December 3, 2024

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The new Google Weather app for the Pixel Tablet is great

The new Google Weather app for the Pixel Tablet is great

Rita El Khoury / The Android Authority

When I zipped around to check the weather on my new Pixel Tablet, I wasn’t expecting to be greeted with a completely revamped and gorgeous interface, but that was it. Turns out there’s a new Google Weather app — which has been teasing for a couple of months — and it’s debuting on the Pixel Tablet and Pixel Fold, with more devices to come.

Google Pixel deviceGoogle Pixel device

Google Pixel device

Big screen • Double as a smart display • Built-in docking

The portability of a tablet and the intelligence of the Nest Hub

The Pixel Tablet is a 10.95-inch slab with Tensor G2-powered features that doubles as a Nest Hub smart display/speaker when placed in the Charging Speaker Dock.

Nice design with fun animation

Screenshot of the google weather app today is sunny

Rita El Khoury / The Android Authority

The Google Weather interface has been completely redesigned from the ground up to adapt to larger screens. Gone is the whole splashy blue screen on previous Android tablets that barely showed any details and required a lot of tapping and swiping to reveal any details. Instead, we get an information-intensive user interface with All the stuff. Literally everything fits on one screen with no scrolling required except for a simple swipe on the Today View. Just look at the atrocities below; This is what the old weather app used to look like on tablets.

The Today view still shows the frog animation with the current conditions. The background color changes from gray to blue to dark and more, depending on the time and weather. However, other days have a uniform blue background regardless of the conditions.

Weather alerts also show hourly top forecasts. I’ve spotted alerts for rain and heavy rain, but I expect there will be more alerts for snow, tornadoes, and severe conditions.

Two other things struck me about this redesign. One of them is that it is now easier to click on any day to see the forecast weather. It’s much smoother and easier than switching to another tab first, and then choosing today. The second is how smooth everything is and the beautiful animation of the wind or humidity gauges that occur when switching from one day to the next or when scrolling through the hourly charts. All is well.

I mean, just look at the UV Index scale as it goes from green for level 1 to purple for level 11.

The new Google Weather app brings even more forecasts

Screenshot of the google weather app over 2 days ago

Rita El Khoury / The Android Authority

Besides the new visual experience, the new Google Weather app adds a lot of additional information previously not accessible via the old interface — you had to go to Weather.com to get that.

Of course, the information won’t be that accurate beforehand, but it should give you an idea of ​​what to expect. You can start planning two to three days in advance for a morning run, an all-day hike, or a sunset on the beach.

There is still room for improvement

tablet weather google pixel 1

Rita El Khoury / The Android Authority

This wouldn’t be a Google app update if it weren’t for some bugs, despite the huge improvements in usability, smoothness, and fit of the tablet.

First, I wish Google would dynamically change the wallpaper for all days, not just today, and include the quirky frog animation in there as well. Some small details also seem to have completely disappeared from the sunrise and sunset chart: there is no solar noon, day length, or daylight left. If you like to dig deeper into these parts, you will have to get it from a third-party app.

The other minor grumble is that the weather widgets haven’t been updated with the new icons yet. They still use the old flat style.

google weather widgets

Rita El Khoury / The Android Authority

But my biggest disappointment is the disparate experience between this new Google Weather app and the old weather experience on the Pixel Tablet when docked.

Do you like the design of the new Google Weather app?

40 votes

How do I get the new Google Weather app?

Unfortunately, Google Weather is still not a standalone app available for download. There have been rumors that it could be split into a separate app, but that doesn’t seem to be the case yet on the Pixel Tablet. For now, it remains part of the main Google search app.

It appears that such changes are being rolled out server-side to the Google app, so again, for now, it appears that the new design is only available on the Pixel Tablet. It’s also expected to debut on the Pixel Fold, but should roll out to more Pixel phones and hopefully more Android devices in the future.