What you need to know
- CARROT Weather 5 is a complete redesign including cards, new data, and more.
Popular weather app CARROT Weather has a big new update out, with version 5 bringing with it a completely new look and feel. But the changes aren't only skin deep, with new features abound.
The first thing you'll notice is the new look, with new artwork throughout. That even goes as far as Apple Watch complications, with the aim being to make everything look great while still showing useful information.
The colorful new icons were built from scratch to be legible even in the teeniest Apple Watch complication. They're not just bold and chonky, though: they pack in more information, too. There are icons for new weather conditions, like mostly clear and mostly cloudy. And the precipitation icons even give you a hint as to how much it'll rain.
Part of showing that information to users includes the new cards. CARROT 5 wants to make sure you see the data that's most useful. The kind of data that is often hidden away in other weather apps. Not so with CARROT 5.
CARROT is smart, so she won't load your screen up with a bunch of useless cards. If you open the app on a relatively calm day, you might only see sunrise/sunset and moon phase cards. But when the weather starts to turn, new cards will bubble up to highlight potential hazards: a big drop in pressure over the next 3 hours, gale-force winds this afternoon, two inches of rain in the next day.
There's more going on here as well, including even more customization options than previous releases as well as some new prebuilt presets for those who don't want to have to do all the work themselves.
Finally, we have the business model. CARROT 5 is now a free download with a subscription giving users access to all the new hotness. The free version of the app does include ads, but there's a twist.
Note that the free version does include ads, but they're either for fake products or other indie apps. The latter are provided free of charge as CARROT's way of giving back to the awesome indie developer community. (It's possible ads may be sold directly at some future point, but users' information will never be sold or shared.)
Those who want to pay for the full experience can hand over anything from $4.99 per month to $14.99 per month depending on the features required. Annual options are available as well, while existing buyers are covered, too.
Existing customers get to keep all of the features from the original paid up front version of the app forever and they will also have their Premium Club pricing locked in.
The newly updated CARROT 5 is available from the App Store now.
