User Guide / Alerts & Notifications / Alerts & Notifications Overview

🔔 Alerts & Notifications Overview

iOSiPadOSmacOS

What you need to receive Forecast Bar notifications, where the settings live, and how to view active alerts in the app.

Forecast Bar can notify you about severe weather, incoming rain, daily forecasts, beautiful sunsets, celestial events, and thresholds you define yourself. This page covers what notifications need in order to work, where to configure them, and how to read active alerts inside the app.

What notifications require

Forecast Bar notifications are delivered by Forecast Bar's own weather service — a server that watches the weather for your locations and pushes alerts to your devices. Because of that, three things must be in place:

  1. A Silver or Gold subscription. Notifications run on Forecast Bar's servers, so they need a real subscription — the free 24-hour unlock opens up the app's local features but does not include notifications. See Plans & Tiers for which alerts each tier includes.
  2. Sign in with Apple. Signing in creates the sync account the service delivers your alerts to (and syncs your settings across devices). If you haven't signed in yet, the Notifications screen shows a Sign In to Unlock prompt first. You can also sign in from Settings → About & More.
  3. iOS notification permission. The first time you turn on an alert type, Forecast Bar asks for the system notification permission. If you decline it, alerts can't appear — you can grant it later in the iOS Settings app under Forecast Bar.

Where the settings live

Go to Settings → Notifications. (If your subscription is below Silver, this row opens the subscription screen instead.) Once you're signed in, the screen lists every alert category:

SectionWhat it doesDetails
Severe WeatherOfficial severe weather alerts (U.S. & Canada)Severe Weather Alerts
Precipitation AlertsRain and snow starting/stopping, plus the Live ActivityRain & Snow Alerts
Daily ReportsMorning and evening forecast summariesMorning & Evening Reports
Astronomy AlertsEclipses, supermoons, solstices, auroraAstronomy & Celestial Alerts
Tide AlertsKing tides and big low tides (coastal locations only)Custom & Threshold Alerts
Custom NotificationsBuild your own threshold alertsCustom & Threshold Alerts
Temperature Comparison"Today will feel different" notificationsCustom & Threshold Alerts
Do Not DisturbQuiet hours for all Forecast Bar notificationsBelow

A Sign Out button sits in the toolbar of this screen. Time pickers throughout snap to 15-minute steps.

Settings → Notifications — every alert type in one place.

Do Not Disturb (quiet hours)

At the bottom of Settings → Notifications, turn on Do Not Disturb and set the From and To times to silence Forecast Bar notifications during those hours — overnight, for example. It's off by default.

Note: Severe weather types you've marked as Critical Alerts can still come through during quiet hours — see Severe Weather Alerts.

Viewing active alerts in the app

When a severe weather alert is active for the location you're viewing, it appears in one of two places:

  • Alerts card — by default, an alerts section appears on the main screen below the forecast cards. Tap it to read the alert.
  • Toolbar badge — turn on Settings → Data & Layout → Alerts → Show Severe Alerts in Toolbar to show a badge on the toolbar button instead of the inline card.

Tapping an alert opens its details: Issued, Expires, Counties affected, the full Description, and any official Instructions. When several alerts are active at once, use the previous/next arrows to page through them — a "1 of 3"-style counter shows where you are.

Troubleshooting notifications

If alerts stop arriving, go to Settings → About & More → Notification Diagnostics → Test Notifications. It can run a full notification test, list any issues it finds with suggested fixes, send a test notification, refresh your push token, and copy a diagnostic report you can email to support. See Troubleshooting for common causes.

Notifications on the Mac

The Mac app has the same Notifications settings, with the same subscription and Sign in with Apple requirements (on the Mac, Gold is called Pro and Silver is called Plus). One difference: on the Mac you choose a single location for notifications — either Current Location or one of your saved locations — rather than a list of monitored locations.