I’m sure that “it’s me, not you.” It seems like every time a weather app is mentioned on a podcast, the host or guest or both sing the praises of the Carrot weather app. I’ve downloaded it multiple times only to end up deleting it. Why? From my perspective:
The graphics are too cartoonish
The layout and fonts, the overall GUI, makes it much harder to quickly digest the weather compared to the stock weather app, which integrates with The Weather Channel app.
I’d think that “cartoonish” maybe not be a bad thing for some? I use Carrot on my Watch and iPhone mainly because it seems faster and more reliable than the alternatives. Maybe performance depends on where one is? Anyway, yes the design is a bit janky and I never use the snark-mode, but Carrot is fast – and I like that scrolling day-by-day hour-by-hour display shown in your screenshot.
(From the reliability perspective, Dark Sky seems to have fallen into the Slough of Despond since Apple bought it.)
I find the visualization better in Carrot Weather vs the stock Weather app. I do think the stock Weather app looks more professional and “clean”. But, I like the visualization of the temperatures going up and down. I also like the ability to dive into the future days’ written descriptions.
This is the site I used to determine accuracy. Unfortunately Carrot Weather does not give me the best choice which is why I’m using the Weather Channel app.
I’ve tried Carrot Weather but didn’t like it. On my phone and iPad I use the Apple Weather app. I use Dark Sky for the alerts only; it seems to be pretty accurate in my area. On my Mac I use the menu bar app Forecast Bar (through Set App).
I’m not that big of a fan either. I got the app a while ago, but after a short time using it, I noticed the data was not accurate all the time and the interface was a little confusing to me, so I deleted it.
Decided to give it another shot after iOS 14, to try the widget.
Now I have a weather stack on my Home Screen with the system weather as the main one and Carrot as the second showing a different set of data (Feels like, wind, precipitation).
Since I don’t have to interact with it much anymore, It’s fine.
I like Carrot because of customization on widgets and Apple Watch. Being in a tropical country, temperature doesn’t mean much because its always hot or hotter. Carrot allows me to have a Rain forecast on my Apple Watch by the hour.
I’m not sure if this is enough to deter me from using the app if it’s the most accurate, but it’s definitely enough to consider restricting its access to location data. (I might deny it location access and just have it track weather for my home zip code if that’s possible).
I’m in the like camp on Carrot. Can’t really explain why. My preferred weather source when I really want to know what’s going on is weather.gov. On the forecast page for a location there’s a link to forecast discussion. It’s the forecaster’s rationale for making the forecast they did. You have to be a bit of a weather geek to follow some of it.
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