BBC Weather

Media Applications Technologies for the BBC

- June 7, 2016

Everyone

Weather

( 175,348)

Top Developer

Description

Wherever you are, and whatever your plans, you’re always prepared with the latest weather forecast from BBC Weather.

FEATURES:
• Simple and clear design for easy access to our most detailed and up-to-date information
• Search for locations (automatically added to your favourites), or use your current location
• See any Met Office severe weather warnings issued at your location
• Hourly forecasts with detailed information for the next 48 hrs (UK)
• Look further ahead with 3 hourly forecasts (UK and International)
• See most likely high and low temperatures, and temperature ranges, for days 6-10
• Tap each hour for extra detail including Pressure, Visibility and Humidity
• A day overview including Sunrise/Sunset times, UV, with Pollen and Pollution information for the UK
• Swipe vertically to view all your favourite locations
• Portrait and landscape modes
• Support for 7" and 10" tablets, including hourly temperature curve in landscape mode
• A variety of differently sized interactive home screen widgets, and in Android 4.2 a lock screen widget (widgets unavailable if app is moved to SD card)
• Share the weather forecast on Facebook, Twitter, email and more
• Share favourite locations with a friend via NFC
• Override the detected location, and select a nearby location instead
• Accessibility for users of TalkBack text to speech
• Designed and optimised for Android, and conforms to current Android design guidelines

Note:
• Ability to store the app on the SD card. Widgets will not be available if you choose to use this function. This is a feature of the Android system. If you cannot see any widgets in your list of available widgets, in settings - manage applications, move BBC Weather from SD card to phone/tablet, and then restart your device.
• This app is currently not available for users in the Channel Islands and Isle of Man. The BBC and Google are working to resolve this issue.

If you choose to enable the display of weather at your current location [menu/show current location], the app will provide you with weather information based upon your current location. Your precise location is kept on your device, and once the app has determined the location of the closest populated location for which weather information is available, your precise location is not accessed by the BBC. No other personal data relating to you (such as a username, email address or unique device identifier) is sent to the BBC - you can be assured of this, since the app does not request the "read phone status and identity" or "use accounts on the device" permissions. Your information is anonymous, nevertheless the BBC will keep your information secure and not share it with anyone in accordance with the BBC’s Privacy and Cookies Policy, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/privacy. You can choose to disable the display of weather at your current location [menu/show current location], and then the app will no longer automatically detect your current location.

Reviews

4.4

175,348 total

5 109,965

4 46,979

3 8,631

2 3,876

1 5,897

Daniel Ross

Superbly clear! The clearest, easiest, and most-sensibly laid-out weather app I've yet used; excellent! Keep up the fantastic efforts, BBC! The one minor negative when searching for and finding 'Minster' that did exist with two listed in Kent unclearly has now been fixed with more location detail when such location uncertainty is present. Great! 👍

P Hurkett

Its the... best out there for its ease of use and its simple design.Accuracy has now been improved greatly. But I must say its accuracy in the past was way out. 13th august 2015 was forecast rain all day/24hrs in Bristol and it bearly rained a drop. It wasnt adjusted accordingly either as the day went on. Thousands of £s license money are spent on equipment and wages. Just as well use a barometer and your own judgement. Thats poor when your job/work/earnings relies on an accurate forecast...

Richard Ansell

The actual app works well but the addition if a percentage probability of rain figure would make it much more useful. So called local forecasts are quite often completely wrong. At this moment I am sitting in doors watching a thunderstorm but the latest updated forecast indicates bright sunshine!

Paul Underscore

Seems to work The information given seems accurate most of the time. You can't demand ALL of the time, this is Britain's weather we're talking about, but it gives a good hint. Oddly they don't feature the area I grew up in - it's vibrant, exciting and dubiously famous for riot, which seems to outweigh the Lunar Society's historical influence, but you can guess the weather based on the area next door, so yeah - 's not s' bad.

Ieuan Reed

Material design please My favourite weather app and the interface itself is beautiful but can we get a nice new icon please? I have major OCD and I hate that none of BBC's icons match. Some are lovely and flat, others round and gradient. Fix this and I'll be one happy boy

john clark

John Clark Aberdeen I really like this app. Especially since I live in Aberdeen and support the sons whose home stadiums down by the beach, so if it's going to be windy and cold i can rap up warm if it's sunny I can wear my T start & shorts. I can plan my washing days on this and get predictions when it's going to rain. I love the hourly forecasts too. It's just great!

User reviews

Daniel Ross June 8, 2016

Media Applications Technologies for the BBC July 2, 2013

Thanks for your comments Daniel. The Minster issue is a tricky one - what do you think we should show in this case? Please tell us via the feedback link in the app, this way it will find its way to the right people that can act on it.

P Hurkett July 7, 2016

Richard Ansell June 7, 2016

Paul Underscore September 12, 2016

Ieuan Reed September 12, 2016

john clark September 4, 2016

Chris Clark June 3, 2016

It's the most accurate local forecaster with the closest temperature predictions. Update: However, you've really ruined the widget in the latest update. You've reduced the information on it so I now have to open the app to see when it was last updated - so please return the clock! Nor do we need the big chevrons each side for scrolling, these have reduced the current weather picture size, the discrete ones that were there before were fine. As another reviewer put it... "If it ain't broke - don't fix it!" Hence, I'm removing a star from the grading.

