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Updates

What shipped in each release, in the order it landed. A version still being tested is marked In Progress, and stays that way until it is out. A chip marks where a change applies — US, Canada, or Japan, by the location you set, because it depends on that country's weather services. A change with no chip works wherever the app runs.

Version 1.4 In Progress Weather Data for Japan

This release adds weather data from the Japan Meteorological Agency — severe weather alerts, precipitation nowcast radar for both radar views, and tide predictions from its official tide tables. It is still in development; this section will get a release date once it ships.

Added

  • Japan Severe weather alerts from the Japan Meteorological Agency. Emergency and urgent warnings interrupt the broadcast; warnings and advisories crawl the ticker instead.
  • Japan Precipitation nowcast radar from JMA's high-resolution tiles. Both the close-up and regional radar views draw from it.
  • Japan Tide predictions from JMA's official tide tables. The Tides segment reads them for a Japanese coastal location, the same way it reads NOAA's and the Canadian Hydrographic Service's for the US and Canadian coasts.
  • Japan Current conditions from JMA's AMeDAS observation network. Without a personal weather station configured, the temperature, humidity, wind and pressure on Current Conditions and the ticker come from the nearest AMeDAS station that reports them, refreshed every ten minutes, and the screen names the station it read. Forecasts stay Apple Weather's.
  • The app is available in Japanese. Every screen, the spoken segment intros and the This Date in History entries follow the Apple TV's language setting, the same way Canadian French and US Spanish already do. Wind reads in metres per second for a location in Japan, as JMA reports it.

Fixed

  • Radar no longer calls itself unavailable while it is still loading. At launch, and after a location or radar settings change, the radar segments read "Radar Data Not Available" for the ten-odd seconds before the first images arrived. They now say the radar is loading, and keep saying so if that first fetch is interrupted and retried. A genuine outage still reads as unavailable.
  • Alerts clear when the alert feed itself goes silent. If the alert service cannot be reached for thirty minutes, the crawl and any pending interrupt clear rather than repeating the last thing the feed said. Alerts return as soon as the feed answers again. This matters most in Japan, where JMA warnings carry no expiry time of their own.

Version 1.3 · Released August 31, 2026 Spanish, and Full-Screen Radar

This release adds Spanish for the United States — every screen, the This Date in History entries and the spoken segment intros, following the Apple TV's language setting, the same way Canadian French already works — and a radar view that fills the whole screen. The support for personal weather stations beyond Tempest that this cycle opened with moved to a later release.

Added

  • USCanada Full-screen radar. Double-tap Select while a radar segment is showing and the map fills the screen. Left and Right switch between the close-up and wide views, Menu or another double tap brings the broadcast back, and a weather alert still interrupts.
  • The app is available in Spanish for the United States. Every screen, the spoken segment intros and the This Date in History entries follow the Apple TV's language setting, the same way Canadian French already does. Weather alerts keep the National Weather Service's own English wording — NWS publishes no Spanish today — with the announcement around them in Spanish.

Fixed

  • Spanish Zoom explanations agree with the unit. Settings → Radar's three Zoom explanations and the Regional Radar row read "de unos 300 millas de ancho" for imperial viewers, a masculine article in front of a feminine unit the sentence cannot see. They now read "de aproximadamente 300 millas de ancho" in either unit system.
  • USCanada The Base Map heading in Radar settings is translated. Settings → Radar's BASE MAP section header, over Street Map and County Lines, stayed in English under French and Spanish; it now reads "FOND DE CARTE" and "MAPA BASE".
  • USCanada Radar could stop updating for the rest of the session. After some launches the radar quietly stopped fetching new sweeps — the loop kept replaying the frames it already had, growing older by the hour, while temperatures and alerts stayed current. Most visible on the new full-screen radar, but the broadcast's radar segments replayed the same stale loop. Radar now keeps refreshing no matter how the app came to the screen.

Version 1.2 · Released August 18, 2026 O Canada!

This release is about running outside the United States: weather alerts, units and a forecast that work in Canada too, alongside a sharper close-up radar for everyone.

