature, rain probability, or a condition icon.
Medium (4x2) — a wide rectangle spanning the full screen width. The most popular size for weather because it can fit an hourly forecast strip or a current conditions summary with room for detail.
Large (4x4) — takes up half the screen. Best for multi-day forecasts, radar maps, or dense weather dashboards. Most people find this too large for the home screen but useful in the Today View.
Lock Screen — tiny inline widgets (introduced in iOS 16) that sit above or below the clock. Extremely limited space — usually just a temperature, an icon, or a single number like UV index.
Apple's Built-In Weather Widget
Apple's Weather app, which absorbed Dark Sky's technology after Apple bought Dark Sky in 2020, provides decent widgets out of the box. The small widget shows current temperature, condition, and high/low. The medium widget adds an hourly forecast strip. The large widget shows a 5-day forecast.
What it does well:
Clean design that matches iOS aesthetics
No additional app to install or subscription to pay
Uses Apple Weather data, which is generally accurate for most locations
Integrates with the system weather framework, so it updates efficiently
What it doesn't do:
No customisation — you can't choose what data to display
No rain probability on the small widget
No UV index, wind speed, or humidity on the home screen widgets
Limited lock screen options — just temperature and condition
No weather alerts on the widget itself
For many people, Apple's widgets are perfectly adequate. But if you want specific data at a glance — "will it rain in the next hour?" or "what's the UV index right now?" — you'll need a third-party widget.
Third-Party Weather Widgets: What to Look For
When evaluating weather widget apps, consider these factors:
Update frequency. iOS restricts how often widgets can refresh. Most weather widgets update every 15-30 minutes. Some apps use background app refresh and location updates to refresh more frequently, but aggressive updating drains battery.
Data source. Weather accuracy varies by provider. Apple Weather, OpenWeatherMap and the Weather Underground personal weather station network all have different strengths depending on your location.
Customisation. Can you choose which data points appear? Can you change colours, fonts, or layout? The best widget apps let you build exactly the widget you want.
Lock screen support. Not all weather apps offer lock screen widgets, and those that do vary widely in what data they can fit into that tiny space.
The Best Weather Widget Apps
CARROT Weather
CARROT Weather has earned its reputation as the most customisable weather app on iOS. Its widget options are extensive — you can configure exactly which data points appear in each widget size, choose from multiple layouts, and even get CARROT's signature sarcastic weather descriptions on your home screen.
CARROT can draw on several data sources, including The Weather Channel, AccuWeather and Apple Weather, so you can pick whichever is most accurate for your area. Lock screen widgets show temperature, condition, precipitation chance, UV index, or wind speed — your choice.
The downside is price. Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets, like the extra data sources, are part of CARROT Premium, a subscription at US$4.99/month or US$19.99/year. The free tier is limited.
Weather Underground
Weather Underground's key advantage is hyperlocal data. It pulls from a network of over 250,000 personal weather stations worldwide, which means the temperature it reports might be from a station 200 metres from your house rather than from an airport 15 kilometres away. In areas with dense station coverage (most of the US, UK, and Western Europe), this makes a noticeable difference in accuracy.
The widgets are functional rather than beautiful — they show current conditions, hourly forecasts, and radar. The app is free with ads; the ad-free version is $1.99/year.
Weather Strip
Weather Strip takes a unique approach: it visualises the entire day's weather as a single horizontal strip, using colour to encode temperature, precipitation, and cloud cover. At a glance, you can see that the morning will be cold and clear, the afternoon warm and cloudy, and the evening rainy. It conveys a full day's weather in less space than a traditional hourly forecast.
The medium widget is where Weather Strip excels — it's essentially a colour-coded timeline of your day. It's a one-time purchase with no subscription.
Cloudmesh Weather
Cloudmesh Weather goes deep on widget variety. It offers 24 Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets across small, medium, large and Lock Screen sizes, and each one is built around a single question: an umbrella widget that tells you whether you'll need one and when the rain starts, hourly and 5-day forecasts, commute weather, sunrise and sunset, moon phase, air quality, feels-like temperature, running conditions, drone-flying conditions, what to wear, activity ideas and a large detailed forecast. On the Lock Screen there are temperature, umbrella, air quality and hourly widgets.
