Best Weather Apps for Desktop
While weather forecasting is a notoriously imprecise science, with voice assistants, pop-up notifications and buzzing smartwatches, keeping an eye on the weather of the day (and dressing accordingly) is easier than ever. Sure, checking the truncated weather forecast on your phone can be handy, but it can also mean you’re missing out on valuable information that could help you cope with the heat, sleet, or general filth outside. This is where desktop weather apps come in handy.
While you may be overwhelmed by the number of weather apps in the Mac App Store or Windows Store, few are beautiful in shape and rich in data. Here are the best ways to check the weather on your Windows 10 or macOS computer.
Windows: MSN Weather and Weather Channel
MSN Weather
Windows 10 includes its own free MSN Weather app, which isn’t a bad thing. It benefits from Windows 10’s customizable Live Tile feature, which immediately displays updated information about your local forecast when you browse the Start menu. This means you don’t need to open the app to see the weather, you just need to press the Windows key.
MSN Weather presents the current forecast along with a forecast summary for the next ten days. Also included are information such as visibility, dew point and barometric pressure. You can look at a satellite image of your region to see upcoming storms or recent weather conditions.
In addition, MSN Weather features a ton of additional information aimed at paranoid amateur meteorologists. You can mark the times of sunrise and sunset (perfect for determining the golden hour for photos ) and get an idea of what to expect by including historical rainfall and temperature data, informing you of the likelihood of rain on a particular day. over a 30-year period.
Weather Channel
The free Weather Channel app for Windows 10 may appeal to allergy sufferers more than weather lovers. It includes the same weather forecast information you find in MSN Weather and supports the same customizable live tile feature.
The Health section contains information such as pollen scores from trees, grass and weeds, and influenza activity (it is winter so the flu activity graph was red). You can also set up The Weather Channel to send you pollen, rain, or severe weather alerts based on your location, which is handy if you’ve forgotten to ask your computer yourself. This feature alone might be worth considering. However, this is not the prettiest app. It displays the forecast for today on a big, bold screen, but forces you to scroll down to get other important information and allows prying news articles to take up precious space.
Mac: The Best Prediction Panel in the Show
While Windows 10 has a robust built-in weather app, macOS isn’t so lucky. There is a weather app that displays a general forecast in your notification center, but it lacks the information you need to get an idea of the day or week that is coming. If you want a more convenient way to get weather information, as well as more information about the weather in general, you should use the forecast panel. We’ve written about Forecast Dashboard in the past and still think this is one of the best weather apps for your Mac.
It’s in the menu bar and provides a lot more information than the default weather service on your Mac. You can display weather data in the dock or menu bar and view animated forecasts based on the weather data provided by Dark Sky.
You can see information such as sunrise and sunset times, historical weather conditions, humidity, dew point, and more. The app is also pleasing to the eye, making it a great addition to your Mac app library. It’s a bit pricey at $ 9.99, and additional in-app purchases are available to increase the frequency of weather updates (the forecast bar is updated hourly). Even so, if you’re tired of the rain, Forecast Bar may be the weather app you need to stay dry.