The WxAlerts iPhone app is waiting on Apple. Until it arrives, an iPhone or iPad on iOS 16.4 or later can get warnings for your saved places from wxalerts.org itself, added to the Home Screen.
Set it up
- In Safari, open the forecast for a place you care about.
- Tap Share, then Add to Home Screen, then Add.
- Open WxAlerts from your Home Screen.
- Tap Turn on alerts. Sign in or create a free account when asked, then allow notifications.
If it opens on the map, tap Turn on alerts for your places at the top, or go to Account, then Places.
The Home Screen app keeps its own sign in, separate from Safari’s, so you sign in there once even if Safari already is. If you create an account, confirm your email, then come back to the WxAlerts icon and sign in.
What you get
- Warnings for your saved places, as ordinary notifications. A tap opens the alert.
- As many places as your plan covers: one on the free plan, more on the others. See pricing.
- Each place’s own settings under Account, then Places: which kinds of alert it sends (warnings, unless you change it), anything muted, and whether it is paused.
It does not follow you around. A web page cannot check where you are in the background, so the alerts are for the places you saved, not for wherever the phone is.
Turning it off
In the Home Screen app, go to Account, then Places, and tap Turn off on this iPhone. Removing the icon from your Home Screen, or turning off its notifications in Settings, stops them too.
If nothing arrives
- Check that Settings, Notifications, WxAlerts is allowed, and that a Focus mode is not holding it back.
- Check that the place is saved and not paused.
- An alert reaches a place when the Weather Service’s warning area contains it. A county named in a warning is not always covered by it.