Macintosh Weather Software Review by Product Name/Version Source Price System Requirements Development Status Sonic’s Rating US$20 Shareware PowerPC Processor, Macintosh OS 8.6 or higher, Quicktime 4.0 or higher, 32 MB RAM, 90 MB Disk space. See review below for OS X information. Active Excellent (for fast machines) Shareware (too difficult to navigate poor website to find out price) Macintosh 9.0 or higher; Macintosh OS X 10.0 or higher Active Fair US$10 Donationware PPC Macintosh, 4 MB Ram, Mac OS 8.6 or higher or Mac OS X 10.1.x, Carbon Lib 1.2 or higher. One Carbonized version for OS X and the Vintage Mac OS.
Active Would be at least Good if stable US$10 shareware Not explicitly listed. Guessing OS 7.x and newer, plus a separate version for OS X 10.0.4 and newer. Moribund and unknown Flaky Gavin Shapiro Freeware System 8.1 or Later with CarbonLib (Or Mac OS X)????
Poor Freeware Weather Grok can be run on any Macintosh with OS 8.0 or higher and 3 MB free RAM. Open Transport is required. Separate versions for OS X and the Vintage Mac OS. Dead and Unsupported.
See Son Of Weather Grok. Good Scott Norris Freeware System 7.1 or later and Open Transport. Moribund Fair US$10 shareware.
WeatherMan runs on any classic Mac with Open Transport installed. Avoid QuickTime 4.1.2 if you can.
Having AppleScript installed would be nice but not required. WeatherMan runs on OS 9.x. There are some known bugs on OS 8.x but nothing too serious.
Separate versions for OS X and the Vintage Mac OS. An internet connection. Active Very Good Aladdin Systems Discontinued Payware N.A. Stone cold Dead Poor US$12 shareware A Macintosh computer with any PowerPC processor; Mac OS 8 or later (Mac OS 9 compatible); QuickTime 4.0 or later for satellite graphics; An Internet connection, dialup or fixed.
Not compatible with proxies. Dead Poor From the Author: Earth Browser is a three dimensional model of the Earth that is constantly monitoring conditions around the globe. It will keep you informed on the latest weather forecasts, earthquakes, volcanoes and webcams from all over the world. It also becomes a beautiful screen saver when your computer is idle.
Sonic’s review: Earth Browser is a very comprehensive program that goes well beyond just weather forecasts. Version 1.7.1 appears to be the final version for the Vintage Mac OS (to 9.2.2). As of the date this page was last revised, Earth Browser is currently supported for OS X and is at version 2.5.1, costing up to US$30. It was pretty slow on my 9600/350 running 9.2.2, though it was stable and doing an awful lot of processing (bumping up the RAM allocation did not seem to help much). Forecast data in v. 1.7.1 appears limited to a “5-day forecast”, and lacks the extended forecast, warnings, and other information products like WeatherMan provide. Still, the other products don’t cover the world as well as Earth Browser, are not as intuitive, and don’t touch things like earthquakes and volcanic activity.
Very well documented, and appears to be well supported. Folks with fast Macs and especially those running OS X should take a serious look at this program. From the Author: Simple Weather 1.7 is an easy to use and understand weather program that updates the weather for you when you specify. Keep up to date on what the weather is like even if you can’t see the outside. Simply open Simple Weather and read the easy instructions and you are ready to go. Sonic’s review: Very limited display. Smaller and maybe faster than WeatherMan, though far less informative.
The OS 9 version of this product seems to have actually gotten worse from 1.7 to 1.7.5: text is cut off, does not sort when field heads are clicked. Then again, the documentation is sufficiently poor that it is hard to tell what is supposed to happen. From the Author: Son of Weather Grok is an application that displays weather conditions and forecasts for cities from around the world. Son of Grok will show the temperature, sky conditions, humidity, wind speed, pressure, ceiling, visibility, and much more. Weather data is usually updated hourly from NOAA, and you can set Son of Grok to get this data at specified time intervals. The data is then displayed in an easy to read format using fancy-schmancy sky condition illustrations like you see on the news, along with the details in a small scrolling ticker and drop down list.
Drivers windows 7 32 bits. Sonic’s review: Son of Weather Grok is the currently-supported replacement for the older Weather Grok program. I had previously tested version 4.2.1, which showed quite a bit of promise, and some competition for WeatherMan. 4.2.2 has proven to be an unstable crashy mess on my system, so i cannot currently revisit SWG’s merits. I have submitted a bug report to the author and will update this review if i can get a version that runs stably for me. From the Author: WeatherCenter is designed to keep you updated on current weather conditions, as well as providing a simple wayto get weather outlook information, all in a TV Weather-style format. Sonic’s review: Fails to work correctly in substantial ways (missing information). Seems less complete than WeatherMan, and definitely more modal.
