Privacy respecting weather app for Android

https://f-droid.org/packages/org.secuso.privacyfriendlyweather/

by BurungHantu • 4 years ago

134 97 4 years ago

Privacy Friendly Weather lets you watch the weather for cities and locations you are interested in. The app has been developed by the research group SECUSO at Karlsruhe Institute of Technology. More info can be found on https://secuso.org/pfa

errantmind• 4 years ago

Thanks, just installed it and it has what I need in a weather app

btzs• 4 years ago

From above link:

* are Open Source (GPLv3) and their source code can be viewed an GitHub by anybody

* used minimal permissions

* do not neither tracking mechanisms nor advertisement

The app are made by students of the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology.

jonas-w2• 4 years ago

The developers [0] of this app have a whole series of different Privacy Friendly Apps, if you search for "org.secuso" on f-droid you can see them all.

[0] https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/index.php

account-5• 4 years ago

This is brilliant, there's some apps in that collection I was going to try and create myself with dart/flutter.

Probably still will for learning but thanks.

wickedsight• 4 years ago

That's pretty awesome. The page with an overview of all their apps is right here:

https://secuso.aifb.kit.edu/english/105.php

1f60c• 4 years ago

I was curious how a foreign university obtained a .EDU domain, but apparently, foreign universities could register a .EDU domain before 2001.

guerrilla• 4 years ago

Hmm, it never occurred to me that reckoning was the same word as Rechnung (German) and räkning (Swedish) but that's kind of obvious now that they say it. Is that a common way to refer to counting and arithmetic in English somewhere?

One thing I see missing though is a mood tracker.

m000• 4 years ago

Their apps are also published on Google Play [1] for anyone who can't/won't install f-droid.

[1] https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=479730765079191737...

muppetman3• 4 years ago

I've never understood why Weather apps are such a huge thing. I just type into Google "Weather" and it tells me that weather. If I was worried about privacy I'd bookmark the local government weather website.

Why the need to install an app for a simple query?

People are obsessed with them though, they're massively popular so I'm missing something.

Markoff7• 4 years ago

Because Weather.com is not the most accurate data source in many places. For instance in Prague by my research Dark Sky is the most accurate, then there is big gap and it's followed by Wunderground/AccuWeather and possibly Weather.com (though I think Wunderground/Weather are often same if chosen specific location)

muppetman3• 4 years ago

Weather itself is so random though. It was dark and hailing a 5 minute drive from my house the other day (it was still sunny with a few clouds on the horizon) I live in a town of 65k people so the weather is for that town. But the forecast was either perfect or totally wrong that day.

tasuki2• 4 years ago

What model does Dark Sky use? I find its interface a bit too simplified, though it does have all the important info.

I'm Czech and always looking for better weather apps. Mostly using our local Windy[0], which shows a comparison of the GFS, ECMWF, Meteoblue, and ICON models.

[0] https://windy.com/

danuker• 4 years ago

I use one because it is much easier to tap once than to have to type anything (like "weather").

Markoff7• 4 years ago

As he said you can make home screen shortcut to whatever URL/site, I use this way weather radar without need of app.

muppetman3• 4 years ago

I get the simple bit but don't both iOS and Android have built in apps/shortcuts? Weather apps just seem to be like Flashlight apps these days, all promising to be the brightest but actually none better than any other all while slurping up your data.

NoboruWataya2• 4 years ago

Widgets is a big reason on smartphones.

TekMol3• 4 years ago

Why not a web app instead?

Web apps are nicely sandboxed, work on every device and give the user tons of interface features they are used to. Like zoom, copy&paste, bookmark urls (each city could be a url, parameters could be query string parameters) etc.

pizza234• 4 years ago

Because one can have a look at the widget very quickly; usability wise, it's a big difference.

fulafel2• 4 years ago

There are some privacy techniques the app could use that are hard for a web app. For example it could update the weather information at a fixed rate so it would not leak the usage patterns of the app.

