Forecast Bar5.6.1

Name: Forecast Bar
Rating: 4.5 (7 reviews)

13 October 2020

Accurate, local live weather and forecasts.

Follow this app Developer website

Overview

Forecast Bar, powered by Forecast.io, offers hyper-accurate, hyper-local live weather and forecasts right in your menu bar. With beautiful background images matching current weather conditions and time of day, along with a simple and clean interface, you will find yourself checking the weather non-stop!

Tapping on Forecast Bar opens up a panel full of relevant weather information, including:

Current conditions, with current, feels like, high, and low temperatures, as well as relative humidity
A succinct description of the weather for the next hour, and next 24 hours
Rich, animated charts showing temperature and rain forecasts
When rain is detected in the next hour, an animated chart showing rain intensity
5 day forecast, with high and low temperatures and weather conditions
Stunning animated icons for each weather condition
Full description of all local NWS severe weather alerts (U.S. only), including Notification Center support

Tapping again on the forecast displays a rich, animated panel with additional information, including:

Current wind conditions with an animated compass
Dew point and humidity readings, with a "mugginess" animated gauge
Pressure indicator with trend information
Sunrise and sunset times for the day
Visibility reading

Other features:

You can also tap on any day's forecast to see a full 24 hour temperature and precipitation chart.
Forecast Bar offers full support for light and dark menu bar modes, and carefully conserves your computer's power.
Forecast Bar automatically uses your location, or allows you to type in any location to get weather reports.

What's new in Forecast Bar

Version 5.6.1:

Adding Pollen and Air Quality (AQI) details in custom summary and forecast details screens (Premium and Weather Company only)
Added Sunset Quality to forecast details
This innovative data point will tell you when the sunset will be beautiful to go watch
Added 4 more days to forecast for a full 14 days (Weather Company data only)
All-new forecast detail page with re-arrangeable tiles. Simply click on the top part of the forecast with the current temperature to check it out
Added Precipitation Total to custom summary options
Fix for tiny icons appearing occasionally
Updated app icon
Crash fixes and performance improvements

22 Reviews of Forecast Bar

Excellent weather app. Very aesthetically pleasing. Regularly updated. I have used this for a long time on macOS and it causes me no issues. Recommended.

(1)

Please remove the FREE designation from this app. It is not free and you only learn that after it's downloaded and launched by announcing that you have a few days to try, after which the subscription kicks in. No thanks.

(0)

Just by glancing at the pictures with heavy graphics and too much info, it's sure consumes a lot of of memory and cpu.

OhEssex

25 January 2019

Version: 5.2.3

Forecast Bar is available for your Mac, your iPad/iPhone and your Apple Watch - that's three separate purchases. I certainly don't begrudge the developers this - each app has it's own development path. What does irk me though is that each app could *easily* use the same data format for weather updates and iCloud could be used to keep all of your various devices in sync that have the app installed, but they charge a separate subscription for weather updates for each separate app. That's just being greedy.,

(3)

Jimw

23 January 2019

Version: 5.2.2

This App scares me. First of all it is a paid subscription app but nowhere on their website could I find any pricing and had to dig to find out it was subscription based. Some pricing is present on the App store but the subscription ($4) does not indicate the subscription term (month, year). It does show a short term subscription of $.50 for one month but no indication if that can be renewed. This is a multiple device App but you must purchase a separate subscription for each device. There is no information about the company anywhere or where it is located. The only information provided is a single email address. Based on its URL it does seem to be a non-US company. My research also indicates it is also focused on games as 'games' is in the parent companies title. Clicking on a link for the Mac version of the App on the parent companies website took me to a website of an on-line avant garde magazine that supports the app features for which a subscription cost $50/year. Nowhere in my research did I find any information about the companies behind the App or magazine or where they are located. Additionally they collect data regarding the use of the App and the only way to opt out is to not use the App. Given a lack of full open disclosure of pricing contact info other than an email address, or the company behind it there is no way I will consider using this App. Despite its slick presentation my security, privacy, coupled with vague cost is not worth the risk for me.

(2)

The issue with CPU usage was fixed in an update months ago (7/18?) and on my iMac runs 0.1-0.2% at idle. The developer has indicated that they have to pay for weather data from Dark Sky and The Weather Company and their subscription helps cover these costs. For something I use / look at many times a day $8 - $12 / year is reasonable. This is a very full-featured app.

10 June 2018

Version: 4.0

My laptop fans were running at a slowish speed so I opened up the Activity Monitor to find the culprit - been keeping my eye on it for over 15 minutes and Forecast Bar has been over 10% CPU for that entire time - something's not quite right and it needs fixing...

Wts

05 June 2018

If you are running Mac OS High Sierra 10.13.5 or 10.13.4 you don't need Forecast Bar. I have Forecast Bar installed on a iMac not running High Sierra and it's great to know what the weather is when i'm working away in my basement suite.

Show comments (2)

476429

03 June 2018

Requires a subscription to perform automatic weather updates.

