It’s been a while since Google has changed something major in the Weather app that is baked into the Android experience. But last week, some people spotted that it is actually getting a redesign and now we’re seeing it roll out to some users who are in the beta channel of the Google Search app. This is more of a user interface and visual redesign but the basic functionality remains the same from the last update and it still pulls information from weather.com.
9 to 5 Google spotted the redesign last week and now we’re seeing it become available for some users. The main change to the app is that a lot of the Material Theme aspects are now applied to this functional app. You now have a search bar with rounded corners as well as some updated tab indicators for things like Today, Tomorrow, and 10 days. The navigation drawer was previously on the upper left but now you get your profile avatar in the upper right corner.
Tapping on the avatar will get the usual Google account dropdown but you also get settings to change the Temperature units from celsius to Fahrenheit or vice versa. There’s also an “Add to homescreen” shortcut that should do as its name says. There doesn’t seem to be any changes to its core forecasting experience. It still pulls data from weather.com and it’s often as simple as that.
The beta update seems to have some kinks to work out. We don’t know if it’s a bug or it’s supposed to be that way but the status bar, which was previously themed to what the weather is, now matches the navigation and search bar. However it is too bright especially when the system is set to the dark theme. We’ll see if Google is able to fix this when the stable version comes out or in future updates.
The Google app 12.20 in the beta channel and launching the weather app from the Pixel Launch’s At a Glance widget or through the search results page will give you this new redesign of the Weather app. No word yet when it will be available in the stable version but that will probably be soon.
