I use windy since years, it used to be the best wind app available. It had a focused, clean design with quick access to all relevant information.

Now I just returned from a months-long sailing trip and can't stop congratulating myself, that just now I upgraded windy and did not do this while being underway. It would probably have led to an instant heart attack, being betrayed of a relevant planning tool...

Your new "upgraded" version of windy is terrible. Why on earth did you do this?

My feedback:

Terrible new crosshair / location picker. Simply: Why? Somewhere one of your guys wrote, that before it "was difficult to select a specific location on the screen". Not true, I did this for years without any issue. I want to be able to zoom to a specific region and then tap on different locations to see the specific forecast for those locations. Before the update this was easily possible. I DO NOT want to be forced to move the map to see the forecast for a different location. I DO NOT want the map to auto-scroll, when I select a new location via "forecast for this location".

Terrible new layer list. Why show some meaningless "colorful thumbnails" that require lots of screen space instead of a compact, informative list of available layers as before?

Your UX designers / developers ruined the user experience that was perfect before. As it is now, its a huge downgrade in user experience. I seriously consider to downgrade to the previous version.

PLEASE provide a LEGACY mode for the location picker. If the picker is not fixed or a legacy mode becomes available, I will not longer will pay for your app.

I use windy since years, it was the best wind app available.

Now a terrible update indeed:

Terrible new crosshair / location picker. I want to be able to zoom to a specific region and then tap on different locations to see the specific forecast for those locations. Before the update this was easily possible. I DO NOT want to be forced to move the map to see the forecast for a different location. I DO NOT want the map to auto-scroll, when I select a new location via "forecast for this location".

Stupid new layer list. Why show "some colorful thumbnails" that require lots of screen space instead of a compact, informative list of available layers as before.

You developers ruined the user experience that was perfect before. I seriously consider to downgrade to the previous version.

PLEASE provide a legacy mode for the location picker. As it is now, its a huge downgrade in user experience.

@Ondřej-Šutera Hi Ondrej, thank you for the clarification!

Can you give some indication, how you at Windy see the critical comments of the users with regards to location picker and layer list? Can you at Windy understand/follow our concerns and complaints? Will there be a modification that allows to use the location picker in a way similar as before?

To further elaborate on location picker and layer list:
In my opinion the new "thumbnail list" for the layer selection could eventually be accepted. Although I do not understand the motivation to go from the old style to the new thumbnail-like list. Apart from having larger tiles to tap to select a layer (was this probably the original motivation?), the thumbnails show some (in my opinion) arbitrary colorful picture. To select the right layer one has to read the text anyways. So, what's the point with the thumbnails? In my opinion the only eat up space on the screen.

The issue with the new location picker is at a totally different and critical level in my opinion. The new interaction process completely brakes the user experience. For myself I would rate the new location picker as catastrophically wrong. It is not possible anymore to tap different positions on the map in a controlled way while keeping the same region of the map on the screen (this is important for route planning for e.g. sailing!). Either one has to move the map or one taps somewhere on the map, but then the map somehow autoscrolls and shows a different map region (...omg...!!!). From a developers perspective this might seem swift and nice that the map somehow autoscrolls. For me as a user this lets me loose focus while carefully studying the weather development for a certain region during which I need to select different locations and need to stay focused on that specific region. Autoscrolling is a no go!
Also, before selecting a certain location was a single tap. Now, I either arbitrarily move the map (bad) or I have to interact with the weather popup bar at the top of the screen to select "forecast for this location", but then autoscrolling... Before it was a single, efficient tap...

It would honestly be interesting what the actual reasons and design goals where for this new version. In my opinion (and reading the comments of many, many other users I'm obviously not alone), the user experience was very good before. No need to try to "invent the wheel again" and completely break the user experience.

Again: PLEASE provide a way to interact with the map and to select a location of interest in a way that follows to old approach.

Looking forward to our feedback, thank you and best regards.

Dear Ondrej, Dear Product Team,

thank you @Ondřej-Šutera for your response in another thread here. I understood, that there will be no general roll-back to the old version. That is understandable in some respect.

Still, please do not forget the concerns of us, your customers. I agree with you, that probably some complaints are just because "something has changed". But other complaints are substantial in my opinion, e.g. the issue with retrieving weather for a specific location.

My major concern is about the "user path" or "user journey" from starting the app to comparing wind predictions for different locations. This is very inefficient at the moment and prevents to efficiently study the weather forecast for a larger region.

