@korina it would be interesting to hear what disadvantages you reckon with. No one is forced to use the download, so I don't see how it can possibly be disadvantageous if you provide it as an option in some remote corner of the website. Unless, of course, someone uses it "by accident", which, however, I think can easily remedied with a simple disclaimer.

If you anticipate that people, despite it being less-accessible and well-labeled, will accidentally use it instead of using the Google Store version, I don't share your concern and I don't see any reason to assume this. 10 years ago, when Android was still young and people didn't know how to install software, perhaps. But not today.

Hi, the forum suggested this thread but I'll take the liberty to create one anyway. I think this would be generally a sensible thing to provide. The only potential reason I can think of why you at Windy wouldn't want to do this is, is to prevent people from accidentally using the direct download APK and then be barred from automatic updates. But I think a sufficient disclaimer (or hiding the download well enough...) could solve that.

That said, I think there are many good reasons why people don't register at Google, use their "PlayStore" or don't participate in their ecosystem entirely. Both, out of personal interest and technical necessity[1].

I known it's not a typical thing to do, but since you're not a typical "closed software" group either and are pretty well tethered with the community, I'm hoping you can help out a bit, for all those who don't want to go through Google.

PS: Signal sets a good example how to do this. I don't think that page (the direct APK download) is accessible anywhere through their main website, but it is there (top Google result, for example), if you insist. So you don't have to go through some 3rd party APK host like "apkpure", etc.

[1] To mention my particular case: I'm using a stock Android, but I use F-Droid for software. Windy and my Banking App are actually the only two closed softwares that are allowed :)

Kaiserslautern (Germany) shows on the map as "K-Town" in the large-scale view. There is a reference to that designation under "also known as" in the Wikidata, but it is unclear to me how this name ends up. Openstreetmap only knows the city under its regular name, too.

@korina Yes, this seems to have been a glitch. The widget displays now.

Sadly, I have to report that the problem which this thread is about has not been resolved. Version 29.2.4 of Windy still causes said delay with the KISS launcher.

I also tried the standard "Quickstep" launcher. The problem does not occur there. Then again, the standard launcher does not show the keyboard on the home screen and might have an entirely different infrastructure. My suspicion is simply that Windy does not re-draw effectively, which could be remedied by adding a cache.

I would appreciate if your dev team could look into this. KISS is one of the most popular launchers. Windy is not Open-Source, so it doesn't seem to make sense that I ask the KISS developers for help. Thanks.

@korina I'm afraid the new widget did not improve things for me but the opposite. When I add the widget to the home screen, there is now only a message "Couldn't add widget" in place of the widget.

@vicb What's wrong with using the arrow keys? Moving the pointer over the bar and scrolling is kind of awkward. Though the sideways scrolling (assuming it has no other use) could make a nice feature indeed.

@korina it would be interesting to hear what disadvantages you reckon with. No one is forced to use the download, so I don't see how it can possibly be disadvantageous if you provide it as an option in some remote corner of the website. Unless, of course, someone uses it "by accident", which, however, I think can easily remedied with a simple disclaimer.

If you anticipate that people, despite it being less-accessible and well-labeled, will accidentally use it instead of using the Google Store version, I don't share your concern and I don't see any reason to assume this. 10 years ago, when Android was still young and people didn't know how to install software, perhaps. But not today.

Hi, the forum suggested this thread but I'll take the liberty to create one anyway. I think this would be generally a sensible thing to provide. The only potential reason I can think of why you at Windy wouldn't want to do this is, is to prevent people from accidentally using the direct download APK and then be barred from automatic updates. But I think a sufficient disclaimer (or hiding the download well enough...) could solve that.

That said, I think there are many good reasons why people don't register at Google, use their "PlayStore" or don't participate in their ecosystem entirely. Both, out of personal interest and technical necessity[1].

I known it's not a typical thing to do, but since you're not a typical "closed software" group either and are pretty well tethered with the community, I'm hoping you can help out a bit, for all those who don't want to go through Google.

PS: Signal sets a good example how to do this. I don't think that page (the direct APK download) is accessible anywhere through their main website, but it is there (top Google result, for example), if you insist. So you don't have to go through some 3rd party APK host like "apkpure", etc.

[1] To mention my particular case: I'm using a stock Android, but I use F-Droid for software. Windy and my Banking App are actually the only two closed softwares that are allowed :)

@korina Yeah, I was just greeted by the splash on the website. Great news, I have a good feeling about. Keep up the good work :)

@korina Hello and thanks. The phone can effortlessly display 3d renderings, games, and other, more sophisticated things on the home screen. I'm positive that Windy's performance impact when displaying a static image in the background can not be blamed on a lack of hardware.

That seems to be an issue of insufficient software design or simply a bug (for example if Windy tries to re-draw the entire widget each time the screen size changes, instead of retaining a copy of the drawn widget in cache - but I'm not Android developer so my speculation is fruitless). In any event, I'm not going to buy a new phone for this.

I'm looking forward to the new widget. Do you have an ETA perhaps?

Here, I made you two videos for comparison:

With Geometric Weather
With Windy

@korina I do not understand what you mean "I cannot see the exact issue with the widget". Do you not recognize the delay after the keyboard appears/disappears? Do want me to show you a reference video with another widget (for example Geometric Weather), where the delay does not happen so you can see the difference?

My phone has no problems rendering other widgets or programs of any kind. But as soon as the Windy widget is on the home screen, things become unresponsive.