6 Must Have Weather Widgets For Android

While the weather is something you typically just mention during small talk, it's one of the major factors shaping how you go about your day. The weather dictates your daily routine, from deciding what to wear to figuring out where to spend the rest of your day to planning how to store your motorcycle. That's why, unless you're cooped up indoors all year long, staying in the loop with your local weather is always a good idea.

But let's be real — you might not always have the time to tune into the early morning weather report or search online for weather updates. In such cases, you can rely on weather apps instead. These nifty utilities are convenient and impressively accurate, saving you from wearing a sleeveless top on a cold day or getting caught in downpours without an umbrella. If you're on Android, these apps come with an extra perk: widgets. That means you don't even have to launch the app just to check the weather — just a quick glance at your screen, and you're all set. If you're looking for the best widgets to add to your home screen, here are six of the must-have ones based on first-hand experience and Google Play Store reviews. There will be a more in-depth explanation of our methodology for picking these apps at the end of this article.

Featuring a comprehensive suite of forecasts, such as a 12-day weather forecast, a detailed 48-hour rain and temperature forecast, and even local forecast videos and news, the 1Weather app caters to a wide array of needs. It pulls its data from DTN WeatherOps, which, in turn, is backed by more than 200 meteorologists, data engineers, and data scientists who analyze a diverse mix of inputs, including modeled, historical, and hyper-local. The 1Weather app also includes alerts from the United States National Weather Service (NWS) whenever available in your current location.

As for the widgets, there's a total of 12 options you can pick from that display two different sorts of information:

• Simple: Shows essential information like temperature, weather type, city name, current date, and time in varied sizes.
• Detailed: Comes complete with a more elaborate description of the current and future weather. You can see the current wind speed, humidity, chance of precipitation, high and low temperatures, and temperature and weather forecast for the next three to five hours or four days.

To personalize the widget, you can change its accent color, background theme (dark, light, transparent), and background transparency. You can enjoy 1Weather free of charge, but if you prefer to remove the ads (which pop up in the app itself and not the widgets), you can opt for the Pro version for $4.99.

If you're tired of weather apps with boring interfaces, check out Yahoo Weather. Its minimalist full-screen UI showcases the essential data you'll need for the day laid out on a single page with a random Flickr photo of your location as a nice visual treat. Yahoo Weather gets its data from Weather Underground, which is known for its robust forecasting system. In the U.S., Weather Underground relies on a vast network of over 250,000 personal weather stations, nearly 2,000 Automated Surface Observation System (ASOS) stations, and more than 26,000 stations from NOAA's Meteorological Assimilation Data Ingest System (MADIS). For international weather, Weather Underground taps into roughly 6,000 airport-based automated weather stations, 8,000 personal weather stations, and 16,000 MADIS stations worldwide.

Yahoo Weather offers seven widgets to beautify your home screen, each of which also features scenic backdrops:

• 1x1 and 3x1: Both show similar data (location, weather conditions, and temperature) but in different layouts.
• 1x2 and 3x2: Similar to the smaller widgets but with the addition of a digital clock. The 3x2 layout lets you scroll through the different locations added to the app.
• Fixed Location 3x2: Similar to 1x2 and 3x2 but with a larger clock display.
• Scrollable Locations 3x2: Visually similar to the Fixed Location widget but can be scrolled to display a different area.
• Hourly Forecast 3x2: This shows the weather forecast and temperature for the next 12 hours.

Yahoo Weather is completely free, though it does include ads within the app.

True to its name, YoWindow aims to show you exactly what you can expect to see when you look outside your window. Its interface changes to reflect the current season, weather conditions, and sun and moon position at specific times of the day. But more than aesthetics, YoWindow provides high-precision weather data, too. It sources its current and forecast weather from various references, including the NWS, Foreca Nowcasting, Open Weather Map, the Norwegian Meteorological Institute, and the Norwegian Broadcasting Corporation (NRK), over 4,000 METAR weather stations, and other radar and satellite images. What's cool about YoWindow is that it also allows you to change the app's weather service to your preferred source to get more reliable local data.

Widgets-wise, YoWindow features six different-sized options for your home screen:

• 1x1, 2x1, and 3x1: Presents the same information (location, weather condition, temperature, and time).
• Nine-day and Hourly Forecast 3x2: Divided into two rows. The top row shows you the weather forecast for today and the next eight days. The bottom row is an hourly forecast for the current day.
• Clock 3x2: Comes with a giant clock in the middle and features the temperature, weather conditions, wind speed, and wind direction.
• Detailed 3x2: Provides a comprehensive overview of the weather for the day. This includes details such as humidity, dew point, sunrise and sunset times, pressure, and last update time.

You can purchase the ad-free version of YoWindow for $0.99 for one month or $9.99 for life.