The free tier includes a set of widgets, and there's a 7-day free trial of Premium. After that, Premium is a one-time unlock rather than a subscription, which is increasingly rare among feature-rich weather apps.
Widget Types People Want Most
Based on App Store reviews and weather app forum discussions, these are the most requested widget types:
Rain probability timeline — "When will it rain today and for how long?" A horizontal bar showing precipitation chance by hour is the single most useful weather widget for daily planning.
Hourly forecast strip — temperature and condition for the next 12-24 hours in a compact horizontal layout.
UV index — increasingly popular as awareness of sun exposure grows. Particularly useful as a lock screen widget — a quick glance tells you whether to apply sunscreen.
"Umbrella yes/no" — a binary widget that simply tells you whether rain is expected today. Some apps offer this as a small widget with just a rain icon and percentage.
Feels-like temperature — the actual temperature is less useful than what it feels like accounting for wind chill or humidity. Some widgets show both.
Lock Screen Widgets: What Works at Tiny Sizes
Lock screen widgets are the most constrained widget format on iOS. You get either a small circular space or a narrow rectangular one. At these sizes, less is more.
What works well on the lock screen:
Current temperature — a number and a degree symbol. Clean and instantly readable.
Rain probability — a percentage and a rain icon. The single most actionable piece of weather data.
UV index — a number from 1-11+. If it's above 6, you know to take precautions.
Condition icon — sun, clouds, rain, snow. One symbol that tells you the story.
What doesn't work well on the lock screen:
Hourly forecasts — too much data for the space
Multi-day forecasts — illegible at tiny sizes
Radar maps — interesting but useless at 20x20 pixels
Tip: You can set up different lock screens in iOS with different widget configurations. Create a "daily" lock screen with rain probability and temperature, and a "weekend outdoors" lock screen with UV index and wind speed. Swipe between them as needed.
Widget Battery Impact
Weather widgets do consume battery, but the impact is usually minor if you're sensible about it. Here's what affects battery life:
Location updates. Widgets that use your current location need to check GPS periodically. "While Using" location permission is more battery-friendly than "Always." Some apps let you set a fixed location to avoid GPS use entirely.
Refresh frequency. iOS manages widget refresh through a budget system — each app gets a limited number of refreshes per day. Apps that try to update every few minutes will drain more battery than those that update every 30 minutes.
Number of widgets. Having one weather widget is fine. Having five weather widgets from three different apps, all checking GPS and fetching data independently, will have a measurable impact.
Radar and maps. Widgets that display radar imagery use more data and processing power than simple text/icon widgets.
In practice, a single medium weather widget from a well-optimised app typically accounts for less than 2% of daily battery usage. You can check this in Settings > Battery.
Tips for Getting the Most From Weather Widgets
Use widget stacks. Long-press your home screen, tap the "+" button, and drag widgets on top of each other to create a stack. Put your weather widget, calendar widget, and reminders widget in one stack and swipe between them. This gives you more widgets without using more screen space.
Enable Smart Rotate. When you create a widget stack, enable Smart Rotate in the stack's settings. iOS will automatically show the most relevant widget — surfacing the weather widget in the morning and the calendar widget before a meeting.
Match the widget to the question. Don't use a large widget when a small one answers your question. If you only need to know "will it rain today," a small widget with rain probability is more efficient than a large multi-day forecast.
Try multiple apps. Weather widget apps are inexpensive. Try two or three, live with each for a week, and keep the one that gives you the information you actually use. The best weather widget is the one that answers your specific daily question at a glance.
The Bottom Line
Apple's built-in weather widgets are a solid starting point, but third-party options offer dramatically more flexibility. Whether you want a minimalist temperature display or an information-dense weather dashboard, there's a widget app for your style. The key is to identify what weather question you ask most often — rain, temperature, UV, wind — and pick a widget that answers exactly that, nothing more. A glance at your phone should give you the answer in under a second.