TekMol3• 4 years ago

Web apps can do that too. Google for "pwa sync background" to see how.

pmontra• 4 years ago

I use the web site that has proven to best predict the weather in my area along the years. Firefox with UBo on both desktop and Android. It's pinned on Firefox home page on my phone. I think that I could put in on the home screen of the phone as well but I don't care.

DarthNebo• 4 years ago

The fact that it had to be mentioned at all for a weather app is concerning & telling of the state of tech

cryptoz• 4 years ago

Privacy in good weather apps that are innovative can be tricky. Phones have enough sensors like barometers to be useful weather stations, and collecting that data could improve forecasts. But that also includes accurate location data, and making a useful forecast model from data collected on device is significantly more challenging when you account for privacy needs.

The “telling state of tech” may be that our hardware has outpaced our ability to socially reason about how useful weather data should be collected and shared, or not shared.

donkeyd4• 4 years ago

Sure, but I'm fine with sharing my data for that purpose. I also have an app that registers any possible earthquakes and shares that data with a centralized server for analysis. I'm perfectly fine with that, as long as they don't sell my data to anyone who wants to market earthquake safety equipment or wants to track my location.

Transparency on the use of data is important to make decisions on this type of stuff. If a weather app requests access to my barometer to improve predictions, independent of my personal data, I would fully comply with that.

vladvasiliu• 4 years ago

As a sibling commenter says, this seems legitimate use. They also probably don't need to track you for this. The data point that P pressure was detected at L location at T time should be enough. It doesn't need to know that when those parameters change, they're coming from the same user.

krageon2• 4 years ago

tricky

and then you go on to say "but I would just like to not give folks privacy because it's much more convenient for me not to".

That's not tricky, that's called being a shark. You are making the world a worse place by reasoning in this way and an even worse place by trying to spread it to other people.

donkeyd4• 4 years ago

Indeed. That's why I like the privacy cards on the iOS App Store a lot. For apps like this, it makes it really easy to spot the ones that'll record my location data on their servers for some reason.

It's the same with fitness tracking apps, so many of them send health data to their servers, but there are a few (often paid ones, of course) that seem to store important data only locally.

IndySun• 4 years ago

That's why I like the privacy cards on the iOS App Store a lot

Donkeyd, I find the privacy cards in the iOS app store to be an unreliable source. I will read the relevant privacy policy stating 'data not collected' to mean anything but. Do you know if the card self-reporting?

xcambar• 4 years ago

Can you name a few, please?

I am very reluctant to fitness apps and devices for that exact reason and I'd really like to see a privacy friendly app.

Bonus points if you know devices that can be used with local data only.

Markoff7• 4 years ago

What's the point of Weather app respecting privacy if its data source (OpenWeatherMap) has horribly inaccurate data?

I use Weawow and Today Weather, none of them have access to Location, actually both of them have no permissions granted at all and works fine. I don't use apps which don't allow manually selecting Location.

reflexco• 4 years ago

Chicken-and-egg problem. You would say the same about the data provider if there was no decent frontend for it.

Markoff7• 4 years ago

Not really, data source is way more important than form how it is delivered. Beatiful app with horrible forecast is useless, while horrible looking app with great forecast is still acceptable. Data source is the most improtant thing at weather app, which is why I won't even bother install some app which has for instance only inaccurate Open Weather data, no matter how good the app.

darkwater• 4 years ago

I wonder how using an API that is under CC-BY-SA 4.0 [0] is considered an anti-feature. I mean, I understand what they want in f-droid with [1] but there should probably be some middle-ground for cases like this?

[0] https://openweathermap.org/full-price#licenses

[1] https://f-droid.org/en/docs/Anti-Features/#NonFreeNet

csande17• 4 years ago

The data might be licensed under CC-BY-SA, but as far as I can tell, the service itself is proprietary. The code isn't open source, and you can't just run your own server to use the app completely privately (which you can do with many other F-Droid apps). IMO it's worth calling out.

