How to Use iPhone's Weather Widget for Hourly Rain Predictions
Stepping out of a café on a Bondi side street only to be hit by a sudden downpour is a familiar experience for anyone who lives along the NSW coast. Melbourne locals will tell you it is even more chaotic, with blue sky at lunch and hail by three o'clock. Hour-by-hour rain data has become one of the most practical tools on a phone, especially when plans hinge on whether the picnic, footy match, or beach swim will go ahead.
Apple's built-in Weather app draws on multiple international sources, including Australia's Bureau of Meteorology, and pairs with a flexible widget system that lets you glance at conditions straight from the Home Screen or Lock Screen. With a few taps, you can set up an hourly precipitation chart that shows exactly when rain is expected, how heavy it might be, and how long it should last.
This guide walks through every step, from granting location permissions to choosing the right widget size for the way you use your phone. It also covers a couple of Australia-specific touches that make the forecasts more reliable when you are moving between the tropics and the southern capitals.
By the end, you should be able to read the rain chart confidently, customise the widget to suit your routine, and avoid the small settings mistakes that cause the widget to display the wrong town or stale data.
Enabling Location and Weather Data on Your iPhone
Before any widget can show useful rain predictions, the Weather app needs permission to know where you are. On iOS, this lives under Settings, then Privacy & Security, then Location Services. Scroll down to Weather and choose While Using the App or While Using the App & Widgets, depending on how aggressively you want the forecast to update in the background.
Precise Location should be switched on for the most accurate rain predictions. Without it, the widget may default to a broader suburb or nearby town, which matters when storms roll across narrow stretches of coast like the one between Manly and the Northern Beaches. Apple also pulls atmospheric data from partners such as the Bureau of Meteorology, so even users in regional Queensland or Tasmania will see local forecasts rather than generic regional ones.
Push notifications are another easy step most Australians skip. Inside the Weather app, open the three-dot menu and tap Notifications. Enabling rain notifications sends a heads-up roughly an hour before precipitation is due at your saved locations. It is handy during the humid build-up season in Brisbane, when afternoon storms can form within twenty minutes. Pair this with critical alerts in Settings so that severe weather warnings still cut through Do Not Disturb.
Notifications on the Lock Screen and in the Notification Centre can be tuned individually. Choosing Announce Notifications through Siri in your ear is a small luxury on a wet Sydney commute, especially when you're walking from Central to Town Hall without an umbrella to hand.
Adding the Weather Widget to Your Home Screen
Placing the widget is the part most guides skip over. Long-press an empty area of the Home Screen until the icons start jiggling, then tap the small plus icon in the top-left corner. From the widget gallery, type Weather into the search field and you will see several options: a small square, a medium rectangle, a larger tile, plus dedicated complication styles for the Lock Screen on iOS 16 and later.
Drag the size that suits your layout. The small widget is great if you prefer a minimalist grid, while medium and large both reveal a horizontal strip of forecast hours. Tapping Add Widget pins it to your Home Screen; from there, you can long-press the widget itself and choose Edit Widget to swap which location it tracks and whether it shows temperature, conditions, or the hourly timeline.
If you are running low on Home Screen space, pull down from the top of the screen to open the Today View or use the dedicated widget stack on the left of your first Home Screen page. Both spots accept the same Weather widgets and behave identically, including live updates as conditions change through the arvo.
Do not forget the Smart Stack option either. iOS can rotate a stack of widgets, including Weather, based on the time of day or your current location. If you commute between, say, Parramatta and the CBD, the stack may shift towards the Weather widget when it detects poor conditions en route, surfacing the hourly chart exactly when it matters.
Reading the Hourly Rain Predictions Chart
The widget alone shows only a summary, so tap it once to jump into the full Weather app. The first card labelled as My Location includes a horizontal strip of hours with a small weather icon and the expected temperature. Below that sits the precipitation forecast for the next ten hours, sometimes more.
This chart uses two layers. The blue bar at the top of each hour shows the probability of rain, while the lighter blue band underneath indicates how intense that rain is likely to be. A heavy blue bar with a tall lighter stripe means a high chance of a strong shower, whereas a short bar suggests a small chance of drizzle. The chart automatically updates every fifteen to thirty minutes using fresh data from Apple's sources.
Swipe the chart sideways to move through the day, or pinch outward to see the full 24-hour window. Tapping a specific hour pins a detailed summary, including expected accumulation in millimetres, cloud cover, humidity, and wind. Australians will appreciate that rainfall is displayed in millimetres rather than inches, matching how the Bureau of Meteorology reports the data.
