The new Google Weather app for the Pixel Tablet is great

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.

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.

There are new, more similar icons for all weather conditions, as well as new graphs and images for precipitation, wind, and humidity, as well as new, animated gauges for wind, humidity, UV index, and pressure. I get it – everything is new. And it looks absolutely stunning in dark mode and in photo too.

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.

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.

Chief among these are hourly forecasts for all 10 days, not just today and tomorrow. This includes hourly temperature and conditions, precipitation, wind, and humidity 10 days prior in most cities. There are some exceptions with limited expectations (such as Tokyo in the screenshot below), but they are very rare.

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.

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.

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.

When the tablet is sitting on the dock and in Hub mode I can see the current weather but tapping it doesn’t open the new weather app unless I unlock it. Not sure why. Even worse, if I asked Google Assistant about the weather, I’d get the old Nest Hubs weather interface. Sure, it’s more visible from a distance, but it uses an outdated design, outdated symbols, and provides very little information.

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.