Before ("old" app):

• Open the app
• Zoom & pan to relevant region
• Tap on the screen somewhere -> a dot and a "flag" with the local weather appears at that location
• Tap on the flag -> the time-line with the local weather appears at the lower screen
• Tap on "wind" -> wind predictions of all models are shown

If I now want another location (old app):

• Tap on different location -> wind predictions of all models are shown for this new location, map stays as it is
• Tap on different location -> wind predictions of all models are shown for this new location, map stays as it is
• and so on ...

Current version of app:

• Open the app
• Zoom & pan to relevant region, target location of interest with cross-hair
• Tap on "forecast for this location" -> the time-line with the local weather appears at the lower screen (when doing this at low zoom levels (overview), the map is automatically zoomed to some high (detailed) zoom level)
• Tap on "display as" -> selection menu "Basic, Waves, Wind, ..." opens
• Select "wind" -> wind predictions of all models are shown

If I now want another location (new app):

• Tap on "X" to actively close prediction time-line
• Zoom & pan to new relevant region, target location of interest with cross-hair
• Tap on "forecast for this location" -> the time-line with the local weather appears at the lower screen (when doing this at low zoom levels (overview), the map is automatically zoomed to some high (detailed) zoom level)
  (- Do this again for each new location...)
  Edit & Correction: The "move map" option solves this to some degree, still an issue, since the user is forced to move map, also auto-zoom issue persists.

So, where before changing location was a single tap on the location of interest (same map view), I now need to navigate to a new position (which means to move the map) to get the forecast there.

Probably this might sound as if this is no big deal. But during sailing the app is used several times a day to study the development of wether predictions for a specific region, which involves quickly switching between different locations in that region. To stay focussed it is crucial not being forced to change map view. Also, every unnecessary interaction should be avoided. Having to move the map, auto-zoom, lets me quickly loose focus while studying the weather.

In reference to the above, I kindly like to propose small changes to the new app.
Specifically my suggestions are:

• Let users simply tap on the map to show the wind prediction time-line for the tapped location
• Keep shown map region as it is (no auto-zoom) during selection of a new location

I guess, these are ideas, that could be implemented as small modifications with minimal impact on other new features of the app. Implementing this would bring user experience back to the efficient interaction that was provided by the old version of the app.

In summary: An efficient way of studying weather for a certain region is crucial. The old app was very good in this respect, for the new app the "user journey" to get to the same result (wind for a specific location) is too complicated.

So I kindly ask you to discuss/consider my suggestions and I hope you can see the above as constructive ideas.

I'm open to discussion. Please let me know, if anything of the above is unclear.
Probably you can see from the time I invested in my posts here how much I love your app and how much I like to also use it efficiently in the future ;-)
Thank you

Edit: Added reference to "move map" option.

@temp850

you wrote

I am looking at two other options instead of Windy which is sad. I hope they are listening to us.

Which options are you looking at? I'm also very disappointed and need to look for alternatives.

@HarrryKeith
Look for windy at e.g. the apkmirror site. There you will find the apk-file of the old version.

I agree, new version is unusable. Windy should take the ongoing concerns of the community serious and should finally do something about it.

@anthony10

"Neural networks", to this sounds a bit dangerous to rely at... I would prefer to look at the front analyses of the weather services instead.

Guys at Windy. Above you see the report of yet another user who reports that the new UI is NOT more user-friendly than before.

During the last weeks I Iearned that at Windy you guys have the impression, that the new UI is easier to use. As reported many, many times by a lot of users, this is sadly not the case.
Please consider to revert certain things or at least provide options, so that the user can decide upon the preferred mode of interaction.

Things that need to be fixed:

• location picker
• auto-zoom
• layer list

@Ondřej-Šutera

Thank you! I was not aware of that change. A very good step in the right direction!

I just tested it, here some feedback:

My usual "workflow" is to show the forecast for a certain spot on the map (formerly tapping somewhere, now via the crosshair dialog) and then check the forecast for different locations on the map the get an understanding of the weather development for a larger region (e.g. 100km x 100km). This is what I do as a sailor and I assume pilots, hikers etc. will do the same. Checking the different locations was very efficient before by simply tapping somewhere and having the opened forecast dialog update accordingly.

The new feature "Move the map to change ... location" lets me move the map without changing the forecast location. A very good, first step.

Unfortunately the efficiency of checking different locations is still much worse than before. If I first select one location and then want to check a different location, I first have to close the forecast dialog, then move the map to aim for a new location and then tap on "Forecast for this location". These are three steps during which I need to move the map where before it was one single tap without moving the map. At the moment, this is very inefficient and a quite awkward user experience.

Before, the only visual change when comparing different locations was the actual forecast in the popup dialog and the wind arrows on the map. When I tapped on different locations, everything shown remained the same, except the wind arrows and the forecast show in the dialog. This was extremely good to compare forecasts for different locations. Now, with the necessary three steps to change location and the necessity to close and open the forecast dialog including auto-zoom it still lets me "loose orientation" on the map. Very bad...