Leon Jones September 9, 2016

Easy to use This app hasn't improved in its accuracy of weather prediction. It can forecast rain all day, and its not raining at anytime in this period. The app has well designed screen area to show weather information where you are. The app breaks down the weather into one hour slots. This implies accuracy. But it would be more realistic if it was in two or three hour slots. Such as the weather forecast on teletext service currently on bbc tv.

Steven Albertson September 6, 2016

Reliable app with only a few unfortunate quirks I like this app: it's easy to navigate and understand and its wiggets mean it slots into my phone menu quite well. Unfortunately, if I have a number of saved weather locations I haven't found a way of reverting it back to current location without deleting all app data in settings.

Dan Ellerton July 8, 2016

Good but slow Brilliant app, always handy to know what the weather will do, and I like how you can be so accurate with location. Lately though it has been very slow to update & there is no option to manually refresh. It got so slow I had to uninstall & reinstall again to get it to work

Samantha Clark July 5, 2016

Gone downhill This app used to be good and I had no issues with it. Recently it has been poor, won't update to today's weather and shows the wrong day. Clearing the cache and forcing the app to stop makes no difference. I have to uninstall and install it again, every time I want to check the weather!

Mark Connor August 10, 2016

Accurate and pretty. Best weather app by far. I'd been using a shortcut to their web page with my post code pre-selected before, but this is really well designed and faster. Not perfect predictions, but often uncannily close, even with the times of rain. By far the most accurate of any other web weather services I'd tried. Also includes a really nice looking widget. Nice one, BBC. Thanks!

Michael Hayward August 3, 2016

I love the BBC Weather app. I find it as accurate as any forecasting is likely to be - even to the hour. I rely on it when arranging a game of golf and only rarely has it not been quite accurate. The rain may arrive an hour later than expected or an hour later. I can live with this. Also, I love the fact that it is easy to find out the weather in other parts of the country, or even in Tasmania or Canada. I would be lost without it on my phone and tablet.

Kashif Sheikh September 14, 2016

Very good Very good. The widget is slick and well presented unlike many widgets on Android. It also allows you to pan through multiple locations without going into the app which is useful. It's not flexible enough to allow widgets for multiple locations but that maybe an Android restriction rather than a development / UI limitation.

Jack September 3, 2016

Great Application It's a great application with smooth animations, high quality images and the perfect amount of opacity between different layers blending them perfectly. The application has all the information you may need, and can be refreshed at any time. Personally, I prefer the Google weather web application, but that's just personal preference due to it's simplistic layout in comparison the the BBC weather application.

Daniel Smith June 28, 2016

Terrible Not so much forecasting as sticking a head out of the window and reporting it. Look at it one minute and tomorrow is sunshine, look again in an hour and it will be floods. Do not make plans based on the information from this app, they cannot forecast long term or short term. Easy to use but pointless.

David Willis August 18, 2016

Rating heavily influenced by poor forecasting The weather summary for the day often does not reflect the reality of what type of weather actually arrives. I know UK weather is variable but forecasts of just 1-3 days ahead are constantly being changed, far more often than on some other weather apps.

Tristan Gale September 4, 2016

Accurate and detailed Shows stats that other apps don't e.g hourly wind speed. Generally it's pretty accurate too. Only problem with it is that it is missing large popular areas in nearby countries yet has places I've never even heard of in Canada.

Neil Guest August 1, 2016

Changes by the minute App works well but who the hell is providing bbc weather?? Could only be the met office seeing as they can't see no further than the next half hour. Sack the bloody lot of em i would and employ a weather cone instead.

Stella Jamieson July 4, 2016

Great but could be better... The app doesn't seem to get updated too often in respect of changing weather so can often be inaccurate for predicting even the next day and wouldn't trust it to predict a few hours ahead necessarily . Yes I know it can't be 100% accurate but still. 7 times out of 10 it's reasonably accurate.

Stuart Mcneil July 11, 2016

Often inaccurate I'm finding this app to be very inaccurate lately and now use the weather channel app instead which appears to be spot on most of the time, I do appreciate the British weather is very twitchy but the app is all to often totally wrong, why do they bother with the five day forecast? it always shows cloud after 3 day's! Needs to be sharper!

Graham Rule September 1, 2016

Unrelable Frequently this has forecast sun all day with some rain in the evening only for there to be heavy rain well before that. Met Office radar gives much more relable view. Also, it can't show any forecast, not even one downloaded a few minutes earlier, if not online. And it doesn't believe a device bluetooth tethered to a phone is online.

j hokodo August 6, 2016

When's it going to rain? Really useful, responsive and fairly reliable. Can take a while on start up, but otherwise very good. Only issue is on showery days- it can change it's mind about what might happen later in the day. So check in again if you can.