Smashin Software appears to be shuffling its product offerings. There appears to have been a successor to WeatherChecker called iWeather. IWeather appears to have ceased development at prerelease version 3 (PR 3). WeatherCenter is listed as “Coming Soon” on a with a copyright date of 1999. Appears to be limited to only one city at a time. Promising, yet very unfinished product.
From the Author: WeatherChecker is a program that you can use to check the weather. The first time you run it, it will ask you for your zip code.
Once you enter it, it will give you the weather for that zip code at weather.com. From then on, whenever you run the program it will give you the weather for that zip code and you will not have to enter it again. If you ever want to change the zip code, just hold down the Command key while starting the program and you will be prompted to enter the zip code again. Sonic’s review: WeatherChecker does nothing more than launch a web browser and find the correct weather.com link.
Not that useful IMO. From the Author: Weather Grok is a simple application used to grab the latest weather conditions from NOAA. Painter essentials 5 tutorial. Weather Grok uses NOAA's ICAO codes to lookup the weather conditions for your area. Weather Grok provides a simple, easy-to-use interface to the information on local weather provided by NOAA. Weather Grok can get this data at specified time intervals or whenever you wish. Sonic’s review: Well made, and decently documented.
Price cannot be beat. No forecast, yet very good and flexible for the basic current information. Has been superceded by Son Of Weather Grok. From the Author: WeatherMac lets you call up the weather in your area. You can even have it read to you.
Sonic’s review: Very fast. Supports multiple cities, but only displays one at a time.
Nice automation feature (untested) to have it auto-save a text file for printing. Updates every hour; not adjustable. As with most of these products, the documentation is sparse, and there are no recent signs of ongoing development. If all you want is current temperature, barometric pressure, humidity, and wind speed,and you don’t mind being stuck with only U.S. Units (no metric), the price is right and you may want to check it out. I usually want some kind of forecast.
From the Author: WeatherMan downloads current weather conditions, current weather forecast, severe weather statements and Nexrad radar images from the National Weather Service. Sonic’s review: I have been using WeatherMan since version 1.8.3b2. It does enough of what i want well enough that i have long been a registered user.
Takes up more screen real estate than other choices, yet uses it well: it is very complete. The biggest problem has been documentation: the author readily admits preferring spending time improving the program over creating and maintaining documentation. At least in recent versions there is a Quick Start guide! The scrolling bug still occasionally pops up (intermittent lack of scroll bars), otherwise WeatherMan has evolved to become pretty stable.
Hint: double-click on the radar image to open it in a bigger window where its contents can actually be seen. From the Author: Aladdin Systems has removed WeatherTracker, and instead has links to other weather software. Sonic’s review: WeatherTracker is obsolete payware, for which serial #s are no longer available. In previous unregistered testing under OS 8.1, it tended to crash.
From the Author: WeatherWatch downloads and displays satellite graphics for all the regions of the world, plus temperature, humidity, visibility, and more. Sonic’s review: What is it about weather software that causes developers to abandon the projects so early and so often? This appears to be another dead product, not even listed on the company’s website.
There are better choices, though the display of the Weather Underground national temp. Map is nice, and other products could learn from it. This Siber-Sonically Pure Page is and Transitional compliant.
Source: There are many uses for historical weather information, but your desktop console often does not store more than a few hours of past data for review. This is where personal weather station software comes in, and why we recommend that you install it yourself to get the most out of your investment. If you’re only using your to find out the current weather conditions, you’re not using your station to its fullest potential. You can forecast and analyse much more by looking at weather trends over the longer term versus just observing whatever is happening at any given moment. For example, seeing how a shift in wind direction affects weather conditions and temperature over several hours may provide clues as to what the weather may do in the near future. Also, reviewing weather observations for an extended period of time may help you better decide whether you might need to water your garden more as a result of overall drier weather to ensure optimal growth, and so on.
Where Can I Get Free Weather Station Software? Most weather stations come with software in the box. There are a few stations—most notably the and —where you’ll need to purchase some type of attachment or dongle to connect it to a software program, but those are few and far between.
There are also third-party software options available if the included software doesn’t meet your needs, which we’ll cover later. While typically these are “shareware,” meaning you can download them for free to try but must pay for a license if you plan to continue to use them, a few options are available at no cost. Generally, the free weather software options are limited and often lack reliable customer support. We think the included software options will be sufficient for most, although your specific situation might require a software application that is more robust. Additionally, Mac users might run into compatibility issues, as most manufacturers only produce software for the Windows platform and not the macOS. In this case, your only software option may be a third-party application. Can I Just Use the Weather Underground Instead?
Modern personal weather stations offer internet connectivity, which in turn allows the station to upload data to the Internet. A popular destination for sharing weather data over the Internet is, which is the world’s largest database of live personal weather stations. If merely sharing your weather data to the world is your biggest goal, then just uploading it to the service will be sufficient.