Furthermore I think there is a bug: When I start the app, aim for a certain location and select "forecast for this location", the forecast dialog pops up and the map zooms and moves. But it moves in such a way, the the actual location that I selected before is somewhere offscreen and not in the focus anymore. Obviously, the selected location should still remain in focus when the forecast popup opens. (Also: Please deactivate auto-zoom (or make it optional), when opening the forecast dialog ;) ).

Please let me know if anything of the above is unclear.

In summary: I very much appreciate, that a little bit has happened with regards to the location selection process. It gives me hope, that our voices as users are heard in a way. Please see the above as constructive feedback to make the user experience better and more efficient, coming again close to the very good user experience that we had with versions prior to v39.

Thank you

@Korina , I fully support what @elaeroplano is saying. Check the many, many complaints from other users.

I have written about the things that are really bad in my opinion here: https://community.windy.com/topic/27520/totally-disappointed-by-recent-update-picker-layer-list

You had such a wonderful app, why did you decide to break the user interaction so badly? Please decide to revert things.

@Filip_K

Another suggestion:

Often I want to quickly jump to a certain time to check weather there. To do so, it is quite inefficient to first carefully grab the slider and move it to the desired time.

At the moment, when I want to jump to a certain time, I need to click or tap the very thin line directly underneath the slider. Since this line is so thin, this is quite difficult sometimes, in particular when being underway with a boat. Very often I tap into the map instead...

Suggestion: Instead of clicking/tapping this very thin line, let the user also tap into the region below the slider to set a desired time. See my screenshot where I tried to highlight hat I mean.

@Filip_K

Ok, thank you for your feedback.

If ICON-D2 falls back to ICON-EU at a certain date, why not let the slider also include the time that is covered by ICON-EU instead of stopping at the maximum time covered by ICON-D2?

@Ftjwinfs @Suty

Another observation with the most recent version (browser), looking at a region of the german baltic sea.

When I select the wind forecast I see the hourly forecast for all models at the lower part of the screen.
When now I select the model ICON-D2, I still see the continuous hourly forecast in the lower part of the screen. But when I try to move the slider to select a specific time, this only goes to a certain date/time, in the example below (first screenshot) until Saturday 17th, 0:00.

When I now select another model, e.g. ECWMF, I can select much later times with the slider. When I change time to much later dates/times, the wind arrows on the map change accordingly. But surprisingly, also the wind arrows for ICON-D2 are still shown and change, so apparently there is data available for these later times. This is shown in the second screenshot.

Is this a bug? Why is it not possible to select certain later times with the slider for model ICON-D2, when apparently there is data available for this model at these times?

@Ftjwinfs

Awesome! Thank you very much for fixing this with the latest version!!

@Filip_K Thank you for the feedback. Good to hear, that it made it to the todo list.

@Filip_K @Suty

Any news on this?

When selecting "Compare forecasts" the timeline is not truncated at a common end time. But when selecting "Wind", the models that feature a longer view into the future are prematurely truncated. See also my attached screenshots.

Can the "Wind" view be extended to show the full time range of the models, as is shown for "Compare forecasts"?

Thank you.

@idefix37 Thank you! Actually I do not use Meteoblue for sailing forecasts, I rather go for ICON and ACMWF. But since Meteoblue is always part of the shown forecast in the timeline, I accidentally stumbled upon what I documented above.

@idefix37 Ok, understood. But this is grossly misleading and Windy really should show a notification, that the map does not show the selected model but something else.

I just realized, that when I only show the map, Meteoblue is not a model I can select. This supports what you wrote. But as soon as I open the "timeline" at the lower part of the screen, Meteoblue is shown an option. The general behavior of Windy implies, that as soon as I select a model, the data shown on the map and in the timeline comes from the same model. A "fallback" to ECMWF should not be "silent", but the user needs to be made aware of this.

I just found a serious inconsistency in the data between the map, the indication shown on the map at the location picker and the timeline shown in the lower part of the screen.

The streamlines on the map show me easterly winds. The direction indication at the location picker and also the wind arrows in the timeline show a northerly wind.

Please see screenshot. The selected model is Meteoblue. You can clearly see the above described inconsistencies

Can you confirm this as a bug?

Also, there seems to be an issue with the color on the map. While for the Meteoblue model 22kn of wind are shown as green, for the UKV model 22kn are shown as orange, which is consistent to the timeline colors (see screenshot below.

@Suty Yes, of course. But I need to know the numbers I need to fill in.

@idefix37 Thank you very much for that hint. I will try that.