Google recentlypublished a brand-new weather appto the Play Store for Pixel phones, but you can’t directly access it. Instead, it’s meant as a hook for the Clock app to get weather data about your current location and any other time zones you have saved. Google is working on a separate solution for its user-facing weather service, though, which is part of the Google app. Some Pixel users report seeing a new shortcut for this Weather “app” on their Pixel Launcher.
Some Pixel phones, including a unit here at Android Police, now show a Weather shortcut in the app drawer on Android 14. The change wasalso spotted by 9to5Google, so it looks like it’s a wider rollout. Much like the Google Podcasts and the Google Assistant apps you can get from the Play Store, this new Weather “app” isn’t an app as much as it is a shortcut to a specific part of the Google app. This much becomes apparent when you tap and hold the icon and head to the App info screen, which gives you details about the Google app instead. Opening the shortcut itself leads you straight to the new Google weather forecast, which you can also access via Google Search and the At a Glance widget at the top of the home screen.
This new Weather shortcut closely resembles the previous solution Google offered, but it has some key advantages. In the past, you could already create a shortcut for weather, but in contrast to the new solution, it only lived on the home screen. It also carried a Google app icon in the bottom right corner, which is a way Android depicts in-app shortcuts you can add to the home screen. The new version of the Weather shortcut looks and feels like a regular app for the most part.
It doesn’t look like Google is fully done with the new shortcut, though. If you look closely, you can see that the sun and cloud symbol it uses is smaller than its predecessor, living in an extra white circle within the round app icon. It’s similar to the YouTube Music app, but given that in its case it’s a white circle in a white circle, it doesn’t seem like it’s supposed to look that way. It also doesn’t supportthemed app icons, which would be one of the advantages of Google opting for this app-like shortcut. Given that weather is already accessible via so many places on Pixels, including the At a Glance widget, it’s unclear why Google felt the addition was necessary in the first place.
We haven’t been able to spot this new weather shortcut on other devices. Likewise, the redesigned weather forecast that Google brought to Pixel phones has yet to roll out widely to all of Android. It’s possible that the company will keep the shortcut exclusive to Pixel phones as many othergreat Android phonesinclude pre-installed weather apps of their own. That way, Google could cut down on potential duplicates and confusion. It’s entirely unclear what the company will opt for at this stage, though.
