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mrk2010

macrumors newbie
Dec 27, 2010
7
0
Bumping an old thread. Just wondering if anyone knows of a good weather app that sits in the menu bar and uses weather data from Wunderground. All I can find on the Wunderground website is the widget. Since they've made their API available to developers, I'm sure that there is an app out there matching my description.
 

Ledgem

macrumors 68020
Jan 18, 2008
2,034
924
Hawaii, USA
I'd like to know, too. I've been using Meteo (Meteorologist), and it works pretty well... but I wouldn't mind a fancier-looking interface, and I really miss having an animated Doppler radar. Meteo has a snapshot of the Dopper, but seeing it in motion is a lot more informative.

MenuWeather looks like it has the features I'm looking for, but I'm not sure about the interface... Living Earth HD is beautiful, but lacks radar maps (for the moment, at least) and there are some big complaints about its resource usage. 500 MB for the weather is something that I can spare, but it seems a bit excessive.

There's also Weather HD, which seems to fit somewhere between the two in terms of design and price. It has all of the features... it's a pity there are no ways to trial each of these applications. Most of them are cheap enough that taking a hit on one wouldn't be so bad, but I'd feel really stupid if I had to go through two or three of them - especially if I did that, and ultimately decided that they were no better than (or even worse than) Meteo.
 

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,136
15,597
California
I'd like to know, too. I've been using Meteo (Meteorologist), and it works pretty well... but I wouldn't mind a fancier-looking interface, and I really miss having an animated Doppler radar. Meteo has a snapshot of the Dopper, but seeing it in motion is a lot more informative.

MenuWeather looks like it has the features I'm looking for, but I'm not sure about the interface...

I have been using MenuWeather and am very happy with it. It does having animated radar for national, regional, and local. If there is something in particular about the interface you would like me yo check for you, I would be glad to do that.
 

Ledgem

macrumors 68020
Jan 18, 2008
2,034
924
Hawaii, USA
I have been using MenuWeather and am very happy with it. It does having animated radar for national, regional, and local. If there is something in particular about the interface you would like me yo check for you, I would be glad to do that.
Thanks, I appreciate the offer. It looks like to get the radar information you need to open the application itself, and can't just get it through the menubar drop down - is that true? It's not a deal-killer, but I'm curious.

Also, based on the reviews in the Mac App Store there are two other concerning points. First, a number of complaints focus on instability of the program under OS X 10.8, with people needing to force-shutdown and such. Have you experienced anything like that? Also, someone else wrote that the update frequency can only be set to 45 minutes at the fastest. Is that true, too?
 

sk1wbw

Suspended
May 28, 2011
3,483
1,010
Williamsburg, Virginia
Anyone seen WeatherClip?

It uses Wunderground data. Just bought it and it looks nice.

----------

Bumping an old thread. Just wondering if anyone knows of a good weather app that sits in the menu bar and uses weather data from Wunderground. All I can find on the Wunderground website is the widget. Since they've made their API available to developers, I'm sure that there is an app out there matching my description.

WeatherClip
 

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,136
15,597
California
Thanks, I appreciate the offer. It looks like to get the radar information you need to open the application itself, and can't just get it through the menubar drop down - is that true? It's not a deal-killer, but I'm curious.

To get to radar info you click the menubar icon, then click "More Weather..." and the window below pops up. On the right there you can see where to click national, regional, or local for radar.

In the area I have shaded out it lists all the cities you are tracking weather for.

mfFak.png


Also, based on the reviews in the Mac App Store there are two other concerning points. First, a number of complaints focus on instability of the program under OS X 10.8, with people needing to force-shutdown and such. Have you experienced anything like that? Also, someone else wrote that the update frequency can only be set to 45 minutes at the fastest. Is that true, too?

I have been using Menu Weather for maybe a year, and I have never once had it crash or lockup.

Correct... the refresh options are 45 minutes, then one and two hours.

I read in a post somewhere from the dev. that he uses a paid weather service (he pays the service per registered user), and this is a limitation of that service. Supposedly, the upside to this is the paid service provides more accurate and complete weather data than the free weather sources used by many other apps. It seems to provide accurate info for the two cities I track.
 

terrymaz

macrumors regular
Aug 3, 2010
123
0
SF Bay Area and Chicago Area
The thing with Living Earth is that it forces the computer to use the NVIDIA graphics card always. I'm trying to find a new weather app to keep the integrated graphics on to conserve battery.

I was going to bring living earth up as well but was not aware of the issue you are speaking of. Is there a way to minimize this problem? Also, for some reason when i start my mac it shows to icons on the bottom of the dock open for it. I've tried messing with login item but cant seem to stop that from happening
 

Agronimo

macrumors newbie
Jan 17, 2013
3
0
Temps

I'm using Temps for a while now and I really love this app. Mac App Store link.
The last version brought a completely re-designed interface, it looks really great now.
You can add up to 12 locations. One click on the menu symbol and you see all your locations with current temperature and condition image. Move the mouse over one of the locations and the detail view with more weather infos and a 3 day forecast appears.
For me it's the best menubar weather app!
 
