Author Topic: Release: sWeather (tray-based weather app) (Read 518089 times)

comp · « **Reply #750 on:** July 17, 2021, 08:55 PM »

I had been using WeatherMate for years until I discovered sWeather which is the best weather program I have ever used. When I noticed that sWeather had stopped working I came back to WeatherMate only to discover that it was no longer working either. I contacted the developer- Ravi Bhavnani, who responded that he was working on a fix. So being deprived of my two weather programs which had been for the most part reliable, I started searching for alternatives. I came upon Tray Weather, which is open source and written in C++ but not portable and without reading the description I installed it only to find out that one needed to get an API key from OpenWeatherMap. After having a look at their Privacy Policy I decided that I didn't want their key and that Tray Weather was not for me so I uninstalled it without even testing it (at first glance I saw that it was bulky, it was not portable, it was limited). After researching some other alternatives which are not even worth mentioning I concluded that for the time being there is no real good alternative to sWeather and that I would have to rely on the inconvenience of web services like wttr.in (GitHub) which at least seamingly do not abuse user privacy (if such a beast has ever existed). If sWeather adopts OpenWeatherMap API I will have to ditch it. If someone has discovered a decent alternative to sWeather I would be grateful if they share their finding. On a side note I want to mention that Yahoo is really fabulous and proverbial- it ruined, burned and destroyed all the assets it once had.
-smaragdus (June 10, 2021, 05:09 PM)

I found this tray-based weather program called Weather Bar:

https://weatherbarapp.com/

It's free and doesn't need anything else to work. The only thing I don't like about it that weather conditions there are displayed in white letters in the tray, and because of it it's almost impossible to see it in my light grey taskbar.

Biffle · « **Reply #751 on:** July 18, 2021, 03:52 AM »

Yes, very nice program. Thank you. Can be used portable as well.

I very much like the bird flying over the forecast display.

comp · « **Reply #752 on:** July 18, 2021, 04:04 AM »

Now if only they could fix the white color. They have a website where suggestions can be added, but it requires registration.

Biffle · « **Reply #753 on:** July 18, 2021, 04:39 AM »

May be one can change the colors in Win itself?

comp · « **Reply #754 on:** July 18, 2021, 12:37 PM »

I like my color as it is, I don't want to change it...

Biffle · « **Reply #755 on:** July 18, 2021, 12:55 PM »

Yes, of course, I understand.

gmusgrave · « **Reply #756 on:** July 18, 2021, 01:38 PM »

Yes, this is a good option!

I agree that the text colour should be customisable, it is very hard to see. That said, you can see the space where it lives, and, if you hover over it, you immediately get a tooltip with the temperature and current condition. Clicking here also opens up the whole app with more detail.

I don't think that feature requests will do much good, since this hasn't been worked on for about three years. However, it is open source, the source code is available on GitHub, and someone could revive this project and make it more user friendly. Even this one change would be a step forward! Any takers?

Also the source code might be a roadmap for the sWeather devs to (more) quickly get their app back up and running, since whatever API Weather Bar uses clearly works.

Just my $0.02....

armus2112 · « **Reply #757 on:** July 18, 2021, 06:48 PM »

looks like Weather Bar is calling an API located at https://api.weatherb...weather/forecast/geo

AusDemFF · « **Reply #758 on:** July 19, 2021, 12:50 PM »

WeatherBar uses OpenWeatherMap (click on Menu, bottom of page)

TechTeacher · « **Reply #759 on:** July 19, 2021, 02:37 PM »

Yes, Weather Bar is a good stop-gap measure, but it hasn't been updated in quite a bit.

I want my sWeather back. I miss the features, the details and the look. PLEASE bring it back!

comp · « **Reply #760 on:** July 19, 2021, 09:51 PM »

WeatherBar uses OpenWeatherMap (click on Menu, bottom of page)
-AusDemFF (July 19, 2021, 12:50 PM)

Looks like local temperatures there are not very accurate... the most accurate I found is Weather Underground, but it doesn't have a desktop app.

armus2112 · « **Reply #761 on:** July 20, 2021, 12:56 PM »

Weather Bar is throwing some error dialogs big time for me today "A JavaScript error occurred in the main process"

gmusgrave · « **Reply #762 on:** July 20, 2021, 01:47 PM »

Working fine today for me.

