I rediscovered this weather app again (for Android and iOS) and am quite amazed that it now has a 4.9 out of 5 rating on the Google app store, and 5m+ downloads just on Android.

Weather forecasting is just never going to be 100% accurate but I do like that this app presents a forecast view from a number of forecasting services so that you can best compare them. The widgets are also the most customisable that I’ve seen with font size adjustments, icon type, and a good selection to choose from. The weather page itself is also customisable to quickly see what you most want to first.

I was pleased to see it does accept, and works fine with, a non-precise location. It is also ad-free and there is an option to share some info, but it is defaulted to off. They work on donations via PayPal for once-off donations (nice to have that option), or monthly via the Android or iOS app stores. The app is Japanese based so hopefully data is safe from the US NSA, but they do state they are not selling data to any 3rd parties. They do seem to be handling privacy according to best practices.

They claim their feature is actually the “wow” weather photos you see, and they also offer a marketplace to sell your own weather photos via their market.

See https://weawow.com/

#technology #weather #weawow

  • I’m a massive fan of Windy.com (not Windy.app, an entirely different service). They charge a premium fee for hourly forecasts but they’re one of the few providers that provide access to the super accurate 9km ECMWF forecasts which are usually prohibitively expensive for private individuals to use. The app is absolutely laden with features especially those for outdoor sports.

  • I use this app and I really love it; I’ve even donated in the past. The pictures are awesome & it’s so fun to see which one will load. I have even paid for a personal license for one of those background pics so I could use it as a wallpaper.

  • Long time user and occasional donor here. I agree with all your points. I love that you can customize each view (daily with humidity and “feels like”, weekly with wind speed, etc). And the widgets are just so well thought out and easy to customize to match your wallpaper. Lovely app all around.

  • Unfortunately, it doesn’t allow me to use my nation’s weather service, so it doesn’t exactly matter how good the App is. There’s a choice of providers, but most of them are no-name aggregators.

  • The one thing that bugs me about Weawow is that the logic for when to display rain or thunderstorms in the widget is way wrong. It seems to show the rain or thunderstorm icon at the slightest possibility of precipitation.

    • Not sure which widget, but I’m assuming the daily forecast? An option is to use the hourly projection widget for a more accurate picture. But yes when a day is party sunny and maybe a little rain, what gets shown for that whole day summary? Possibly they should summarise it better with what is mostly the forecast for the day ie. one hour of rain shows still as mostly cloudy and not rain. It may be worth you suggesting it to them with an option for users to toggle between ANY rain vs MAJORITY of forecast.

      • I guess it’s not actually a widget, it’s a silent notification (that shows current conditions plus hourly if you expand it). The actual hourly forecast in the app is like that too, but since you can see the percentage chance of precipitation, it’s less annoying. I switched from the Norwegian Met Office to the NWS in the hopes Norway was just rubbish at forecasting the US, but it’s the same–it’s how Weawow maps the forecast data to icons.

        I’d take a screenshot, but unbelievably Weawow doesn’t think it’s going to rain today.

  • This is amazing, especially for a free app. There’s customisations for everything.

    Immediatelty replacing my old weather app.

    (Sorry this comment sounds like an ad but its honestly not - although that is what an ad would say…)

  • Installed! I’ve been unhappy with my weather app for a little while now, looking forward to giving this one a try! The fact that they’ll use an approximate location is really nice. Thank you for shouting this out!

  •  Nimrod   ( @Nimrod@lemm.ee ) 
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    41 year ago

    Thank you for making me aware of this. I’ve been searching for a good clean weather app since Apple bought dark sky.

    I have needed that graphical view of temp and precipitation. I only wish I could have both temp and precipitation probability displayed on the same graph simultaneously.

  • Super happy to see this recommendation as I’d been thinking it was time to ditch the stock weather app. I love how much info this gives without having to scroll past ads or open up a website. Thanks for the recommendation!