Added

  • US The close-up radar is much sharper. It now comes from the single Doppler radar nearest you, at four times the detail of the blended national picture. When no radar is close enough, or the nearest one is out of service, it falls back to the national picture as before — a badge in the corner of the radar names whichever you are looking at.
  • USCanada A Radar screen in Settings. It chooses between the two sources above, and holds Clear-Air Returns, Street Map and County Lines.
  • US Clear-Air Returns. Off by default: the close-up radar hides echoes weaker than light drizzle, so quiet days stay clean. Turn it on to see the sea-breeze fronts and storm outflows those weak echoes trace.
  • USCanada The radar now draws the land from Apple Maps. Roads, coastlines and town names sit under the echoes, so it is much easier to see where a storm actually is. In the US you can turn it off under Settings → Radar → Street Map for the plain outline map, which is also what you get automatically whenever the map cannot be fetched.
  • US County Lines is settable, under Settings → Radar.
  • Select holds the picture. Press Select on the remote to keep the broadcast on whatever segment you are watching, and press it again to let the loop carry on. Left and Right still step through the segments while it is held, and a weather alert still interrupts.
  • A Segments screen in Settings. Turn any segment out of the broadcast loop — tides, radar, the almanac, whichever you do not want — and the loop simply skips it.
  • USCanada A zoom setting for the close-up radar. Under Settings → Radar, choose how close the local view is — Wide, Medium or Close.
  • Canada Weather alerts in Canada. Set a Canadian location and the crawl and full-screen interrupts now come from Environment and Climate Change Canada — tornado and severe thunderstorm warnings, and any red-level warning, take the screen once each, exactly as US warnings do. Pressure reads in kilopascals when the Apple TV's region is set to Canada.
  • Canada Radar in Canada. Set a Canadian location and both radar views now come from Environment and Climate Change Canada's national radar composite — including places the US mosaic never reached, such as Newfoundland — with an "MSC Radar" badge in the corner. Settings → Radar shows only Zoom for a Canadian location, and says why: Super-Res, Clear-Air Returns and the base map choices are US-only.
  • Canada Tides in Canada. Set a Canadian coastal location and the Tides segment airs again, with predictions from the Canadian Hydrographic Service — the day's curve, the highs and lows, and the gauge named on screen, the same as it has always worked on the US coast. The predictions are for reference only and the segment says so: they are not for navigation, and the Service's full notice is in Settings → Acknowledgments. Inland and on the Great Lakes there are no tide predictions on either side of the border, so the segment keeps dropping itself from the loop there.
  • Canada Record highs and lows in Canada. The Almanac's record columns fill in for a Canadian location, from Environment and Climate Change Canada's long-term climate extremes — the record high and low for today's and tomorrow's date, each with the year it was set, and the reporting station named on screen. The records run deep: most Canadian stations have a century of them, some a good deal more.
  • USCanada This Date in History now covers August 16 through October 1, and knows which country you're in. Every date carries history relevant to any market plus one US-specific and one Canadian-specific entry — Hurricane Beth over Nova Scotia, the Persons Case, the Terry Fox Run, and dozens more alongside the US-centric history that shipped before. A US location sees the US entry; a Canadian location sees the Canadian one; the shared history shows either way.
  • USCanada Airport codes work in the location field. Type LAX, YYZ or ORD under Settings → Location and it resolves to that airport, with the airport's full name shown so you can check it before saving. Before this, most codes quietly resolved somewhere else entirely — JFK landed on a street in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
  • Canada Weather alerts are read in French. Environment and Climate Change Canada's own French wording, spoken by a French voice, when the Apple TV is set to French.
  • The app is available in French for Canada. Every screen, the spoken segment intros, and the This Date in History entries follow the Apple TV's language setting.

Changed

  • USCanada Regional radar is its own segment now. The wide view used to be an unannounced second half of Local Radar, sharing its title. It has its own place in the loop, its own title and its own spoken intro; the two run fifteen seconds each, so the loop is the same length it was. Either can be turned off on its own under Settings → Segments.
  • The location field says "postal code", not "ZIP". Under Settings → Location, the prompt and the field no longer say "ZIP". Nothing about what it accepts has changed — a Canadian postal code always worked; only the wording said otherwise.
  • US The wide regional radar no longer draws county lines. At about a thousand miles (1,600 km) across they crowded the picture. The close-up view still draws them, and now lets you turn them off.
  • USCanada The close-up and regional radar no longer mark your location. The map is always centered there, so the dot at the middle of the frame was redundant.