NoboruWataya2• 4 years ago

I think allowing the app on the f-droid repo while forcing it to disclose the anti-feature is the middle ground.

autoexec2• 4 years ago

It seems like a privacy respecting app shouldn't leave your privacy dependent on the ongoing and unwavering benevolence of the developer or the services their app uses. For a weather app that would mean not sending my location data anywhere, but also not sending the locations I want the weather for anywhere either since if you know that most of the time you'll be able to tell where I am or where I will be.

The ideal privacy respecting weather app would download and update a local copy of every location's weather, and any requests you made would never leave your own device. I'm not sure how realistic that is, but as long you trust the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, the government they operate under, and that the data being sent to OpenWeather is non-identifying or that they too can be trusted with your data, then this is probably the closest we're going to get.

Markoff7• 4 years ago

What I do is to not install apps which don't work with disabled Location (yes, there are stuypid apps like that not allowing to select location manually, even better are those which don't allow selecting location without gapps in phone), simple as that.

I have no problem manually enter my location once in a few months (or more likely once and for good for home address and 1-2x per year for vacation location).

barsonme• 4 years ago

Or, you could use cryptography.

autoexec2• 4 years ago

Or, you could use cryptography.

Even if the traffic is encrypted if a remote server has to understand what location you're requesting data for, find that data for you, and then deliver it back to you, that same server will be able to log that and you're back to having to trust that they won't save and abuse that data.

salil999• 4 years ago

For a weather app that would mean not sending my location data anywhere, but also not sending the locations I want the weather for anywhere either since if you know that most of the time you'll be able to tell where I am or where I will be.

This doesn't even make sense. How do you want a weather app to not send "locations you want the weather for"?

Also, updating a local copy of every weather place on the planet doesn't scale at all. There's so many places that it won't fit on a single device.

nottorp• 4 years ago

I really like this climate of extreme digital paranoia we've been made to live in :)

But I really think that you can trust an app made by a German university not to sell your data. Not so sure about US universities though.

throwaway81523• 4 years ago

The ideal privacy respecting weather app would download and update a local copy of every location's weather,

You can also do it with multiple, independently operated servers, as long as they don't collude with each other beyond a given threshold. Then the queries and responses can be kept small. The private info in the queries is split between the servers, and the responses are recombined, using methods inspired by Shamir secret sharing in cryptography. That prevents the servers from learning the actual queries being made or responses being sent.

See:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_information_retrieval#...

throwaway892238• 4 years ago

I really like Rain Alarm (https://app.rain-alarm.com/). They do collect data, but they are very explicit about what they collect, how it is treated, and when it is removed. Even if you don't want to use it due to personal reasons, you have to respect them putting this info right at the forefront, as most try to hide it.

Also, I didn't even realize until now, but the app's functionality is available via the web (https://rain-alarm.com/).

krageon2• 4 years ago

Respect comes from not doing it at all. Honesty and transparency are not worth anything when corporations can change this text at will. It is not permanent and there are no consequences for changing it.

Timshel• 4 years ago

Goal of CCPA and GDPR is to make not disclosing illegal so they don't really gain any points ...

The web functionality is not available if you refuse tracking so nothing there too ..

MrksHfmn• 4 years ago

Really like the app with CalyxOS on my Pixel 6

m463• 4 years ago

You can type "weather san francisco" into duck duck go and it will give you detailed weather.

open-source-ux• 4 years ago

If you're in the UK, the BBC has a ad-free weather app for Android and iOS. It included forecasts for locations worldwide. However, I don't know if it is ad-free for international users. Perhaps someone can confirm?

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=bbc.mobile.wea...

kennydude• 4 years ago

Some of the color choices look a little ugly, at least by the screenshots.