AusDemFF · « **Reply #763 on:** July 21, 2021, 11:38 AM »

Looks like local temperatures there are not very accurate... the most accurate I found is Weather Underground, but it doesn't have a desktop app.
-comp (July 19, 2021, 09:51 PM)

What means accurate? The weather station in my town is 20km outside, near the airport. So it would never be the exact weather in my street. I went past a pharmacy the other day, on a street corner, each side with a bit thermometer, with 2°C difference just a street side away. Shadow, less sun, etc. Under trees, it's quite fresher than in plain street. It's accurate for the airport, yes!

And I still prefer sWeather...

comp · « **Reply #764 on:** July 21, 2021, 12:33 PM »

I mean that temperatures in my town according to Weather Bar differ with real-world ones by 5F or more, and they're always lower, according to it. It does make a difference, Weather Underground is more accurate. I noticed that before with other weather apps that are based in Europe, they always underestimate US weather

)

smaragdus · « **Reply #765 on:** July 21, 2021, 05:41 PM »

@comp

I checked Weather Bar and its Source Code and it turned out that the program is JavaScript/Electron and I do not use such stuff.

dhry · « **Reply #766 on:** July 28, 2021, 09:45 AM »

sWeather has not worked for ages. I just wanted to pop on here and thank you, Skwire, for your hard work on this tool to date, have enjoyed using it. Moving to TrayWeather for now since it's all I need. OpenWeatherMap is perfectly fine.

Take care and best of luck with the development and finding a new API in the future.

Regards
Dhry

gmusgrave · « **Reply #767 on:** July 28, 2021, 11:22 AM »

Thanks for this. I just tried TrayWeather, and it's great. You can customise the colour of the tray display, and it has many more features. Works brilliantly!

I've uninstalled both sWeather and Weather Bar. This is the perfect replacement for sWeather.

Thanks again.

armus2112 · « **Reply #768 on:** July 28, 2021, 05:29 PM »

Thanks for the TrayWeather suggestion

sportman12 · « **Reply #769 on:** August 04, 2021, 11:36 PM »

swire any sweather updates ?

Midnight Rambler · « **Reply #770 on:** August 15, 2021, 10:23 AM »

V. 1.8.2 build 1 is no longer working.

Release: sWeather (tray-based weather app)

tomos · « **Reply #771 on:** August 19, 2021, 03:59 PM »

@sportman12, if you still need help installing Tray Weather, please click on link below
Help Installing Tray Weather

@mods, thanks

comp · « **Reply #772 on:** September 04, 2021, 09:31 PM »

I got Tray Weather, but does not compare with sWeather. The only thing in common they have is temperature in tray bar, otherwise Tray Weather's graph-like forecast is a joke, and it can't even display temperature in normal full F degrees, but always shows them with decimal points, which makes them look very strange. Also, time of the day displays in 24-hour format which is really annoying.

I have a suggestion. I understand that the creator of sWeather stopped developing it because he doesn't want to deal with API keys. Would it be possible for him to redo it in such a way so every user would have to get and enter his own API key? Then he would not need to pay for API key, and users will get their favorite weather forecast back, and if they wish, they can get free keys or paid keys.

sacruser · « **Reply #773 on:** September 05, 2021, 08:23 PM »

A fantastic idea! Right, Tray Weather is not even close to sWeather! API keys are easy to obtain, free for the most part. Many of us have them for other software. I know absolutely nothing about coding but I wouldn't think (big question mark) it would be too difficult to pattern the API key portion of Tray Weather into sWeather. I would love to hear a comment on this idea from the creator of sWeather. I know he was looking into this several months ago; but, the further development seems to be at a standstill.

Midnight Rambler · « **Reply #774 on:** October 12, 2021, 11:55 AM »

Installed Tray Weather and received an API key free of charge. Not as user-friendly as sWeather was and don't quite understand why the key was necessary but the program offers a lot of data and can't beat the price.