The Weather Underground has its limitations. The service is ideal for displaying up-to-the-minute data from your station. However, its historical data options are limited. Because of the sheer amount of data the Weather Underground must process due to the thousands of stations on its network, it only captures data about every 10 minutes. Additionally, its display options for historical data are limited, so if you are looking for specific weather data (say a graph of a select number of days), you’re restricted in how it is displayed. It's, for this reason, we instead recommend you install a software package to analyze historical data versus relying on a service like Weather Underground. A Software suite gives you much more control over how your data is displayed, as well as giving you the option to store data as frequently or infrequently as you’d like.
Easyweather Download
Our Weather Station Software Recommendations What software is the best to use? Here are our recommendations.
(Windows and Mac): If you’re a Davis weather station owner, you don’t have much of a choice other than to purchase the WeatherLink software—regardless of whether you use it or not. This is because the software itself is bundled with a special dongle that is necessary to connect your Vantage Vue or Vantage Pro2 to your computer. While the software itself is a bit dated, it offers a high degree of customizability on how you can view your data.
It also allows you to upload your weather data to the Internet, either through the Weather Underground or to your own website. (Web): Ambient Weather's cloud based service is one of the most-recently developed personal weather station software options. The interface is intuitive and user-friendly because it is both a cloud and web-based service that it will run on any device with a web browser.
Compatible with a wide variety of manufacturers either directly or with the addition of the Ambient Weather WeatherBridge. What catches our eye here is the IFTTT support, which allows you to use your weather data to trigger events on your smart devices and the Amazon Alexa support which allows you to ask Alexa for a report on the current conditions or for a report about a specific day, month or year. (Windows/Mac/Linux): A free option—as long as you're willing to deal with outdated software—is Sandaysoft's Cumulus. Its interface reminds us a lot of WeatherLink. Dated, but incredibly powerful. We'd even argue Cumulus does graphs better.
Sandaysoft says the software should work with Davis stations with the dongle, in addition to some Oregon Scientific, Fine Offset, and La Crosse models. Check their site to confirm your station is compatible. (Mac): For Mac users, WeatherSnoop is the best option for broad compatibility. A companion iOS app allows you to also view data from your iPhone and iPad when you’re not at home. The Lite version is focused solely on getting your weather data online, so we’d recommend the Pro version of the software to get the analytical features that we consider a ‘must have’ when considering weather station software. (Mac/Linux): Feeling a bit daring and adventurous?
If you have some tech and computer smarts, WeeWX might be a worthwhile option. It’s completely free and open source and allows you to customize how it outputs data to organize web pages better. It can even upload your data to Weather Underground too. We do caution however that you must be comfortable with Linux, as it operates off the command line, and doesn’t have a friendly graphical user interface. But because it’s such a small and nimble program, you can run it on a Raspberry Pi, negating the need to leave your main computer on all of the time. (Windows/Mac/Linux): One of the leading software packages to get the most from your weather station that was first released in the year 2000 and is still continually upgraded by the developer. Weather Display includes features such as real time data display, graph history, FTP transfer of the weather data to your own web page, email/text notifications of extreme conditions and data transfer to Weather Underground.
The software is compatible with a wide range of stations from manufacturers including Davis, AcuRite, La Crosse and Oregon Scientific. A lifetime license with free updates will set you back $60. About The Author Hi, thanks for stopping. I'm the lead contributor here at Weather Station Advisor. I've had a lifelong interest in the weather spanning more than 30 years, culminating with the pursuit of a Meteorology degree from Millersville University in Pennsylvania. My interests lie in severe weather and climate change.
I also have a degree in Journalism from Temple University, and have spent nearly my entire journalism career covering consumer gadgets. You might have seen my work on Digital Trends, PC World, VentureBeat, or even the New York Times website. I've written quite a bit! At Weather Station Advisor, I joined the team to provide you with the best reviews, recommendations and advice to get the most out of your investment.
As I've found out on my own, weather stations aren't cheap, and it's easy to make a costly mistake.
Full Specifications What's new in version 1.0.1 -Bug fix for location search-Bug Fixes and Performance Improvements General Publisher Publisher web site Release Date April 20, 2015 Date Added April 15, 2015 Version 1.0.1 Category Category Subcategory Operating Systems Operating Systems Android Additional Requirements Compatible with 2.3.3 and above. Download Information File Size 1.71MB File Name External File Popularity Total Downloads 111 Downloads Last Week 1 Pricing License Model Free Limitations Not available Price Free.
Weather Display - the Weather Station software Weather Display Weather Display is the software to get the most from your weather station. Not only does it support a huge range of stations from all the major manufacturers but it's also stacked with features and options.