Living Earth for iPad review: The best weather app for the iPad

By Leanna Lofte
last updated

I'm not going to lie, settling on one single app to label as "the best" weather app for iPad wasn't easy. On one hand I had a collection of feature-packed apps that provided every little detail about the weather, including videos and interactive forecasts. On the other hand, I had a group of apps that didn't necessarily have as many features, but were beautiful, easy to use, and fit the needs of most people. After reminding myself that I was looking for best, not most feature-filled, it was easy for me to give Living Earth for iPad the title.

Living earth is a simple yet gorgeous weather app. In the background, you'll see the earth. If you wish, you can have it spin slowly around its axis with the tap of the button. You can also pinch to zoom in and out of the globe and swipe to rotate it. As the earth rotates, you'll discover that Living Earth shades the half of the earth that is not currently being hit by sun. You can also center the globe on your current location.

In the upper righthand corner, you'll see an icon that represents the current conditions and the current temperature, the high and low for the day, and sunset and sunrise times. If you tap this area of the screen, a new section will pop up below it and give you some more details about the weather, and a 10 day forecast.

The info at the top of this section includes the humidity percentage and wind speed. Tapping any of the days in the 10-day forecast Will break down the forecast into 2-hour intervals.

In the upper righthand corner you'll find the time and date. Tapping it will make it bigger.

In the bottom right corner, you'll see the name of the city you are currently viewing information about. Tapping on the name will pop up a list of big cities in the world that you can switch to. This list is customizable.

In the lower lefthand corner, you'll find five, dimly lit buttons: location, settings, camera, rotation, and alarm. The settings will be where you go to choose units of measure and toggles for live clouds, sunrise times, bright night clouds, gestures and more.

The camera button is essentially a way to share a screenshot of your current screen with Facebook, Twitter, or your Camera Roll.

Living earth features an alarm clock.

The alarm clock is what makes Living Earth more than just a weather app. You can also use it to wake you up in the morning! Even though it's not Living Earth's primary function, it is still a great alarm clock. You can have set up custom interval times (much like Apple's Clock app for iPhone), choose between 7 different piano and harp sounds, or even wake up to your own music. The snooze intervals are between 2-30 minutes. The only really disadvantage to this alarm clock, is that you can not set up multiple alarm. Just one.

The Good

  • Gorgeous
  • 10 day forecast with 2-hour interval breakdowns
  • Alarm clock
  • Interactive earth
  • Fahrenheit and Celsius

The Bad

  • Can only set one alarm

The bottom line

Living Earth for iPad is a stunning weather and clock app for the iPad. It may not have be jam packed with ever feature imaginable, but it does its intended job both flawlessly and beautifully.

$1.99 - Download Now (opens in new tab)

Leanna Lofte
Leanna Lofte

Former app and photography editor at iMore, Leanna has since moved on to other endeavors. Mother, wife, mathamagician, even though she no longer writes for iMore you can still follow her on Twitter @llofte.

21 Comments
  • My fav to! just add your places of interest and fly!
  • Ray Blackboard (aka BlackBorg) purchased ANGEL about 1 1/2 years ago. Resistance is fultie as some might say. Blackboard's eventual plan is to move people from ANGEL to Bb, but we've got at least 3 more years before that is forced. By then we may be using something else entirely.
  • Agreed... others, like Weather HD and Weather 2x, may be "prettier" in a screensaver sort of way, but this is the best overall (and most functional) weather app IMO. Add to that, one thing you forgot to mention is the weather source: Weather Underground. THE most accurate, hands down.
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  • Ok this app looks great but the forecasts suck! A weather app is only as good as the data it's receiving & sedning out IMO. While a 10 day forecast with 2 hr intervals is nice. When it comes from one automated computer model, just like Siri and the stock iOS weather app BTW. It gives horrible information. I'm looking forward to future app that pull data from actually local human meteorologists who have some quality control on the weather data being feed to the app.
  • Is there a weather app that is more accurate? This one uses data from Weather Underground and forecastadvisor.com lists them as one of the most reliable sources.
  • I LOVE this app! Really beautiful.
  • I understand where you said you were looking for the "best" and not most featured filled, but not having a Radar knocks this one down on the list for me. The title should read "best weather/clock app"
  • The best looking perhaps. But it's complete junk as an actual weather app...
  • It doesn't even have radar maps, so what's the point? Best... I think not!
  • That was a waste of a few dollars. I'll stick with the weather channel app for weather. I'm not sure what this is best at, but it's not weather.
  • You forgot to mention the most amazing part of this app... The cloud layer shown across the globe is an actual representation of the live, current cloud formations across our planet! Who needs radar when youve got the world in your hands?
  • Without weather maps its a fail. I want to see if snow, rain or freezing rain is near me, or where I'm going. A brief text description is nearly worthless.
    Its pretty, but lacking in functionality.
    My go-to weather app is Intellicast HD on the iPad. It may not be as pretty, but is much much much more informative.
  • Thanks for the review, looks like a beautiful, but rather simplistic app. Other have said no radar, which is a disappointment, but I wish you had spoken to whether or not the app offers weather alerts. This one function makes or breaks a weather app for me. I'd also like an app that could alert the user on specific events such as sunrise or sunset, that's my $.02. ™
  • Everyone else seems to have covered the things I wanted to say except...
    It's funny that the first sentence in the first paragraph says that it wasn't easy picking the best app. The last line in that same paragraph says it was easy picking the best app.
    I dig your posts and all that, so this isn't any big deal. It was just funny. I was immediately reminded of Chappelle's Rick James sketch (by way of Charlie Murphy).
  • I added the word "after" before "reminding" to clear that up :)
  • This app is amazing! I've had it for a few months now. The cloud updates are mesmerizing. It does do what I need a basic weather app to do without all the extra info that I mostly hardly ever look at. Definitely worth the money!
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