Best Weather Apps for 2022

Weather apps provide a basic service in many different ways, but beware potential privacy issues.
If you're someone who likes to make plans in advance to go on adventures, you need a good weather app to back you up. Weather apps provide us with one of the most basic but essential tasks: the weather forecast. Of course, they do a lot more than just tell us what to expect weather-wise over the next seven days. Depending on the weather app you choose, you can get additional information, including forecasts months down the line, humidity levels and precipitation totals among other tidbits. There's a lot to consider when picking a weather app; it's not just a pick-one-and-forget-about-it kind of deal. That's why we've tested and selected the best weather apps for 2022.

Any third-party weather app -- as in, those that don't come built-in to your phone -- poses a risk, since they operate using location data, and sometimes ask for permissions they don't actually need. A number of weather apps, including those from The Weather Channel, AccuWeather and WeatherBug, have come under fire or faced lawsuits for selling location data to advertisers.

The built-in Weather app on your iPhone (which uses data from The Weather Channel) or Google Weather app on your Android may not be perfect, but if you're already in those device ecosystems, they have your current location information anyway. If you want to be even safer, check the weather manually in your internet browser or another device.

There are hundreds of weather apps in the App Store and Play Store, so we haven't tried them all. But these are the ones we liked best, along with their privacy policy information. All are available on Android and iOS.