I have tried so many weather apps over the years, even paying for more than a few. I always returned to WeatherMan. But I was never satisfied with it. I find a decent, if not excellent radar function to be essential. More, it does not give my second most desired feature - hourly forecasts. I found myself merely using the menubar function and relying on web-based weather (e.g. WeatherUnderground, local news affiliate weather, etc.). But I continued to want I it all in one app! The above is a roundabout way of saying Forecast Bar is easily the best Mac weather app at the moment. I had tried it a few times but there was always something about it, especially the active map and the high CPU/RAM hit. The map is most excellent now. The hit on resources is as little as any other weather app that does anything substantial. My standby, Weatherman, does use much less. But while it does more than so many it still doesn't match up to Forecast Bar. I've now bought it for my iPad and iPhone. Also, easily the most customizable!

I used to use this a lot, but in the last few months it began predicting rain every single day, including the bright sunny ones! Also, it seemed to really slow down restarting my Mac. I don't know of any way to solve these problems so I stopped using the app.

Dana-Sutton

04 April 2016

Version: 2.5.3

There are a lot of great weather programs out there, including, no doubt, this one. The problem is that almost all of them come pre-linked to a given weather service, and when it comes to accuracy these services are all over the place. If you don't like the one for the area where you live, there's nothing you can do about it. The only service I halfway trust is Dark Sky, and unfortunately that's an iOS-only app. On a Mac, your only safe recourse seems to be to go to the Weather Undergound site, dig around for a reporting station in your immediate area, go to its special web page and bookmark it.

Show comment (1)

The radar map is broken indeed – but apparently just for people located outside the USA (just like the weather alerts).
Aeris Weather seems to be an US-only service! (forecast.io worked great in Europe)

Very irritating and misleading, in particular as the official website says "See *global* animated radar maps alongside the detailed forecast with just a single tap."
I'm thinking about asking for a refund if this bug/missing feature doesn't get fixed w/ the next update!

Furthermore, offering only social media based support sucks!
I tried to contact the company via their support-email too, multiple times, a few weeks ago, but have not received any reply yet.

This used to be a great App – But the radar map doesn't work anymore since the developers switched from Forcast.io to Aeris Weather! This was one of the best features and the reason i actually bought the app. Support is also exclusively available via Google+ only, so people are forced to create an account to get help. Asking for help via email is pointless, the support doesn't answer emails at all. This is so frustrating!

I am so sick and tired of dev houses who think it's cute to require "membership" in some social media or in their forum just to contact them and ask a question. If you don't provide a contact email, then you've lost my business. Many of us simply don't have the time or patience to create yet another account somewhere, log in, and post a question to a public forum. I paid for this app and it's been useful but something broke when I tried to add a new location, and now I can't even add in my current location through Apple's location services. A simple question for the dev but it's impossible to simply send a short email. Phooey on this. I'd give it a full 5 stars if it weren't for an easy way to contact support.

Other reviewers are correct when they say this app is gorgeous, the graphics and weather details are outstanding. Unfortunately, that is the only good I have to say about it. As part of the set up process it asks to access location services to determine your local weather - which it failed to do. Other weather apps have used Core Location without a problem. After manually inputting my location, a whole bunch of weather data pops up. That's when we get to the epic fail. I'm in Sydney, Australia - outside right now it is 30c, feels like 31c - Forecast Bar is telling me the temp is and feels like 26c. That's not a slight variance - it is wildly inaccurate. Further - not one of the forecast temperatures for the coming week is correct. This app is one of the most expensive Mac weather apps available, requiring additional expenditure to enable features that are standard in other apps. It is absolutely unacceptable for a supposed 'premium' app to be so grossly inaccurate. It's pointless having a pretty app in the menu bar if you can't trust the core function information it provides. Very poor.

I’ve used Meteorologist for years. Recently it stopped working, so I went searching for a replacement. After a fair amount of comparison shopping, I bought Forecast Bar from the Mac App Store. It has everything I wanted ★★★★★. There is a little bit of a learning curve — figuring out how to access radar and other details. Clicking around on icons and various elements of the UI usually reveals more.

Spudboy

26 October 2015

Version: 2.1.1

Outstanding product. Enjoy seeing what the weather will be like in the morning.

This thing is like a virus you can't get rid of! It worked for about a week then never again. I uninstalled/reinstalled repeatedly but it refused to accept any location I entered, even just the state I live in, always saying "couldn't find location, try again." I used AppDelete to remove it, but it was back upon reboot. Then I removed a couple more files I found...but it was back after reboot. I've used EasyFind to exhaustion trying to find any remaining traces of this damn app, but it's always there again when I reboot! It still shows up in Location Services in System Preferences. It's like a zombie--every time you think it's dead it comes back for more. You can hack off it's limbs, even it's head, but it's still alive, sitting there in the menu bar with it's umbrella icon, mocking me... and still functioning (partly) without its app in Applications! There's nothing left in LaunchAgents, LaunchDaemons, PrivilegedHelperTools, Containers, Preferences or Caches. WTF?! And if that's not bad enough, the dev's support link is useless, leading to a page that says "This UserVoice helpdesk and feedback forum is no longer available." So there's no support at all - you can't reach the developer. The dev. is listed as "Real Casual Games, LLC" on this page, so I Googled that name and found a game software website with a contact link, so I sent an email there.

Show comments (3)

Easy to see great interface. All the important information easily accessible. My goto wx app. It's refreshing to see an interface that puts readability first. Other apps can learn from this one. Try it and see why... Thanks ... Ken

Forecast Bar5.6.1

Overview

What's new in Forecast Bar

Join over 500,000 subscribers.

22 Reviews of Forecast Bar

More apps