Google Pixel devices now include an official default weather app.

Google has finally released a default weather app to compete with Apple and Samsung. Though Pixel phones have long been able to display the current weather in widgets, touching on those widgets merely launched a rudimentary screen with a lovely weather frog and a handful of information. It felt like a website because that's exactly what it was.

Google has changed that with the announcement of the Pixel Tablet earlier this week. Its new weather app — which is accessed through the same widgets as before because there is no icon to open it — has a far cleaner appearance without losing the whimsy of the prior experience. It offers 10-day and 24-hour forecasts, as well as wind, humidity, barometric pressure, and UV index readings, as well as current sun position and sunrise / sunset times. It also shows details for precipitation, wind, and humidity broken down by the hour. All of this is available in an easy-to-parse single screen with some fun animations for the current conditions.

The new software can also provide quick information about impending precipitation, such as how intense it will be and how long it will stay before it stops. It can even deliver this info up to 12 hours ahead of time by utilising data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and other sources. This data will be displayed in the app only when it is relevant - if there is no incoming precipitation near you, it will not be displayed.

Perhaps the only thing missing from this new weather experience is a radar view — if there is one, I’ve been unable to find it in the app. It’d also be nice to have an app icon to launch the weather app instead of having to rely on a widget. Like the bare-bones previous version, this new one is powered by the Google app, but it feels much more native and less like a dinky little website.

For the time being, the new weather app is only available for tablets, including the Pixel Tablet and the soon-to-be-released Pixel Fold. 9to5Google reports that it intends to bring it to other devices in the future, but no timetable has been provided. Thanks to developers who were able to activate it on their devices, Android Police has some photographs of what it looks like running on a phone-sized screen.

Samsung devices also come with a rather comprehensive weather app, but I'm hoping that Google doesn't keep this limited to the Pixel series and makes it more widely available. It wouldn't be the first time Google offered Pixel-specific software to devices other than its own.