I’ve been playing with developer David Smith’s new Check The Weather app for a couple of weeks and I finally understand why people like these things. I’m not a huge fan of weather apps in general, partially because I work from home and also because I live in California, where it’s mostly sunny with a chance of sun.
But plenty of people out there depend on weather apps for their daily routine, even just to figure out what to wear. The easy accessibility of the immediate chance of rain, temperatures for the next few hours, the forecast for the week ahead, including temperature and humidity. Very few weather apps offer all of these things together, which frustrated Smith enough that he crafted his own app to scratch that itch.
The app presents all of that information to the user in crisply defined text, using typefaces from Hoeffler & Frere-Jones and Klim Type Foundry and icons from Sensible World and Iconfactory. The result is an information rich but beautifully readable weather app that puts an immense amount of information at your fingertips. With a swipe in any one of three directions, you can get more or less information than the main view’s current status setup.
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The left pane gives you hourly forecasts with temperature and humidity, the right pane displays daily information with highs and lows.
The coolest bit is that Smith has used the API of the popular rain forecaster Dark Sky to deliver a doppler radar view of your chances of rain on a single swipe upwards. The addition of this data means that even a hard-core weather junkie should have all of the data they need at their fingertips.
I love the fact that all of this info is right in your face, but still doesn’t feel cluttered or claustrophobic. Part of that has to do with the simple slide in pane design and part of that is the excellent typography and iconography.
Either way, if you’re a weather app user, I highly suggest checking out Check the Weather. It’s a standout even in the very crowded weather app space and has even converted me, a bonafide weather app un-enthusiast, to someone who checks the weather daily.
Check the Weather $1.99
Image Credit: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images
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