CARROT Weather 2.5 for Android
- Description
- What's new
CARROT Weather is a forecast app famous for delivering forecasts with a sarcastic sense of humor, often displaying snarky commentary and playful insults alongside the temperature and chance of rain. From the moment you open the tool, a cheerful robotic voice and on-screen text greet you with something like, “Hi, meatbag. I, CARROT, am your new weatherbot.” There is no shortage of weather apps out there, but CARROT manages to stand out. With it, checking the weather becomes entertainment, and you’ll actually look forward to opening the app just to see what quip or insult CARROT has for you each day.
The app’s notorious sarcasm
The defining feature of CARROT Weather is its over-the-top personality. The app’s snarky AI character loves to mock current events, poke fun at the day’s weather, and even lob a few personal jabs at you. Don’t be surprised if CARROT starts cracking jokes about politicians or trending news – its humor is often tied into current events (e.g. quips about tech CEOs or election shenanigans) to keep things fresh.
Crucially, CARROT lets you customize the humor to your taste. Not everyone enjoys being ruthlessly mocked by their weather app, so developer Brian Mueller wisely gave users a personality slider. In the settings, you can set CARROT’s mood anywhere from “Friendly” to “Snarky” to “Homicidal”, and finally “Overkill” for maximum cheeky and occasional light profanity. The app also acknowledges that humor can be a minefield these days, so it lets you set a political bias filter – liberal, conservative, centrist, libertarian, communist, or apolitical – which will shape the jokes you see.
Forecast accuracy
No matter how funny an app is, it won’t keep users around if it fails at its primary job: telling the weather accurately and updating reliably. In this department, CARROT Weather holds its own quite well. The app sources its data from Foreca (as of recent versions) and previously from Dark Sky’s industry-leading platform, meaning the forecasts tend to be trustworthy and precise. It also provides the essentials like severe weather alerts, which appear as notifications or in-app warnings, accompanied by some snide remark, of course. If a major thunderstorm or snowstorm is on the horizon, CARROT will let you know so you’re not caught off guard.
Fun extras and customization
Beyond the basic weather functions, CARROT Weather comes loaded with quirky extras that you won’t find in your standard Weather Channel app. For one, there’s a whole mini-game built into the app involving “Secret Locations.” CARROT will give you snarky clues about various famous places around the world – and your job is to find them on the map. There are dozens of these secret locations to discover, from the Pyramids to Chernobyl to the Titanic wreck. It’s utterly pointless and totally fun. You’ll zoom around the map tapping places that seem to match the clue, and CARROT will taunt you with “warmer” or “colder” messages until you hone in on the correct spot.
The app also has a ton of achievements and Easter eggs to keep things interesting. You can unlock achievements for experiencing certain weather events, e.g. “Survived a Category 5 hurricane” or for finding those secret locations or even for silly things like waking CARROT up at an odd hour. These little gamified elements don’t affect the weather functionality, but they give you extra reasons to check the app and see what else CARROT might have up its sleeve.
On the more practical side, CARROT Weather offers some useful customization for how it displays info. You can reorder and toggle certain data points on or off, ensuring the app shows you the stats you care about (and hides the clutter you don’t). For instance, if you’re a temperature-only person and don’t really care about humidity or dew point, you can configure the layout to emphasize temp and minimal extras.
The quirks and cons
There is no built-in lightning map, no cloud satellite overlay, and no option to get a morning briefing in your notification shade. Competing apps like AccuWeather, Weather Underground, or even your phone’s default weather app might offer more raw information or utility for free. In addition, there’s the issue of platform differences and support. CARROT Weather originated on iOS and it shows; the Android app, while solid, has occasionally felt like a second-class citizen. Some early adopters who came from iPhone noted that the Android version was lacking certain polish – for instance, the signature snarky voice on iOS (voiced by an actual character voice) isn’t quite the same on Android, which relies on more generic text-to-speech.
Conclusion
CARROT Weather for Android is, in a nutshell, “fun weather”. It takes something as mundane as checking the forecast and turns it into a humorous daily ritual. If you’re the kind of person who appreciates sarcasm and enjoys a bit of irreverence, you’ll likely love this app. It’s perfect for folks who want their weather with a side of personality for free.
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