Checking the weather on your Android phone is a simple task. Most phone makers include their own app or a shortcut to see a built-in weather app through a widget. OnePlus has a weather app, Samsung lets you access it via widget, and Apple recently released a fancy new version of their own. Google, on the other hand, has always just pushed you into the Google app for a weather experience. That may soon change.
Before we get into what’s happening, let me just say that the weather in Google Search isn’t a bad experience, but it’s pretty dated as far as UI goes. On an Android phone, you get a weather UI that looks like it’s 7 years old and that’s probably because it is. We do believe that Google is working on a redesign of this within Google Search, but they may also be working on a standalone weather app for everyone.
Spotted within code of the newest update to Google Clock, a reference to “com.google.android.apps.weather” was made that sure looks it’s talking about an app. The new Clock update apparently has a lot of weather info on the backend (temperature, high and low temps, weather conditions, etc.) that simply needs that point of reference alive to power it. With the launch of a Google Weather app, that should all fire up.
A standalone Google Weather app is something we’d love to see. Accessing weather would be simpler or at least more obvious. Going into your app drawer to find the “Weather” app is a lot handier than searching weather within Google or hoping you were able to add that one random pop-up asking if you want a shortcut to it on your home screen.
Google could also update a weather app more often or without the need to update the Google app and its several other pieces alongside it. Like I said above, the current weather experience is at least 7 years old, so you would think that Google could keep a standalone app updated with the times. And look, everyone else has a weather app – it’s time for Google to make one.
To see what the new Google Weather app would look like, simply take a look at the top of this post. Google previewed the new look at I/O a few weeks back. When on a foldable (or tablet), you would see a two-column setup with location and an 8-day forecast on the left side. The right side would then dive deeper into a specific day, with hourly forecasts, wind, humidity, UV index, and sunrise/sunset times to start.
When can you download the new Google Weather app, you ask? Tough to say for sure, but Google has been teasing it on the Pixel Fold and Pixel Tablet, so by the time those launch in the next couple of weeks, we’ll hopefully see it launch, maybe even as a part of the June Pixel update.
I’m weirdly excited about an official Google Weather app.
// 9to5Google
