The release of Android 4.1 and 4.2 Jelly Bean brought several new features and improvements over what we were used to on Gingerbread and Ice Cream Sandwich. Apart from the Google Now, Project Butter and tons others, it blessed this most popular Operating System with one more significant change in the way we receive notifications at our phone. Android 4.1 and 4.2 has made the notifications system more customization, functional and responsive.
With expandable, actionable and prioritized notifications, developers can manage their apps and take control of what goes on when a notification is presented to the user. With your Android phone on Jelly Bean, you can now view the preview of your notifications and our app devs have duly utilized this feature. Today we shall talk about three weather apps that take advantage of the new notification options in Jelly Bean to elegantly present the weather at the notifications drop-down pane. Of course, there may be more such apps but these three apps are with whom I am currently familiar now. The three weather apps capable of this feature are Notification Weather and Beautiful Widgets. Below is a screenshot with all three apps at work.
Notification Weather:
The Notification Weather app is a very simple and light-weight app that shows weather info at your phone’s notifications center in it own simplistic way. As the very name suggests, do not expect a homescreen widget from this app. It is only meant for the notifications panel. Notification Weather is only available to users with devices running Android 4.1 and above as the feature, it gas to offer is only supported by the latest version of Android. Just install the app, open it and configure it as you prefer and enjoy weather updates just by dropping down the notification bar.
Setting up the app is pretty simple and have everything you would expect in a basic weather app. You can simply enable or disable the notification’s display, have your location auto-detected or set one manually and choose either Celsius or Fahrenheit for the temperature. You can choose weather data auto refresh interval ranging from 10 minutes to 8 hours. Currently, Notification Weather can fetch data from Yahoo! Weather, Open Weather Map, and World Weather Online. The app is available in both free and paid basis. The pro version comes at a low price and therefore it is worth trying.
Download from Play Store: Notification Weather Free, Notification Weather Pro
BeWeather & Widgets:
BeWeather & Widgets is a well-known weather app for Android. It can also give weather info at the notification drawer but it does not have the detailing feature like the Notification Weather. It has an option called “Temperature Notification”. You can activate it to get short weather info at the notification center of your Android phone with Jelly Bean.
Beautiful Widgets:
When it comes to a weather app, the Beautiful Widgets app is my personal favorite. It has a nice interface, clean design, good settings options. Though this app is not as good in showing the weather info at the notification drawer, there is another feature called “Unlock Animations” that is unique in itself. It is one of the best-selling weather apps on the market.
Inside the app settings panel, you can turn on “Weather Notifications” option to get the weather at the notification center of your phone. If you wish to have animated weather just as you unlock your device, enable the unlock animations feature and let the magic happen. Needless to say that the app also comes with some cool weather clock widgets to embellish your homescreen.
Download from the Play Store: Beautiful Widgets
So, this was a list of some of the best weather apps for your Android phone with Jelly Bean that can also show weather info at the Notifications drop-down panel. Choose an app that you like most and do not forget to tell us what you think about them.
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