Fixed

  • Canada Settings → Radar shows only what applies in Canada. The plain outline map and the county lines are US-only — they had nothing to draw north of the border, and county lines showed up only on the US side of a border view — so the base map is always Apple Maps there, and the Radar screen no longer lists the US-only choices at all: just Zoom, with a note saying why. The Radar row in Settings describes the same.
  • USCanada Street Map now actually draws. Since it arrived in this beta, Settings → Radar → Street Map had no visible effect. Roads, coastlines and towns from Apple Maps now appear under the radar echoes when Street Map is on.
  • The warning mark on the alert chip is drawn properly, instead of the substitute character the television used to show in its place.
  • US The wide radar view no longer blinks blank. The animation sometimes held an empty frame right after a populated one; the loop now sticks to one mosaic's timeline.
  • US The wide radar view is sharper. It was drawn at half the resolution it is now.
  • The bottom bar spells its units the way they are written. Pressure read "30.06 INHG" there — "101,8 KPA" outside the United States — while the Current Conditions screen behind it showed the same reading as "30.06 inHg". The bar no longer forces its readings into capitals. Its labels are unchanged, and an alert crawl still runs in capitals.
  • Settings → Radar now gives its distances in your units. Since the Zoom rows arrived in this beta, the explanation beside each one read "about 300 miles across" no matter where the Apple TV was set. It now reads "about 480 kilometres across" wherever the rest of the app is metric.

Version 1.1 · Released August 11, 2026 Two Changes to Existing Habits

Read these two first — they change how the app already behaved. Play/Pause no longer opens Settings. It now controls playback, which is what the button says it does; long-press Select is the way into Settings instead. Voice announcements now default to off. Turn them back on in Settings → Audio if you want them.

Added

  • Pair a Tempest station by scanning a QR code. The station setup screen shows a code; scan it with a phone, approve the request in a browser, and the station is connected. No API token to find, copy, or type.
  • A configured Tempest station's own forecast is now the base, not just its live observations — the whole forecast comes from your station, with Apple WeatherKit as a fallback when the station's forecast is unavailable.
  • New readings on Current Conditions, from a connected Tempest station: barometric trend beside the pressure, a now-cast rain chance, a heat-stress index with a colour chip and its risk category, and lightning — how long ago the last strike was and how far away.
  • Almanac shows records from your own station's history, alongside the long-record NOAA climate station, once your Tempest station has enough history to have any.
  • US Visibility no longer disappears when a Tempest station is the source. Tempest has no visibility sensor, so the row used to vanish. It is now filled from the nearest NOAA reporting station within 20 miles, which names itself on the row.
  • Disconnect a Tempest account from Settings → Weather Source → Configure Tempest Station. Your location is deliberately kept, since it is the app's only one.
  • A silent station is reported as silent. If your Tempest stops reporting, the app says so and stops crediting it for readings it did not take.

Changed

  • Settings has been rebuilt to match tvOS. Native navigation, stock system controls, the system's own focus behaviour, and a two-column layout with resting row pills — the shape tvOS Settings itself uses.
  • The pairing page your phone opens is branded, rather than a bare confirmation.
  • The radar frame's timestamp reads on its own, without the redundant RADAR label beside it.
  • Sky glyphs cover both spellings of six Tempest condition codes that previously fell through to a generic cloud.

Fixed

  • Closed the remaining cases where the broadcast loop could stall instead of advancing to the next segment.
  • Fixed the Settings Location field showing as unset while Apple WeatherKit was the source.

Version 1.0 · Released August 3, 2026 First App Store Release

Composite Sky launched with:

  • A continuous broadcast loop of local weather segments: current conditions, local forecast, hourly forecast, extended outlook, almanac, tides, radar, and this date in history.
  • USSevere weather alerts from the National Weather Service, with a tiered interrupt and a crawl along the lower display line.
  • Tempest station observations as an alternative to Apple WeatherKit.
  • USTide predictions from NOAA CO-OPS, with a manual station override.
  • USRecord highs and lows from the NOAA Regional Climate Centers.
  • Music from your Apple Music library, or a stream URL you supply, with ducking under voice announcements.
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