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Weawow is a free and ad-free weather service with 4.9 ratings, choice of weather service, and highly customisable widgets (beehaw.org)

submitted 1 year ago by GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org to c/technology@beehaw.org

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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

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[–] irasponsible@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

Yes, it also does not offer my national weather service, but then what 3rd party app does for me? It does offer most of the commonly used weather forecast services though with a very good comparison to find which is the closest match (which other app does that as they normally list by name only?). I think its rating is really a testament to its usefulness for so many people. I'm really not aware of any 3rd party app that offers the national weather srvices of 150+ countries?

[–] hoyland@beehaw.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] figment@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This has a precipitation by hour graph!! Weather Underground can finally die.

[–] GadgeteerZA@beehaw.org 1 points 1 year ago

I'd been using Weather Underground for years because of their forecast accuracy for my area, but the last two or three years their app has gone backwards and the widgets really lacked.