Weather and places

A few answers come from the world outside the note: whether it’ll rain in London, when the sun sets in Lisbon, how far Paris is from Berlin. Write the question on a calc line and Varlig looks it up, on your Mac, iPhone or iPad. This page covers the weather, the sun and moon, and places.

These lines need an internet connection, and each lookup sends only the place the line names, never the rest of the note. Because their answers change with the world, the examples below show the kind of answer you’ll get, not today’s.

Weather

Ask for the weather in a place by name:

calcAnswers depend on today’s date or live data

temperature in Tokyo gives 21 °C

high temperature in Paris gives 18 °C

chance of rain in London gives 40%

humidity in Berlin gives 72%

weather in Rome gives Partly Cloudy

You can also ask for feels like, wind speed, wind direction, rain, snow, cloud cover, visibility, dew point, UV index and pressure. Weather comes from Apple WeatherKit: Varlig looks the place up first and sends only its coordinates. Current conditions are kept for 15 minutes before Varlig asks again, and a day’s readings, such as the high temperature or the chance of rain, for three hours.

If WeatherKit doesn’t answer, the line stays blank and the live data status in Settings › Calculations says so, such as Apple WeatherKit didn’t answer for Tokyo. Varlig will ask again in a few minutes. It does, a couple of minutes later.

Wherever a weather answer appears, Varlig names where it came from, with the Apple Weather mark and an Other data sources link to Apple’s page of the sources behind it:

How Was This Read? ends with a Weather section for an answer that used the weather, directly or through a name that holds a reading.
The menu on such an answer ends with the same link.
On iPhone and iPad, the mark and the link sit under a calc block whose answers used the weather, when you’re reading the note.
Settings › Calculations shows them under the weather switch.
A Calculation widget showing a weather answer carries the mark; the link is in the note it opens.

Sunrise, sunset, daylight hours and the moon don’t come from Apple Weather, so they carry no mark.

The sun and the moon

Sunrise, sunset and hours of daylight are worked out from where a place is, so they need place lookup but not the weather:

calcAnswers depend on today’s date or live data

sunrise in Lisbon gives 7:26 AM

sunset in Reykjavik gives 7:02 PM

daylight hours in Oslo gives 11 hours 38 min

The moon’s phase needs no place at all, and a date gives the phase that day:

calc

moon phase on 25 December 2026 gives Full Moon

Places

A place name gives its coordinates and the distance between two places, as the crow flies:

calcAnswers depend on today’s date or live data

distance between London and Paris gives 344 km

latitude of Tokyo gives 35.68°

For the time somewhere else, which works offline for the cities and zones Varlig knows, see Time zones.

Turn lookups off

Each lookup has its own switch in Settings › Calculations › Live data: Look up places and time zones and Look up weather conditions. They’re on to begin with, because a line that names a place has asked for one. Turn one off and the lines that need it show no answer; nothing else changes. Privacy and locking lists exactly what each one sends, and where.