Weather app

Review by eFreeware

Weather app is a free, ad-supported forecast tool from the developer Accurate Weather Forecast & Weather Radar Map. It has been on Google Play since late 2017, and the install and rating figures suggest a lot of people have settled on it as their daily forecast source: more than 10 million installs and a 4.6 average across 236,373 ratings. The pitch is breadth rather than a single trick. Forecasts, a layered radar map, home screen widgets and alerts all live in the same app, and you can track conditions in more than one place.

What makes it worth considering is how much of that breadth is aimed at the way people actually check the weather. You get current conditions, an hourly view and a multi-day outlook, plus the supporting numbers that matter when you are deciding what to wear or whether to move plans: humidity, dew point, wind speed and direction, pressure, visibility and precipitation. Sunrise and sunset times are included, and so are moon phase and moon cycle for anyone who keeps an eye on those.

The trade-off is the usual one for a free forecast app: it carries ads. The developer's recent version notes mention a fix for an ads issue, which tells you the ad side of the app is something that gets attention.

Planning a day around the hourly and daily views

The forecast side is where most people will spend their time. The app shows the current temperature, an hourly breakdown and a daily outlook, with the developer listing seven-day information and a ten-day future view. Hourly entries extend across the coming week, so you can look at a specific morning or evening rather than only a daily high and low. For someone deciding whether to schedule a run, a bike ride or an outdoor repair job, that granularity is the difference between a guess and a decision.

Units are handled with more care than I expected. Temperature switches between Celsius and Fahrenheit, and the app can detect which one your country uses and set it as the default. Wind speed and wind direction come in different units too, and precipitation is offered in more than one measure. That matters if you are used to reading pressure in inches of mercury or wind in a particular scale; the developer added inHg as a unit back in version 1.09, alongside a UV index.

The extra readings round the picture out. Atmospheric pressure, visibility, relative humidity, dew point and precipitation sit alongside the headline temperature, and there is a wind forecast tool built around a wind speed meter. Sunrise and sunset times are adjusted to the city's time zone, which is a small detail that makes a difference when you are traveling and your phone has not caught up with local time. The developer also describes the app as covering weather worldwide, so a location you add abroad should work the same way as one at home.

Radar layers and storm tracking when weather turns

The radar map is the second main draw. It is built around a set of layers you can look at individually or in combination: rain and snow, temperature, pressure, wind, clouds, humidity and waves, with storm radar included. Animated maps are part of the package, which is what makes a radar view useful in practice — a still image tells you where rain is, an animation tells you where it is going. For coastal readers, the wave layer is an unusual inclusion and one that a general forecast app often leaves out.

Alerts are handled separately from the map. The developer says the app provides local weather alerts three times a day, and there are storm warnings, a storm tracker, tornado warnings and a rain alarm. If you enable it, a daily weather news item can appear as well. The three-times-a-day rhythm is a reasonable middle ground: frequent enough to catch a change in the forecast, not so frequent that you start ignoring it. Anyone who has ever dismissed a stream of notifications knows the difference.

The storm tools are the part I would weigh most carefully. Radar layers and warnings are only as good as the underlying data and how promptly they refresh, and the developer's claims here — accurate, realtime — are marketing rather than something a description can prove. The app tries to cover both the calm-day case and the severe-weather case in one place, rather than sending you to a separate radar app when a front moves in.

Widgets, lock screen and the notification bar

A forecast app proves its value on a phone partly by how little you have to open it, and this one leans into that. There are home screen widgets, a lock screen that shows temperature, rain and cloud information alongside a clock widget, and an ongoing notification with a forecast bar. The notification bar keeps the current temperature visible in the Android system bar, so a glance is enough without launching anything. The app reloads data for the notification even when you are underground.

Widget choice has grown over time. Version 1.31 introduced 16 widget styles, including transparent ones, which is a meaningful number if you care about how your home screen looks. Multiple locations can be placed on widgets, so you can keep an eye on a second city — a place you travel to for work, or somewhere family lives — without switching screens. The lock screen combines temperature, rain and cloud information with the clock, which is a neat consolidation if you already use your lock screen for timekeeping.

The one caveat worth stating plainly is that all of this sits in an ad-supported app. That does not change what the widgets and notifications do, but it is part of the deal you are accepting when you install it.

Location, permissions and what setup involves

Getting started is mostly a matter of granting location access and choosing a place. The app uses GPS for your current position, and if GPS is unavailable it can fall back to network location — less precise, but workable in some situations. That fallback is worth knowing about if you often check the weather indoors, in a basement or in a building where a satellite fix is slow to arrive.

You can also track conditions in multiple locations, which covers the case where the place you care about is not the place you are standing. Adding a city manually and setting it as the default is the obvious way to use that. The developer's version history mentions localizing the address and weather summary, so place names should read naturally in your language rather than as raw coordinates.

Beyond location, the app's requirements are modest. It is free, rated for Everyone, and the recent updates have focused on maintenance rather than new direction: bug fixes, SDK upgrades, target SDK 35, GDPR updates and enabling HTTPS for its services. The most recent version, 1.79, fixed an ads issue. That pattern — housekeeping rather than reinvention — is what you would want from a weather app you plan to rely on.

Where this forecast app fits best

This is a general-purpose weather app, and it suits people who want one place to check conditions rather than three. If your routine involves a quick look at the hourly forecast before heading out, a radar check when the sky darkens, and a widget on the home screen the rest of the time, the app covers all three without sending you elsewhere. The multi-location tracking and worldwide coverage make it a reasonable fit for frequent travelers who want to keep an eye on home as well as wherever they are.

It also suits readers who like detail. Dew point, pressure, visibility, humidity and wind direction are all present, and the unit switching means you can read them the way you are used to. The moon phase and moon cycle additions are a nice touch for anyone whose interests run that way, and the wave layer on the radar map is a genuine plus for coastal users.

The main consideration is the ad-supported model. If you are comfortable with that and want a broad, free forecast tool with radar, widgets and alerts, this one has the depth to justify a place on your home screen.

The case for installing it

The developer has kept it current since 2017, and the recent updates are the unglamorous kind that keep a weather app working — SDK upgrades, privacy updates and bug fixes.

It is best suited to people who want a single app for planning the day, watching incoming weather and keeping a glanceable temperature on their phone, and who are comfortable with ads in exchange for not paying. If you want a narrow, minimalist forecast display, the breadth here will feel like more than you need. For everyone else, it is a reasonable default to try.

What's new in version 7.9

Weather forecast app with radar, widget & realtime notification. v1.79: Fixed ads issue v1.78: Bug fixes & upgrade SDK v1.76: Bug fixes & update v1.74: Update target SDK 35 v1.70: Updated GDPR v1.68: Enabled https for services v1.58: Updated backgroud location privacy v1.54: Localize for address & weather sumary v1.31: 16 widget styles including transparent widgets v1.09: UV Index, inHg unit v1.02: Change of rain, moon phrase, hourly/daily weather on widget, lot of units settings, ...