Mercury Weather +4

Weather Line was my favorite weather app by a country mile, for years. It eventually disappeared when the dev sold the IP. I’ve been through every other alternative weather app since then, looking for a substitute, and they all had things that I found annoying.

This week, I found Mercury Weather, which is checking all of my boxes! Good widgets with CLEAN design, and good data. An app that gives me what I need and want, without piling on tons of nerdery that I don’t need (I have other apps for when I need to get nerdy with weather). This app is a tight, concise, and pleasant to view, app. I really hope it stays this way!

I like the clean layout and line graph display of the forecast. In combination with other favorite weather apps Mercury provides an intuitive display and nice widget options. The trip planning forecast is a nice addition—though it would be helpful if the temp display on the main city list showed high & low for the day so you could understand generally what the day was like to help with planning and packing. When a trip approaches within the week the weather for the travel city is spliced into the forecast.

Monthly average temperature graph (premium feature) is very useful. It’s unfortunate that the app lacks radar, but the iOS weather app and many others fill in this gap. I think the design could be improved if some of the elements were made more compact, for example, the search/globe icon in the top right takes up a whole line of vertical space in the top of the app which essentially leaves a blank bar at the top and pushes the forecast at the bottom below the fold (for standard sized iPhones). That blank space at the top could be filled with glyphs and small widgets to give glanceable weather data for the day. I also think the hourly graph should display the day when it crosses over midnight.

This app is just so much nicer to look at than Apple weather! I miss dark sky and don’t need ALL their details, but I would love to see a radar map (and really needy - I’d REALLY love it to have the little cones that show the direction storms are heading and estimate time with the lines…) as someone who spends a lot of time outside for work it’s great to look at a map and say “well, looks like we have at least 20 minutes till this clears. Let’s go kill some time” or “looks like this is a whole line of pop up storms, let’s call it for today”

On a similar note when I’m planning things I’ll say “weather looks good Wednesday” and most people say “oh? My app says rain” yes the little icon shows rain, and it will rain…at 10:30pm. Being able to get that view further out is super helpful.

All in all, for now I’ll take the every day comfort of this app and look at Apple weather when I need future details or radar. I’ll just keep crossing my fingers and hoping for a little bit more down the road 🤞🤞