Announcing Simple Weather v4
On the eve of my birthday, here’s a surprise – a big update. Welcome to Simple Weather v4. This is a really big release. I’ve heard from the Open Source Community (FDroid , Emails , GitHub issues) and the Play Store Reviews. They all wanted me to add a few new features to the already wonderful app. So without wasting time, I’ll tour you through the new features.
NEW FEATURES
- New weather Screen with minor tweaks
- Weather Widget and Hourly Notifications
- New Weather Graphs and Weather Maps
- View Weather Data in Fahrenheit too
- Use your own custom Open Weather Map key
- Refreshed About Screen
- New Icon
DOWNLOAD THE APP
With this release, you now have two sources to download the app from – the Google Play Store and the F Droid Store. While this update is currently live on the Play Store, it will take some time to arrive on FDroid Store (PS. Do not download v3 from the FDroid store, it was meant for Beta testing) (because FDroid isn’t that great when it comes to scanning through releases, v4 will soon be available there in a few days).
NEW ICON
Ah, sadly yes, this is one of the changes too. I know I had just changed the icon in v2, but I think this was really necessary to convey what my app is trying to deliver. Sadly a Sun over a black background would mean complete darkness. So this was necessary. It is also aligned to the main color of my app. Enjoy the new icon.
SLIGHTLY TWEAKED WEATHER SCREEN, NEW WEATHER OPTIONS
Once you upgrade to this new version, you will now see a slightly tweaked main screen. All the information you need, is now in one place. Right here,
As you can also see from the picture above, the Search Red Floating Button has now been moved to the toolbar. This was necessary because in lot of the Reviews I had seen that the FAB (floating Button) usually would hide the details of the last weather item. I could not find a replacement in time, thus I had to move the search button to the main toolbar. And also you can see a Drawer toggle in the toolbar, Right? Yay, open that up and you see this:
This upgrade adds a big request you have all been asking for, Fahrenheit temperatures. Hit the toggle, and the weather screen (if visible) will show you the new Fahrenheit values. I know this could have been better (rather than always refreshing when hitting that toggle), but I will work on it when I get time .
You can also see 2 new options under the Home tab – Weather Graphs and Weather Maps. These are 2 new ways to display the weather information:
What’s more exciting is that you can launch this from your home screen right away. So you need not visit the app ,open the drawer and select the option. Rather, if you are running Android 7.1.1+, you could do this from your launcher as well.
On the Weather Graphs screen, if you hit that empty circle on top, it will show the values on the graph. Moreover, you can change between the three states (Rain, Wind, Temperature) in the Weather Maps screen too.
WEATHER NOTIFICATIONS
You can also opt to see weather notifications on an hourly basis as well. Just hit the “Show Hourly Notifications” toggle, and you will get essential weather updates every hour, like this:
WEATHER WIDGETS
Here is another big feature request being released today – Weather Widgets. These might be slightly buggy on your phone restart (I will work on this in the near future too), otherwise these should just run fine. There are 2 sizes of this widget – Large and Small, whose size you can increase if your launcher supports that option.
CUSTOM OPENWEATHERMAP KEY
As you can see in the Drawer pic, you can now choose to load the Weather Data with your own Custom OWM Key (I would encourage, not recommend all to perform this daring step). Doing so can help slow down the amount of server crashes happening due to my Key.
A NEW ABOUT SCREEN
Also, here is a slightly tweaked About Screen
WHY IS THE APP v4 AND NOT v3
Potentially, this question would have arose on seeing the title itself, “Where did v3 go?”. It never went anywhere, I had decided to do Beta testing with v3. Another reason why I didn’t name the Play Store release as v3 was because the number 3 is unlucky for me. In my early school days, I was always ranked #3 , which never excited me. I started to feel #3 was plain and boring right from then (and unlucky too).