Weatherling 1.7, the latest update to my Mac desktop weather app, is out, with shareable weather templates, grass growing along your windows, custom colors, more Lings, and optional Game Center. Building it has also given me more time to work on the parts of a product that are easy to put off: how a control behaves, what a default assumes, and whether someone can use it with VoiceOver.
AI coding tools free up a lot of my time. I can spend more of it thinking through what happens before and after someone clicks a button, trying the app in different situations, and refining the experience. With Weatherling, that means paying attention to how a playful app fits into a computer someone is using to get work done.
Shareable templates that preserve your settings
A feature description often ends too early. “Share a weather template” sounds complete until you follow the link on the receiving end. Should opening it immediately change your weather? Which settings should come along? How do you get back to what you had?
In 1.7, templates save a scene’s weather, colors, and Random settings. You can start with Rainy Day, Snow Drift, Autumn Day, or Techno, make your own, and share it as a link or file. Opening one adds it to your collection while leaving your current scene, location, and device settings alone.
That gives someone room to look before they commit. A friend can send you their weather without rearranging yours. Defining that behavior is product work, and faster implementation gives me more room to do it.
Custom colors with a way back
Each effect now has controls for color, intensity, and brightness. Natural restores the original appearance. Templates let you keep a scene you like before trying something else. Custom Sync lets you decide how much individual elements follow the weather outside, including leaving one unsynced.
I want people to try strange colors and combinations without worrying about losing a setup they liked. The recovery path needs as much attention as the new control. If someone has to remember six slider positions to undo an experiment, I have left them with work the app should help them avoid.
Improving VoiceOver accessibility
Accessibility is one of the best uses of the time these tools give me. There is more room to consider how someone reaches a control, how its purpose is announced, and whether a change of state makes sense without seeing the screen.
Weatherling already supported VoiceOver. Version 1.7 improves that experience: with VoiceOver running, the menu bar cloud opens the tray as a popover VoiceOver can follow, and more controls have clear labels. Those details determine whether someone can actually operate the app.
Generated code still needs to be checked through the interaction it creates. A label can exist in the code and still be vague when spoken. A panel can look right while being awkward to navigate. Having time to follow those paths is valuable, especially for a solo developer responsible for the whole product.
Optional Game Center and controls for daily use
The new Lings come with optional Game Center leaderboards and achievements, including lifetime and weekly scores. You can also share a single Ling or achievement card. Game Center starts off, and weather, collecting, and your local score work without it.
Some people want a collection to compete over. Others want rain while they write. Both should be comfortable using the same app. An optional feature needs to remain optional throughout the experience, including when someone chooses never to set it up.
Version 1.7 also adds choices for battery power and hiding effects over selected apps. Polish, Dutch, and Traditional Chinese join the supported languages. These are different ways of giving people more control over how Weatherling fits their day.
Grass that responds to rain and wind
Grass grows along window tops, with moss and soil beneath it. Rain helps it grow, wind bends the blades, and a slider controls its height. Weather now plays along the tray, too, and you can push settled leaves with the cursor.
These interactions are why I enjoy building Weatherling. The effects share a little world, so they should respond to each other. Making grass appear is one step; making it feel at home alongside the rain and wind takes more decisions.
The same care applies when the desktop changes around it. This release includes fixes for Stage Manager, Mission Control, dragging, browser menus, and shutting down. Weatherling needs to behave predictably through the ordinary things people do with their computers.
Where I spend the time saved by AI coding tools
It is easy to fill every hour saved by AI with another feature. I want to spend some of that time returning to what is already there: trying another path through a panel, improving a label, reconsidering a default, or making it easier to recover from a change.
I have written about scope creep when AI makes features cheap and the product judgment that still goes into shipping software. This release gives me a concrete way to act on both: spend some of the saved time improving the features people already use.
The tools make more of that work practical for me. I still have to decide what a good experience should be and check whether the app delivers it. Weatherling 1.7 is how I am putting that extra time to use.
Version 1.7 is included for existing customers. You can update through the App Store, read the feature announcement or the full release notes, and see Weatherling in action.
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