Claire Greene June 27, 2016

Inaccurate I've used this app for many years now and over time it is becoming more and more inaccurate with its forecast. A prime example was yesterday (26/06/16) the app said light cloud and sunny spells but it was heavy rain outside. The more long range the forecast the more generic it becomes.

Mark Angell August 13, 2016

Very Good (and free of course!) Always difficult to predict the weather for an Island unless a blob of high pressure stagnating above. As good as any other app I have used. Not a saddo but stops this fair weather golfer from getting wet! (Well most of the time!)

Gra Piken August 25, 2016

Where's the humidity percentage? Most other weather apps display humidity data. Humidity plays a huge part in how the weather 'feels' and I have never understood why the BBC ignores this. When opening it often opens on a different day other than 'today' which is niggling. Not bad though.

Chris W June 17, 2016

Nice looking but... Really inaccurate! Supposed to be snowing all day in my area according to the BBC but nothing in reality. All other weather forecast apps do not forecast snow for me. And the forecast keeps changing every hour or so. Make your mind up. Useless!

Cecile Alfred June 16, 2016

Useful and nice design ! I use this app pretty much every day to know how to dress. (Why do I never choose a country with only 2 seasons?) Mostly accurate depending on the country. Obviously very reliable when in the UK! I wish the app offered the same map as the website so that I could still evaluate the intensity of typhoons when in East Asia during summer time! Green or yellow on the map makes a difference!

natalie tate June 21, 2016

Rubbish Not only do I find the forecasts pretty inaccurate (it's actually raining cats as I type this despite forecasting sunny spells) but sometimes the forecasts differ to what the BBC TV weather forecasts say. Don't bother. There are plenty better

Craig Smith September 19, 2016

Get the Met Office back It is sad, it is a lovely easy app to use but since you stopped using the Met Office it has become hugely inaccurate! You no longer seem to be able to get the nowcast right! I, not very long ago I remember Carol on Breakfast stating that you were now as accurate on a 4 day forecast as you used to be on the following day, most certainly not the case now!

Lee Sanderson June 29, 2016

Look out the window for better accuracy. All the info comes from the same MET office equipment but no matter who packages the end result, it's rarely ever right especially for the west of Scotland. A year on from this original review and it's worse than before.

Warren Drake July 24, 2016

It's OK. I prefer the older version with the radar map.. A real shame it's not on this new version, radar extremely helpful to me especially chasing/photographing thunder storms. Had to unfortunately install another app that shows radar.

Polly Whyte June 12, 2016

I use it a lot, but ... ... there's one really annoying niggle. The summary bar at the bottom often bears little resemblance to the day's forecast. For example, today's shows light cloud and sunny intervals, yet the hourly forecast is for rain or heavy cloud until 9pm. So a quick overview of the next few days tends to be inaccurate. What a shame, as otherwise it's easy to use and normally spot on.

Kenneth Wong June 6, 2016

New widget design terrible. Font for town name too small to accommodate the back/forward buttons. It was fine before. It looks odd now. And it doesn't scale at all well on a tablet! Oh dear......luckily I backed-up the previous version and reinstalled it. The main app is fine.

John Anderson July 4, 2016

App OK, forecasting hopeless. Finally, the problems are fixed and the app is now back to the reliability level of v1. Unfortunately the forecasting seems to be worse than ever. Not even trustworthy for one hour ahead, and that's for all the areas I check. Might be better to drop the computers and go back to the seaweed method. 😀

Dave Sowden August 5, 2016

BBC Weather A weather app that is good, not perfect, but does what it's supposed to do. Accuracy is pretty good but if it turns out to be slightly wide of the mark then it's the weather itself , not the app. These days the forecasts are 90% reliable, though I do wonder sometimes how the Apple app can sometimes be different to the BBC app!

Greg Carroll June 17, 2016

The best I've used I worked at sea for a while and had to pay a fair bit of money for each forecast. This is the best I've come across by far and I'm surprised it's free! It is regularly accurate within a few hours of the app's predicted forecast. If anything, it tends towards a more cautious or pessimistic prediction but as I ride a motorbike daily this is useful and particularly so in icy, windy, or heavy rain conditions. I check it daily and I love it.

Tom Howes June 12, 2016

Nice interface, lousy forecasts I'm really sorry BBC, the accuracy of your forecasts has dropped appallingly recently. If there's a chance of extreme weather, you forecast a worst case scenario; if it's hitt and miss, you miss and it hits. I now rely on the Met Office app and Rain Today - both of which actually do the job!

Nick Randall-Smith June 19, 2016

Essential. What is more British than the BBC? What is more important to the British than the weather? Living on some wind blown, rain spattered, wave battered rocks on the edge of the world's second largest ocean makes this the essential app! It would nice if there was a % chance of rain prognostication.

Dominic Bill June 30, 2016

It's so often wrong I'm not sure whether it's this year's weather, although it's more often wrong than right. The forecast shows sun, outside its raining cats & dogs and vice versa. Have no faith in its forecast accuracy, now using morecast as my default weather app, which is proving to be far better.

What's New

Some useful tweaks to the widget, including backwards and forwards arrows to scroll through locations, as well as some minor performance improvements.