Best weather apps for Android: 8 of the most accurate

Regardless of the season, knowing the weather forecast is essential to making sure you don’t head outside in shorts when it’s drizzling out, or when it’s Sahara-like in the shade and you’ve forgotten to dress light and breezy. Thankfully, there are many great and very attractive weather apps that you can keep on your Android device so you’ll never be left out in the rain again. In this article, we'll discuss some of the best weather apps for Android.

Here are the best Android weather apps!

The Weather Channel: best for world weather news

This is the go-to weather app for many Android users with up-to-date and accurate weather information. It includes hourly, 36-hour and 10-day forecast options, as well as the usual gamut of weather conditions like wind speed, humidity, UV index, visibility, dew point, and pressure. It has a really slick interface, featuring a weather related videos section with clips from around the world. It’s simple to use and intuitive, though it doesn’t feature all of the necessary info on a single page like some other apps do.

The "Now" weather window (left) is clean, if a little light on detail. 

The Weather ChannelINSTALL

Weather Underground: best for getting involved

The self-proclaimed “world’s most accurate hyper-local weather forecasts”, Weather underground employs the combined services of over 33,000 weather stations to offer localized reports from a widespread weather community. This is said to produce a more personalized experience, tailored to your real-time location; users can even give updates on how the weather is in their area, rather relying on what other sources are reporting the weather. The interface is highly detailed and shows everything you could ask for on one convenient and useful page.  

The tick and cross which can be seen on the left screen is to confirm whether or not your local weather is as described - information which will be used to give a more accurate weather overview.

Weather UndergroundINSTALL

Arcus Weather: best at a glance

The Arcus Weather app has a no-frills approach to its interface, which is mostly a dull and grey across its “now”, “hourly” and “daily” pages, but it is very accessible. Arcus features widgets, and weather updates which can be accessed from the notification bar, all supported by a weather algorithm which aggregates a number of sources to provide the most accurate information possible. Arcus weather’s descriptions are nice and detailed, with statements like “light rain through the week, with temperatures falling to 50 degree fahrenheit on Friday,” making it very useful for providing a quick overview.

The Arcus Weather interface is bland, but helpful.

Arcus WeatherINSTALL

1Weather: best widgets and animations

1Weather is one of the best free weather apps for Android, not only because of the immense amount of weather information it is able to share (weather, temperature, wind speed, UV index etc), but also because of its awesome graphics, design and setup. You’ve really got it all: real-time and regularly updated weather forecasts for your home base, but also anywhere in the world. In addition, you'll get precipitation info, animated sunrise and sunsets, and a 10-day weather forecast, which is quite accurate. On the design side, 1Weather has live weather backgrounds and live animated radars for severe weather, and gives you the option of creating your own background. There are many home screen widgets, which consist of the regular square format as well as three clock formats.

Accurate weather at your fingertips, 1Weather looks good and is reliable.  © 1Weather

1Weather:Widget Forecast RadarINSTALL

WeatherBug: best for extra features

WeatherBug also excels in the design and user interface departement, plus it is able to pin-point the weather forecast not only to your city but to your actual neighbourhood. In addition to forecasts and severe weather warnings, the developers have also incorporated a traffic camera section to avoid jams and the possibility to share photos and albums. You can customize it to your lifestyle, to know, for example, if you can run to the gym on a specific day, as well as personalize your home screen, language, and save multiple locations.

WeatherBug has some social features like the option to share pictures, in addition to the usual weather information. Plus live cams show you weather and traffic situations.  

WeatherBugINSTALL

Yahoo Weather: best for ease of use

Yahoo Weather, a free app for Android, offers a complete package full of all the weather information that you need, and has a user interface with appealing graphics. Though it holds a lot of information, the app never seems cluttered, and the constantly changing backgrounds from Flickr are really refreshing. There are many sizes and kinds of widgets for your home screen, plus you’ll often get notifications in your status bar. It has all an average user would need without going overboard with any over-the-top professional features, though the only thing that could be improved on is location precision.

Yahoo Weather uses background images from the huge image database Flickr, which gives the app a really nice look. 

Yahoo WeatherINSTALL

GO Weather: best free version of a paid app

GO Weather offers reliable weather information, nicely displayed on a well-made user interface. In comparison to some other apps, weather updates happen a lot more frequently, and in addition to weather predictions, you’ll also get information on such things as sunrise and sunset, chances of precipitation, wind speeds and more. GO Launcher also comes with a live wallpaper which displays the various weather scenarios, plus it has a few widgets to choose between as well. There’s a free and a paid version of Go Weather Ex, but for those who don’t want to pay, you’ll have to put up with some in-app ads, plus you won’t have access to further weather details and additional content, like themes. Nonetheless, the weather information on the free version is just as accurate.

Go Weather has a nice variety of widgets to decorate your home screen. 

GO Weather Forecast & WidgetsINSTALL

Google Now: best for simplicity

Google Now has a lot to offer in the form of cards which you can customize to show information that you need, when you need it. One of these is a weather card, which shows the daily forecast for your current location, work location and travel destinations. The display is very Google, simple, minimalistic, and informative. Plus you get information such as wind speeds, and the chance of rain. Another available card is for public alerts, which gets you emergency information that comes right from the National Weather Services and the U.S Geological Survey. You can get Google Now as long as you have a Google account, and the Google Search app installed on your Android device. Tap on the Google Search app, tap on the search box, or swipe from the bottom up and this will bring you to Google Now.

 

GoogleINSTALL

What is your favorite weather app?