Mercury Weather Ratings and Reviews

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 🤞🤞

This app seems well thought out. It is extremely simple and direct, while still providing most of the information I want while looking at a weather app.
The one thing missing is air quality index data. Air quality is increasingly important these days and I can’t fully abandon Apple Weather app without this crucial feature.
The top pane of this app features a large current temp display with 3 tappable toggle positions below it (2 at night, since one is UV). These toggles are humidity/dew point, wind/gusts and UV. I really wish I could toggle UV to AQI! This makes sense to have those two share a position, and having one of the items not tappable makes it feel broken. Plus, having the UV position come and go at day/night is more confusing than a simple “-“ there at night.
I hope the devs will include AQI data soon. It would be a big feature boost without adding much app complexity.

I like the design and limited features. The weather items in the app are mostly what I use in my other weather app. Overall opinion: lots of attention to detail in the design; less in the functioning of the app. I'm using v1.1.4.

Main issues: It's slow to update weather in the app and in widgets/complications. App doesn't use background app refresh (not showing in my list). App is now forgetting that I have a subscription and switched all my widgets to demo mode; had to open the app settings to verify subscription; then widgets switched back. Watch app's name appears as a variable/key instead of app name in the complications lists (never seen that before). I had to reinstall the watch app for the complications to work. Also, my subscription shows as "Clear" instead of "Mercury"; who is Clear? I'd totally use this app if the polish applied to the design was applied to how it functions.

I have a road trip starting in a couple days, so decided to try out the new “trip weather” feature. I added in the cities for the first 6 days of the trip. But the “trip view” screen that lists each city just shows the *current* temperature in each of the cities. I would prefer to at least see the high-low temperature for each day in each city, so it could be used as an easy reference when deciding how to pack. I realize I can tap on the transportation icons above each day on the main screen, but the “trip” screen seems like it could be more useful. I realize this is a new feature, so maybe there’s more to come.

Feature no. 2 of the Pro pack is “Remove our slightly annoying banner from your weather overview”? It’s flagrant and also funny, but… idk. Makes me feel weird. Especially when the app uses the same data source as the stock weather app.

Also, the comments talk about how beautiful it is, but I find the broken up line graph to be hard to look at. I wish it was a smooth line with the numbers listed at the top of the column or something. Small nitpicks… but we’re comparing a paid app to the free built in weather app (which uses the same exact data)

The trip forecast seems like a nice feature, and I’ve even wanted something like this to exist before, but I only find myself wanting that once or twice a year

I like that I can have this app displayed as widgets showing current weather, hourly weather and 7 day forecast. With but one glance available across multiple devices I can get all the information I need. Weather alerts are detailed and prominently displayed if needed and I love the fact I can have numerous other locations available, again with just a glance.
The price and the lack of radar maps reduced it to a 4 star rating imo, but this is one solid weather app. Despite the price and it being without maps, this app was still good enough for me to do the switch and become my full primary weather app. Try it.

I wanted to give a small, young indie team a shot, but I ended up disappointed.

The app tries really hard to be a new Weatherline (RIP), but it does it poorly:
It’s more chaotic and less readable. It doesn’t offer any customization which results in scrolling and scrolling and scrolling - a poor use of screen space.
It’s got a very in your face design, which is not going to be everyone’s cup of tea (I’m not a fan), so the lack of themes or any adjustability hurts Mercury a lot.

Also, the price. It costs just slightly less than Carrot, but it doesn’t offer any additional data sources. If you’re relying only on WeatherKit, you should price your product accordingly. But really, you should just offer more providers.

It definitely takes guts to take on the already good stock weather app and phenomenal Carrot. I respect that.

Having said that, I don’t think Mercury will be successful. It’s just too far behind and I don’t think it will ever be able to catch up.
As a huge fan of Shark Tank and an *anonymous* AppStore reviewer I can’t help myself: you should take this app behind a barn, shoot it and then burn it.

I can see you’re talented devs, but I doubt this weather app is the best use of your talent.

Love the beautiful UI and minimal design. One star knocked because I can’t begin to understand the choice of having the search magnifying glass graphic take up so much space at the top. Move it down into the temp graphic field and free up that space to see more of the UI at the bottom of the screen, please. Or for that matter along with the minimal interface, just leave it off completely as the user can already just tap the city name to bring up the location chooser. Or maybe just pull down to access locations being that the pull down to refresh is nonexistent.