For planning purposes, tap the ten-day forecast tab at the bottom of the screen to see how the chart fits into the broader week. Forecasts lose accuracy past five days, but the immediate ten-hour window is generally reliable enough to plan a bushwalk in the Blue Mountains or a sunset barbecue on the Mornington Peninsula.
Picking the Right Widget Size for the Way You Live
Not every widget shows the same level of detail. The small square displays the current temperature, conditions icon, and high-low range, but does not include the hourly rain chart. For precipitation at a glance, you will need the medium or large widget.
The medium widget shows the current conditions on the left and a horizontal strip of up to five forecast hours on the right. That strip includes a small precipitation indicator under each hour, which gives you a quick read on whether the next shower is in twenty minutes or two hours.
The large widget goes further. It includes the location name at the top, the current conditions with feels-like temperature, and a longer hourly strip that covers roughly eight hours. On capable devices, the strip animates as new data arrives, which makes it easier to see at a distance, especially if your phone is propped up on a desk while you are working.
Lock Screen widgets, available on iPhone models running iOS 16 and later, come in smaller rectangular forms. They are ideal for users who want a constant rain check without unlocking the device. The rainfall complication shows a small droplet with the expected chance of precipitation in the next hour, perfect for tradies heading off to an early arvo shift on a building site in Perth or Adelaide.
Australia-Specific Weather Tips and Alerts
Australia's climate varies wildly, and the Weather app has a few settings worth adjusting for the local conditions you actually face. Open the Weather app, tap the three-dot menu, then tap Notifications and turn on Severe Weather alerts. These pull directly from Bureau of Meteorology warnings for tropical cyclones off the coast of Cairns, severe thunderstorms across inland New South Wales, and bushfire-prone winds in Victoria.
Adding multiple locations helps if you travel often. Hit the list icon at the bottom right, then the plus symbol, and search by town or postcode. You can save as many as you like, including international ones. If you are heading overseas, the widget will still track your home suburb, which is handy for family checking in during heatwaves or sudden cold snaps in Hobart. Travellers planning a longer break can also research accommodation through resources such as Arushi Villa while the widget tracks incoming rain back home.
Air quality and UV index are also worth a look. The Air Quality tile can be added to the medium and large widgets, and it shows the current reading alongside the relevant health advice. UV index data, which often peaks between ten and two during an Australian summer, is built into the hourly timeline on iOS 17 and later. Tap the Sun icon in the top right of the app to view the day's peak UV time and recommended protection level.
For sailing, fishing, or coastal walks, scroll to the Wind and the Sunset/Sunrise sections. Tides are not built into Apple's app, so pair it with a dedicated tide widget if you are heading out around Botany Bay or Jervis Bay.
Troubleshooting Wrong Locations and Stale Data
Sometimes the widget shows the wrong town, or the hourly chart fails to update. The fix usually lies in three places. First, confirm that the top of the Weather app shows your real current location rather than a previous favourite. Tap that header and choose My Location to refresh. Second, verify that Precise Location is still toggled on under Settings, then return to the Home Screen and reopen the widget. Third, force-quit the Weather app by swiping it up from the app switcher, as lingering background processes can cache old data.
If the rainfall chart is missing entirely, the most common cause is that you have added the small widget, which simply does not have space for it. Replace it with the medium or large version. Older iPhone models may also experience slow refresh rates, especially when Low Power Mode is on.
Occasionally, users who have picked up a secondhand handset overseas see strange behaviour, such as widgets never updating, the Settings app showing foreign menus, or the Weather app refusing to set a default location. In that case, it is worth confirming the handset itself before relying on it for safety alerts. Run through how to check if an iPhone is original using the IMEI lookup and serial number method, then compare the result against the packaging and Apple ID account shown on the device.
A quick word on widget storage: weather data can pile up if you are collecting a long hourly history or running multiple location widgets on the Lock Screen. If your phone feels sluggish after adding several stacks, prune the locations you do not actively watch and rely on the main city forecast for anything else.
| Widget size | Locations shown | Hourly rain preview | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Small | 1 | None, current conditions only | Minimalist home screens, quick temperature glance |
| Medium | 1 | Up to 5 hours, with precipitation indicator | Daily commute, desk reference |
| Large | 1 | Up to 8 hours, animated timeline | Weather-watchers, large Home Screen tiles |
| Lock Screen complication | 1 | Next-hour probability droplet | Quick glances without unlocking |
Set aside a few minutes this week to enable precise location, drop a medium or large Weather widget onto your Home Screen, and switch on rain notifications for the suburb you actually live in. Once those three pieces are in place, the hourly precipitation chart becomes a quiet daily reference that helps you plan a Bondi swim, a Blue Mountains hike, or simply deciding whether the laundry will dry before dinner. After that, the widget does its job in the background, leaving you free to get on with the day without constantly checking the radar.