Also, kinda surprisingly, Android has the capability to allow for different sources of data through different apps providing it. So they could have allowed for choice of weather service through other "apps" (even if those other apps provided no user interface). It's kinda sad how under-used Android can be tbh,

deng• 4 years ago

Used it for a while, but unfortunately, the data at Openweathermap was just way off for my location (Germany). Switched to FOSS Weather (https://f-droid.org/en/packages/de.baumann.weather/), which is a wrapper around wetterdienst.de. Unfortunately, this app is no longer maintained, but it still works perfectly fine.

ttctciyf2• 4 years ago

Is any substantial store of endorsements / comments for f-droid apps to be found?

I guess the absence of a "like" or review function in the f-droid app is a deliberate choice, but I'd love to see user feedback at a central, or at least easily discoverable, place.

This has been discussed [1],[2], and looks like it won't happen "officially", but a third-party site utilising the API and possibly organised like nexusmods, with posts and endorsements, say, would be nice to see!

1: https://forum.f-droid.org/t/reviews-feature-for-f-droid/1197...

2: https://forum.f-droid.org/t/discussion-thread-for-each-app-i...

zufallsheld2• 4 years ago

There's g-droid that has a like functionality: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.gdroid.gdroid/

Though it could use more users and reviewers.

ttctciyf2• 4 years ago

Thanks, I'll certainly give that a try!

Sverigevader• 4 years ago

One of the best (well made, great design, functional) Android apps I'm using currently is a weather app. It's made by the Norwegian Public Service Agency, NRK.

The app is simply called Yr and they have a website where you can find the apps (bottom)[0]

[0] https://www.yr.no/

piaste3• 4 years ago

Doesn't seem to be open source though. NRK has a bunch of open-source projects on github [0], but the app isn't one of them, only some support libraries [1]

[0] https://github.com/orgs/nrkno/

[1] https://github.com/orgs/nrkno/repositories?q=yr&type=all&lan...

trabant00• 4 years ago

I've tested https://openweathermap.org/ multiple times in different places in Europe. The forecasts are far from accurate when compared to weather.com (which is the data source for google weather). Right now for example it show 6 degrees C less than real for my location for the entire week.

jacooper• 4 years ago

I find Geometric weather to be better, also on F-droid.

piaste3• 4 years ago

+1. Geometric Weather is one of the rare FOSS apps that also have slick, modern UX.

jonnycomputer• 4 years ago

Are there no open-source weather apps on Play Store? For US weather at least we have https://www.weather.gov/documentation/services-web-api, so it doesn't seem like it would be that hard to do. Is there something about the Play Store eco-system that makes such a thing not viable or trustworthy? Seems like all you'd need is a minimalist web page doing a single http request to the api

mathstuf• 4 years ago

I suspect the main issue is getting discovered. Without filters like "no ads" or "no in-app purchases" in Play Store, it's hard to see how Google would ever organically bubble results for such an app to the top (since Google Ads is by far the most popular and there are definitely financial incentives to promote those apps over more privacy-conscious ones).

throwup2• 4 years ago

I prefer to use apps from F-Droid, but when that fails, I use a third-party search for the Play Store that has both of those filters - https://playsearch.kaki87.net/

Your broader point is right though. It doesn't benefit the app devs since 99.99% of users just use the first-party search.

gmiller123456• 4 years ago

If there were an open source app that was popular, the spammers would copy it and put it out there 10,000 times over, loaded down with spyware.

I generally release all of my code as public domain, but never publish the source code to an app.

The first day I got an Android phone, the first app I wanted was a flashlight app. After clicking through the permissions on some for a couple of minutes, I realized it was just going to be faster just to learn to write my own. It's just appalling that Google, the so called "master of search" won't let you filter results by permissions required.

None of my apps require more permissions than what's required, and some require none. And people give them 1 star reviews stating the "permissions screen is blank", or back when there used to be a popup with the permissions: "Warning! This app doesn't display a permissions popup!". They've literally never seen an app that doesn't require permissions.

jonas-w2• 4 years ago

Someone else mentioned that this app is also on the google play store.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/dev?id=479730765079191737...