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plaintiger

macrumors member
Sep 3, 2008
40
1
I'm using Temps for a while now and I really love this app. Mac App Store link.
The last version brought a completely re-designed interface, it looks really great now.
You can add up to 12 locations. One click on the menu symbol and you see all your locations with current temperature and condition image. Move the mouse over one of the locations and the detail view with more weather infos and a 3 day forecast appears.
For me it's the best menubar weather app!

i just tried Temps on your recommendation and found it to be a complete waste of $3.00. the server's continually down. if you want to make sure your Mac is still able to display spinning rainbow beachballs, Temps is great for that. but if it's weather you want, you'll have to look elsewhere.
 

plaintiger

macrumors member
Sep 3, 2008
40
1
update: i'm no longer using Menu Weather - it's just too damn problematic. it works for a while, and then one issue or another arises - most recently, the app's been unable to find weather and just sits in my menu bar spinning, and displaying a beachball if i dare click it. i just got tired of its unreliability and after looking at a few other options went back to Meteorologist. it's not gorgeous and doesn't have some cool features like Menu Weather's (occasionally-working) ability to determine your current location, but it provides everything i absolutely require, and more, is very configurable, and it's free. and it seems to be pretty diligently updated too. works for me, at least until something better comes along.
 

Agronimo

macrumors newbie
Jan 17, 2013
3
0
i just tried Temps on your recommendation and found it to be a complete waste of $3.00. the server's continually down. if you want to make sure your Mac is still able to display spinning rainbow beachballs, Temps is great for that. but if it's weather you want, you'll have to look elsewhere.

Sorry, but that's not true. I'm using Temps for about a year nearly every day now - without the problems you are describing in your post. Try it again, I'm sure it works.
 

plaintiger

macrumors member
Sep 3, 2008
40
1
Sorry, but that's not true. I'm using Temps for about a year nearly every day now - without the problems you are describing in your post. Try it again, I'm sure it works.

okay, it's been a while, but i find myself at this thread again, seeing what people think of which weather apps these days, and at least as of now, i stand corrected: Temps is working beautifully (and i mean that literally - it's very pretty). the preferences seem a little limited to me, and it doesn't seem to be able to make its preferences window quite fit on the screen of my 11" MacBook Air, but it is fetching weather and displaying it in a way that's at once intuitive, detailed, and beautiful. i might have to try it for a while, even though it doesn't seem to be able to display the humidity in the menubar, which i've appreciated about Meteorologist since i started playing the uilleann pipes.

***

whoops, nope, never mind: Temps, for all its beauty, seems to be buggy and poorly designed. right after i posted the above praise for it, it crashed when i tried to close its About window, and then i discovered the developers forgot to include a Quit command (unless it's at the bottom of the Preferences window that can't be made to fit onto my screen). so for me it's back to being a toss-up between Meteorologist (not pretty and doesn't support location detection, but solid and displays humidity in the menu bar) and MenuWeather (awkward interface and doesn't display humidity in the menu bar, but does support location detection). and methinks my personal winner is Meteorologist, until something comes along that does everything i want and does it without crashing.
 
Last edited:

Ledgem

macrumors 68020
Jan 18, 2008
2,034
924
Hawaii, USA
whoops, nope, never mind: Temps, for all its beauty, seems to be buggy and poorly designed. right after i posted the above praise for it, it crashed when i tried to close its About window, and then i discovered the developers forgot to include a Quit command (unless it's at the bottom of the Preferences window that can't be made to fit onto my screen). so for me it's back to being a toss-up between Meteorologist (not pretty and doesn't support location detection, but solid and displays humidity in the menu bar) and MenuWeather (awkward interface and doesn't display humidity in the menu bar, but does support location detection). and methinks my personal winner is Meteorologist, until something comes along that does everything i want and does it without crashing.
I used Meteorologist for a bit over a year and ultimately switched to Temps because Meteorologist keeps creating a ghost window whenever Mission Control was activated. There wouldn't be a window, but "Meteorologist" would show up and take up space. I believe the change log indicated that this problem was fixed with OS X 10.7 or 10.8, but I had it with 10.8 and it continued with 10.9.

Temps looks nicer, but I have some doubts about its accuracy. I don't know where it pulls its data from, but I've had a few instances where Temps would claim that it was "clear" outside, when it was either raining or overcast. The extended forecasts seem to match up closely enough with local weather forecasts, but I found that to be odd.

I'll continue with Temps for now, but the hunt for a good weather application continues...
 

stisdal

macrumors 6502
Feb 28, 2010
320
1
USA
Living Earth Desktop

Give Living Earth Desktop a try. I have multiple weather apps, but this is the one I like to keep in the menu bar. Accurate (Midwest USA), gives conditions with a glance, and a week view with a click.

I am running Mavericks and use this on both my Mini (i5) and my Macbook Pro.
 

kamuix

macrumors regular
Feb 9, 2011
198
15
california
I've been using clear day and its pretty nice. Sits in the menu bar and I do have multiple cities for fun to check out their weather. I can click on the weather icon and it'll drop down a menu with the other cities temperature. Then there's the app when you open showing temps, radar, and all that fun stuff. Also shoots out weather warnings too, via notifications. I guess the only bad thing is that the warnings are shot for any cities that you might have set up. I had Paris for fun, and I kept getting flood warnings lol.
 

plaintiger

macrumors member
Sep 3, 2008
40
1
between the wording and tone of this message and the fact that the author is a MacRumors Newbie, i'd be willing to bet the author is the developer or someone else with a vested interest in Temps' success.

Temps

I'm using Temps for a while now and I really love this app. Mac App Store link.
The last version brought a completely re-designed interface, it looks really great now.
You can add up to 12 locations. One click on the menu symbol and you see all your locations with current temperature and condition image. Move the mouse over one of the locations and the detail view with more weather infos and a 3 day forecast appears.
For me it's the best menubar weather app!
 
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