PredictWind - Marine Forecasts

Review by eFreeware

Most weather apps treat the sea as an afterthought, a blue area behind a coastal town name. PredictWind is built the other way around: wind, waves, currents and tides are the point, and the land is what sits at the edge of the map. That focus is what makes it distinctive, and it is why the app has drawn more than a million installs and a 4.7 average from over 31,000 ratings since it first appeared in 2011.

The app comes from PredictWind Limited and sits in the Weather category. It is free to download, carries no ads, and offers in-app purchases. The developer describes it as the world leader in marine weather forecasts, a claim I would treat as marketing rather than a measured fact, but the underlying toolkit is broad enough to explain the reputation.

Who is it for? Primarily people who make decisions based on sea conditions: sailing yacht crews, powerboat owners, and anyone else whose day on the water depends on wind strength, wave height and current direction. If your idea of a forecast is a five-day icon strip for a city, this is far more machinery than you need. If you plan passages, race starts or long weekends afloat, the depth starts to make sense.

Forecast models and the routing engine

The foundation is access to a set of established global forecast models, including ECMWF, AIFS, ICON, UKMO and GFS. Alongside those, the developer runs its own PWAi, PWG and PWE models, which it bills as unmatched in the short-to-medium range. Having several independent models matters at sea, because agreement between them is a rough signal of confidence and disagreement is a warning to plan for more than one outcome.

Weather Routing is the feature the developer leads with, and it is the one that separates this app from a map with arrows on it. You give it a start point and an end point, and it works out a route using tides, currents, wind, wave data and depth, while also accounting for the dimensions of your sailing yacht or powerboat. The result is presented as a route tuned for comfort or for speed, which is a meaningful distinction when a shorter line means a rougher ride.

Departure Planning answers a narrower question: what the conditions will look like along your route if you leave on day one, two, three or four. It condenses those options so you can pick a departure date rather than guess at one. For anyone whose schedule has any slack in it, that is often more useful than a forecast for a fixed day, because it turns the weather into a choice instead of a constraint.

Maps, tables and graphs for reading conditions

The display layer is where a lot of marine apps fall down, and PredictWind spreads the data across several formats. High-resolution maps cover wind, gusts, CAPE, waves, rain, cloud, pressure, air temperature, sea temperature, ocean data and solunar information, and you can view them with animated streamlines, wind barbs or arrows depending on what you find easiest to read. The choice of symbol style sounds minor until you are trying to judge a wind shift at a glance.

Tables are the opposite approach: a dense dashboard for detailed analysis of wind, wave and rain figures, with numbers rather than colors. Graphs let you compare multiple forecasts side by side, which is the natural companion to the multi-model setup. Between the three, you can move from a quick visual impression to a precise reading without leaving the app.

Ocean Data adds the layer beneath the surface, covering ocean and tidal currents plus sea temperature. Currents are easy to underestimate when planning a route, and having them in the same place as the wind forecast saves cross-referencing. It is the kind of feature that only matters to some users, but for those users it matters a great deal.

Daily Briefing, alerts and live observations

Not every check needs a dashboard. Daily Briefing reduces the forecast into a plain text summary, which suits a quick read before you commit to a plan or share conditions with a crew. It is the feature I would expect to use most on ordinary days, with the maps and tables reserved for the ones that need closer study.

With Weather Alerts, the app watches wind, wave and other values and pings you once they line up with your chosen settings. That reverses the usual pattern of opening an app to see what the weather is doing; instead the app tells you when the weather is doing something you care about. Live Wind Observations and webcams cover the present moment at your local spot, which is a useful check against what the models predicted.

Local Knowledge adds context about marine spots, amenities and activities at your destination, and GPS Tracking produces a customizable page for a blog or website with wind data overlaid. AIS Data taps the AIS network to map over 280,000 vessels around the world. The last two lean toward sharing and situational awareness rather than forecasting itself, but they round out the package.

What the app asks of you

The download is free, there are no ads, and in-app purchases are available. I would go in expecting the paid elements to relate to the more advanced tools rather than assuming everything is included at no cost. That is a reasonable posture for any app of this scope, and it is easy enough to start with the free side and see how far it takes you.

The other requirement is knowledge. Weather Routing depends on you supplying your boat's dimensions and your start and end points; Departure Planning asks you to interpret four sets of conditions rather than one. None of that is difficult for someone who already reads marine forecasts, but it is a genuine step up from checking whether it will rain.

There is also an expectation of engagement. Alerts only help if you set preferences that reflect the conditions you actually sail in, and the multi-model comparison only pays off if you look at more than one source. The app gives you the material; deciding what matters is left to you.

How I would use it in practice

For a day sail or a short powerboat run, the natural sequence is a glance at the Daily Briefing, a check of Live Wind Observations or a webcam near the launch point, and then the map layers for wind and waves. That covers the decision of whether to go at all, and it takes less time than reading a full forecast discussion.

For a longer passage, the order changes. I would set up a route with Weather Routing, compare the models on the graphs to see where they diverge, and then use Departure Planning to test whether shifting the trip by a day or two produces a calmer or faster crossing. Adding the ocean and tidal current layers before committing makes sense, since currents can undo a good wind plan.

In the background, Weather Alerts are worth configuring early rather than in the moment. Set them around the wind and wave ranges you are comfortable with, and the app becomes something that taps you on the shoulder when a window opens. GPS Tracking and the AIS view are the extras here, useful if you publish your trips or want to know what traffic is around you, but not the reason to install it.

A forecasting suite for people who plan around the sea

PredictWind is a serious marine weather tool rather than a general-purpose weather app, and it is priced to let you try that seriousness for nothing. The combination of established global models, the developer's own PWAi, PWG and PWE models, routing that accounts for your boat's dimensions, and departure planning that turns the forecast into a scheduling decision is a coherent package for anyone whose plans depend on the water.

The caveats are the ones that come with the territory. It is free with in-app purchases. It asks for boat details and route inputs to get the most from its headline features, and it rewards a bit of familiarity with marine forecasting. Someone who wants a simple answer to whether it will be sunny on Saturday will find it heavy going.

For sailing yacht crews, powerboat owners and others who treat wind, waves and currents as the deciding factors in their day, the depth on offer here is the appeal. The 4.7 average across more than 31,000 ratings suggests that audience has found it useful. My advice is to install it, set up alerts for your own comfort ranges, and let the Daily Briefing handle the routine checks while you keep the routing tools for the trips that deserve them.

What's new in version 5.6.9.1

Changes in v5.6.9.1: . Bugfixes