Weather Gods 1.4 - Apple Watch

By Weather Gods (Scott), 3 July, 2017

Forum
iOS and iPadOS

Hi All,

1.4 should be hitting the app store shortly.

The main changes are

- a fully accessible version of Weather Gods on your wrist, split into two parts; a smart weather complication and a watch app.
- German localisation
- Japanese localisation

The watch app can be used with your current GPS and also with your favourites from the phone app. The watch app presents an hourly overview with each of the gods. Each god can be double tapped to drill down into some more detail. The Fire, Air, Water and Ice god also have their own 48 hourly timeline. For the first time, we have included dew point, humidity and pressure, with the Air God.

Optionally, you can install a couple of Weather Gods complications.

The first complication is the pressure for the hour and an indicator as to whether the pressure is rising, falling or level.

Our main complication is based on the smart weather conditions from the weather wheel on the phone app. For each hour, we check and prioritise the weather conditions and present the top three based on a priority system. For example, gale fore winds would be a higher priority than an overcast sky. You always get the current temperature in addition to the top three conditions.

Both complications work with time travel. This allows you to rotate the digital crown and hear the pressure or smart conditions for up to 48 hours in to the future.

The phone app has also received a few updates:

- Accessible stickers for Greek, German, Japanese, French, Spanish and Vietnamese
- Improvements to follow me and offline mode
- Accessibility improvements to the main notification setup screen. Previously, once you had configured a notification, we put you back to the start. Not helpful when working your way through the list. Now, we will put you back to the notification you just configured. This has a couple of benefits. First, you get confirmation that the notification is activated. Second, you can easily swipe to deactivate if you change your mind. Finally, it's easy to move on to the next notification in the list.

As ever, we couldn't have managed without the fantastic beta testers from AppleVis who helped us with the development and testing of the app and watch app. So, a big thank you to them. We are also indebted to our two translators who have made the Greek and German translations the best ever. Thank you Irene and Michaela :)

Please let us have any feedback about the watch app or the other changes to the main app. If you need any help with anything then please send us an email from Settings and we will try and get back to you as soon as we can.

Best regards
Scott

Options

Comments

By snowyowl on Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - 21:27

Hi all.

I am one of the beta testers for Weather Gods and the app works fantastic with the series II watch.

I have the temp and conditions on the large complication if your using the modula face and the pressure next to it on a small complication. Its been a pleasure to work on this. Thanks for an excellent app Scott.

Cheers.

By Weather Gods (Scott) on Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - 21:27

Hi Snowy,
It has been a pleasure working with you and all the other beta testers. What I really like about the AppleVis beta testing community is the attention to detail demonstrated by the testers and how everyone strives to make it such a great and accessible app.

It really is excellent team work and much appreciated by the Weather Gods team.

Many thanks
Scott

By Dave Matters on Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - 21:27

Two weeks or so ago, I wasn't having any luck finding a weather app that I liked for the Apple Watch. I tried several of the more popular apps, but found them to be awkward or lacking in the information I was looking for. This latest version of Weather Gods, however, has turned out great! Well done, indeed. Now I have the temp, wind speed and direction, and humidity in an easy to use Apple Watch app. Loads quick, and offers more than enough information. Now, if only I could convince the Gods to cool off the weather so it was as cool as their app.

I haven't even looked at the complications yet. Guess I will do that next.

By Trep on Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - 21:27

I installed the Weather Gods app on my apple watch series 1, but it will not work. When I open the app, it just shows "unknown" and "Locating, current location," and will not change. I've tried reinstalling the app with no luck.

By snowyowl on Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - 21:27

Hi.

Scott himself tried using the weather gods app for the watch on his series 1 and it didn't work as well as it is on the series 2. If anyone else has a series 1 and can get it to work well would love to know how you did that.

By Weather Gods (Scott) on Wednesday, July 26, 2017 - 21:27

Hi Trep92

Sorry to hear you are having some problems.

The watch app does work on the series 1, but as Snowy says, it's a lot better on the series 2. I did all my development on the series 1, right up until release day, and then I got a series 2. Gosh, such a difference. The other thing I noticed was that voiceover on the series 1 seemed to make my watch quite slow and buggy :(

However, this isn't helping you with your series 1.

The main difference between the series 1 and 2 is that the series 1 has not got any built in GPS. This means the watch app relies on the phone and on the GPS on the phone.

Here are some things to check please:

1. You have a good connection between your watch and the phone
2. Location services for Weather Gods is set to allow
3. There is reasonable battery charge on the phone and the watch

We also recommend that you launch Weather Gods on the phone and then launch Weather Gods on the app. The reason is that both apps talk to each other and exchange information such as settings, favourite places, whether follow me is switched on etc. Once the watch app is running, you can force quit Weather Gods on the phone if you want.

We also built a feature into the phone app which will try and help the watch app as much as possible by sending GPS location updates, whenever, they are detected on the phone. It saves your watch battery and also makes for faster location updates.

If you have switched on follow me, then the watch app is automatically updated as you move around e.g. in a car, on a bus etc. You will need location services set to always for Weather Gods on the phone, in order to get regular GPS updates to the watch app.

Other recommendations are:

1. Put Weather Gods into your dock. The reason for this is the watch OS gives priority to apps in the dock, and we request regular calls from the watch to our watch app for updates.
2. Setup a Weather Gods complication - the watch app should update about every 30 minutes if you have a complication setup.

I would also recommend force quitting Weather Gods if it gets stuck updating current location, rather than a re-install, which takes time.

To force quit an app on the watch:

Press and hold down the side button until the shutdown screen appears. Press and hold the digital crown to force quit the active app.

If you are still having problems then please email is via Settings on our phone app and we will do our best to get it working.

Thanks
Scott

Thanks so much for your help, Scott. I've gotten it to work now, I forgot that I had disabled location services for the app. Thanks again, I love the app.