Earlier this year, Apple acquired Dark Sky, a popular hyperlocal weather app available on iOS and Android. With the acquisition, the Dark Sky app for Android was shut down earlier this month on August 1st. The Android app is no longer available on the Google Play Store, and users who try to open the app will notice that it no longer shows weather data. However, one developer on XDA wasn’t satisfied with any of the alternative weather apps on Android, so they set out to reverse engineer the last version of the Dark Sky app to see if they could get it up and running again. Meet Darker Sky for Android—a likely short-lived revival of the beloved weather app that Apple killed off for Android users.
Below are screenshots from my current daily-driver Android phone, the ASUS ROG Phone 3, running the first release of Darker Sky. As you can see, most of the basic features work, including the full weather forecast, the time machine feature, the radar, the precipitation forecast, and the temperature forecast. The only features that don’t work are weather report submissions, weather notifications/alerts, and widgets. The developer has no intention of enabling the paid features, for obvious reasons.
Darker Sky was made by a prolific developer and reverse engineer who wishes to remain anonymous since this modification was done on shaky grounds. The developer in question is well-known by us for their work on reverse engineering other popular applications, but they decided a low-profile release was more appropriate this time around.
You can download Darker Sky from the Telegram channel linked below. The developer aims to post updates on this channel but won’t be signing their name on new messages so they can remain anonymous. I’m told the developer is the only one with posting privileges on this channel, though, so new releases won’t be coming from any other source. Lastly, since Darker Sky is a newly signed app that hasn’t been submitted to the Google Play Store yet (…and it obviously will never be submitted), Google Play Protect may warn against installing it. That’s a normal message that Play Protect throws up to warn against installing unknown apps from unknown sources, so don’t be surprised if you see it.
What’s unclear is how long this mod will continue to work. After all, Apple seems to be integrating part of the app’s features into iOS 14, so it’s unlikely the Dark Sky API will work for much longer.