Apple is adding a new feature to the Weather app in iOS 26, bringing Severe Weather Alerts and Widgets for Predicted Travel Destinations. The new feature provides notifications using Apple’s “Proactive Intelligence” to keep iPhone and Apple Watch users informed about weather possibilities before arriving at your destination. The new feature will help ensure that travelers are not caught off-guard by the weather at their destination.
Currently, the severe notification system offers alerts for a user’s current location. The new iOS 26 feature builds upon that foundation, using on-device processing to determine if you may be traveling soon, but only if you have “Significant Locations & Routes” permissions enabled.
The feature can be enabled by doing the following:
- In Location services, enable “Significant Locations & Routes”
- Set Weather app location access to “Always”
- Enable Severe Weather notifications in the Weather app settings
Once the feature is enabled, the Weather app can then access predicted destinations to deliver timely alerts relevant to those possible travel destinations. Privacy-minded individual will want to know that Apple says the feature may associate the regions of your possible travel destinations with your Appe Account, much how it already handles alerts for your current location.
In watchOS 26, the feature uses Smart Stacks and Widget Suggestions to automatically display a destination-specific widget in your Smart Stack for an at-a-glance weather update for places Apple thinks you are likely to visit in the near future.
As reported by MacRumors, iOS 26 also appears to extend satellite connectivity in Emergency SOS and Messages to include Weather app data. This will allow users that are in spots where there isn’t any cellular or WiFi connectivity to receive warnings about severe weather,
