Dark Sky announces acquisition by Apple and discontinuation of Android support

Popular weather app Dark Sky made a huge announcement, and the forecast for Android users doesn’t look good. The company revealed that it has been acquired by Apple, causing some major changes for users in the near future.

Dark Sky, which describes itself as a hyperlocal weather app, made its name on down-to-the-minute precipitation forecasts based on a number of sources, including crowdsourced data from users who opt-in. Receiving widespread acclaim, the app quickly amassed over 1 million Android users, establishing itself as a formidable force in the weather service market.

Following the acquisition by the iPhone maker, announced in a company blog post today, Dark Sky reportedly won’t go through any major branding changes (no iDark Sky for now), but support for Android will be discontinued on July 1, 2020.

A complete drop of support for a large portion of users is kind of a big deal, especially for Android users like me, but the company also announced that all active subscribers will be given a refund at the date of discontinuation, which will also affect Wear OS and web clients of the service.

Given Dark Sky’s reputation as the best weather app around, it’s sad to see it go as far as the Play Store is concerned. But based on the app’s #1 status in the Weather category of the iOS App Store, Dark Sky will likely still enjoy much popularity on the other side of the fence.