IG_Semmelweiss3• 4 years ago

I have used the app. Its Ok but of limited use - and has no widget.

At some point I had to use a china-based app (that i would normally not touch with a 10 foot pole) despite privacy considerations

Why? Because they had a widget that did the trick.

I could see forecast by the hour on the widget, including % rain by the hour and wind.

A user needs to be able to plan his day (or week) out with a mere glance. If I have to tap more than once foe this information, thats a problem.

Is it going to rain at the time im scheduling this lunch meeting? Will it pour during my daughter's little League game? Will the mild cold going to be frigid because of severe wind gusts?

Those are answers i need on my home screen, viewable at.all.times.

I commend weather app for their privacy considerations but its too basic to be useable in most use cases except for generic 'just give me temp and precip '

zufallsheld2• 4 years ago

The app has a widget.

ryukafalz• 4 years ago

Yup, had to go check as well after installing and it does indeed. With four different options even!

AlexandrB• 4 years ago

At some point I had to use a china-based app (that i would normally not touch with a 10 foot pole) despite privacy considerations

Scary stuff. The fact that a well-informed user would compromise privacy consideration to save a tap or two when checking the weather is why we're all probably doomed. Even the slightest inconvenience seems to outweigh any long term privacy implications.

IG_Semmelweiss3• 4 years ago

I have migrated off all of gsuite and will still refuse to turn on location. I don't even use Gmaps even though Osmnd is mostly useless.

Yet at some point I had a china weather app on my phone and i was quite happy w it. Since replies mentioned a widget is now available, will try it out.

throwup2• 4 years ago

I used to use Dark Sky, which was perfect! It had an auto updating widget with a precipitation graph for the week. Then Apple bought it and shut the API down for non-iOS devices, so I found myself in a similar predicament. Like you, I was tempted to install some 1Weather-like garbage, but I ended up switching to Forecastie. The widget is barebones and it requires 3 taps to get to the precipitation graph, but those are just my own little pet issues. As far as things that actually matter to most people -- it's ad-free, open source, nice and snappy. If you don't like the OP app, I can recommend this one. https://f-droid.org/en/packages/cz.martykan.forecastie/

IG_Semmelweiss3• 4 years ago

this is my go to when on desktop.

I have it bookmarked, so its faster than the phone itself (right now its set at the White House ZIP code)

https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=38.895&lon=-77...

infamia• 4 years ago

Try Geometric Weather in the F-Droid store. It is quite a lot more than simple precipitation and it has a widget. Also, WX if you're in the US for really advanced weather info.

JeremyNT• 4 years ago

I've used this app, and it's OK, but for power users in the US, wX weather has a much better feature set:

https://f-droid.org/en/packages/joshuatee.wx/

https://gitlab.com/joshua.tee/wx

prego_xo• 4 years ago

I use Geometric Weather. It's also on F-Droid, has widgets, material design, and a GPL3 license. You can choose the source for your weather, and it has just about any feature you'd ever need (wind speed, barometric pressure, weekly, daily, and hourly forecasts). It's very pretty, too.

morsch• 4 years ago

Not every feature, unfortunately, no radar map.

zikduruqe• 4 years ago

Maybe try https://www.yr.no/en

ThePowerOfFuet• 4 years ago

Why does this look almost exactly like RadarWeather?

https://f-droid.org/repo/org.woheller69.weather

hnburnsy2• 4 years ago

Here is another great choice in the US, sourced directly from the NOAA, I think it used to be in FDroid but now is a direct download.

https://nwsnow.net/

NWS NOW is a FREE weather application with no advertising, no user tracking using the National Weather Service™ and National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration™ public API.

hnburnsy2• 4 years ago

NWSNow does included various sized widgets too.

Privacy respecting weather app for Android

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