weather24: Forecast & Radar

Review by eFreeware

weather24 is a free weather app from wetter.com Group GmbH, published on Google Play since May 2010 and installed more than 50 million times. It combines forecasts, a rain radar and home screen widgets in one package, which is the main reason to consider it: instead of checking one screen for the week ahead and another for rain moving in, you get both from the same app.

The rating sits at 4.7 from over 1.6 million ratings, which suggests the basics have held up over a long run on the store. It is free to download, supported by ads, and there is an in-app purchase route as well. I would treat it as a general-purpose weather app rather than a specialist tool for one narrow need.

What kind of weather watcher gets the most from it

The app is built for people who check the forecast as part of an ordinary routine. If you want to know whether the afternoon will hold for a walk, a bike ride or a few hours in the garden, the combination of current conditions and an hourly view covers that well. The 16-day outlook stretches further, which is useful for planning a weekend away, a barbecue or a trip to the coast without opening a separate long-range service.

It also suits anyone who likes glancing at conditions without opening anything. The widgets are resizable, so they can be sized to fit whatever space you have on a home screen, and they can show live conditions for a chosen place. The developer mentions Times Square among the locations the widgets can track, which hints at how the app treats faraway places: not just where you are standing, but where you are going or where someone you care about lives.

Travelers are another natural fit. Forecasts can be set for your current location, your home or a destination, so the same app covers the days before a trip and the days during it. Storm and rain radar coverage is described as global, which matters if your plans cross borders rather than staying in one region.

Where I would be more cautious is with anyone who needs a highly specialized weather tool. This is a general forecast and radar app, and its strengths are breadth and convenience rather than depth in any single niche.

Forecasts that stretch from the next hour to the next fortnight

The core of the app is its forecast range. You get hourly detail for the near term, daily summaries, and a long-range view that runs either 7 or 16 days depending on which you choose. That spread covers most of what a household needs: what is happening now, what the next few hours look like, and whether next weekend is worth committing to.

The developer describes the forecasts as precise, promising reliable information about current conditions and upcoming changes. I would read that as the usual confidence you would expect from a mainstream weather service rather than a guarantee; forecasts are only ever as good as the models behind them. What matters more in daily use is whether the app presents the information clearly enough to act on, and the recent update suggests the team has been working on exactly that.

That update redesigned the hourly forecast so it is clearer which time each temperature and weather condition belongs to, and gave weather warnings a full redesign to make them easier to understand. Both changes address the same problem: a forecast is only useful if you can read it at a glance. Weather warnings in particular benefit from plain presentation, since they tend to arrive when you are in a hurry.

The rain radar and the conditions it tracks

The rain radar is the feature that separates weather24 from a plain forecast app. It tracks precipitation in real time, so you can see where rain is now and how it is moving rather than only reading a percentage chance. For anyone who spends time outdoors, that is often the difference between leaving now and waiting twenty minutes.

Coverage is described as global for rain and storms, which makes the radar useful beyond your own neighborhood. The developer pitches the radar as a way to stay ahead of heavy rain and storms without surprises, which is the sensible way to use it: as a short-term planning tool rather than a long-range one.

Alongside the radar, the app surfaces the standard set of climate readings: temperature, wind speed, wind direction and hours of daylight. None of these are unusual on their own, but having them together in one view is what makes the app practical for a quick morning check. Daylight hours in particular are easy to overlook and genuinely useful when you are planning an evening outdoors.

The widgets tie the radar and forecast back to the home screen. Because they can be resized, you can keep a compact current-conditions tile or something larger that shows more at once. The widget experience is multimedia, with the ability to track real-time conditions in places like Times Square as well as nearer to home.

Free to download, with ads and a Premium option

weather24 costs nothing to download, and it is supported by ads. There is also an in-app purchase option in the form of Premium, an ad-free subscription. That is the trade-off in plain terms: you can use the app without paying, and you will see advertising while you do.

The recent update made Premium easier to find within the app, which suggests the subscription is meant to be a visible choice rather than something buried. If advertising in a weather app bothers you, Premium is the route the developer offers.

I would not read the presence of a subscription as a sign that the free app is crippled. The app's features include the forecast range, radar and widgets. That is a straightforward arrangement, and it is worth deciding up front whether you are comfortable with ads in something you might open several times a day.

How it compares with other ways of checking the weather

The obvious alternative is whatever weather app already came with your phone. weather24's case rests on doing more in one place: a 16-day forecast, a precipitation radar with global coverage and configurable widgets, all from a single install.

A dedicated radar or storm-tracking service is the other direction. Those can go deeper on precipitation and severe weather, but they are typically built around that one job. If your interest is mainly in what the next two weeks look like, with radar as a useful extra, a general app like this one is the more comfortable fit.

weather24 sits between the two: free with ads, with a subscription available if you would rather not see them. Which of those makes sense depends on how often you check the forecast and how much you mind advertising in the process.

A dependable daily forecast app with a capable radar

weather24 is a well-established, widely installed weather app that covers the essentials competently: hourly and daily forecasts, a 7 or 16-day outlook, a real-time rain radar with global coverage, and resizable widgets for the home screen. The recent update to the hourly forecast and weather warnings shows attention to how the information is read, not just what it contains.

It is best suited to people who want one app for everyday planning and occasional travel, and who are happy to accept advertising in exchange for a free download. If you would rather not see ads, the Premium subscription is the developer's answer, and it is now easier to find.

For a general-purpose weather app with a long track record and a large user base, this is an easy one to try. The forecast range and radar do the heavy lifting, and the widgets make the information available without opening anything.

What's new in version 2.77.0

We redesigned the hourly forecast, to make it more clear to which time the temperature and weather condition belongs. Weather warnings got a full redesign too, to make them easier to understand. PREMIUM, our ad-free subscription, is now also easier to find. And of course we have several bug fixes!