★★★★★ · APP STORE REVIEW
“Cozy Weather App”
“Nice simulated rain effect for those days when you’re in bed working. Does not track you either so always a plus for me!”
A little rain. A little snow.
DESKTOP WEATHER APP FOR MAC
Make It Rain.
Let It Snow.
Touch Grass. Weather and nature effects for your Mac desktop
A little weather for your Mac.
Rain, snow, sun, leaves, grass, and wind on your windows.
Plus little visitors called Lings™!
Download for Mac$1.99 once. No subscription.
Outside feeling.
Inside your screen.
Inside your screen.
Rain & snow is on.
Off until you ask for it.
These aren’t screenshots.
Go on. Move a window.
★★★★★
“Cozy Weather App”
“Nice simulated rain effect for those days when you’re in bed working. Does not track you either so always a plus for me!”
★★★★★
“It’s a fun app for when you want rain”
“It’s a lightweight app that adds a little rain to your day even if you live somewhere dry!”
★★★★★
“Does What It Says, And Does It Well”
“Really, is there anything better than a simple app whose only use is aesthetic joy and where it does exactly what it says it does without any hassles? This is what the $1.99 price point is all about. You don’t need it, but someone worked hard enough on it to make you want it, so why not pay them for the effort as a way to say “Nice job.””
★★★★★
“Neat execution”
“really like the rain physics , especially after minimizing the full screen apps... I hope more weather effects like snow and hail gets added on in future updates.”
★★★★★
“So cool!”
“I’m running it all the time. Please continue to deliver new features and improve the graphics :) more variability of the dripping, dripping around corners a little better, showing up behind the bar at the top on mac would be more immersive too.”
★★★★★
“Relaxing App”
“Purchased this for casual use but have found myself using it for work too for focus assistance via the visuals and especially the sound effects. The visuals are top notch & really atmospheric. How the rain streams off the window edges during heavy phases really makes it. Looking forward to future updates.”
★★★★★
“I needed this!”
“Weathering has one job and it does it vey well. At the moment, my Mac desktop is experiencing a mix of rain and snow. The rain and snow builds up on top of any open windows. When I close a window, the precipitation is no longer supported so it falls down the screen. My windows, themselves, are not affected. The whimsy that this app brings is just what I need.”
★★★★★
“Creates the vibe”
“This is awesome. Love the app, love the one-time fee, feels like a fresh air in the dark times of subscriptions. Please add more weather effects and don’t drop the development. If one day you will get tired of supporting this please consider going open-source, devs (including me) would love to keep this alive. Thank you!”
New in 1.7
Weatherling 1.7 adds templates you can save and share, grass that grows along your windows, colors of your own, more Lings, and optional Game Center leaderboards and achievements.
- Templates save your whole scene under a name, with an optional emoji. Start from Rainy Day, Snow Drift, Autumn Day, or Techno, then load, rename, copy, or delete your own from the Templates menu at the top of the tray.
- Share a template as a link or a file. Opening a shared template adds it as a new one and leaves your current scene, location, and device settings as they are.
- Grass grows along the tops of your windows, with moss and soil beneath. Rain makes it grow faster, wind bends the blades, and it has its own height slider and Random setting.
- Give each effect a color of your own: the palette button beside a slider sets the color, intensity, and brightness of rain, snow, fog, sunlight, leaves, or grass. Natural brings back the original.
- Custom Sync sets how much of each element follows the weather outside, or stops syncing one element entirely.
- More Lings to discover.
- Optional Game Center: compare lifetime and weekly scores on leaderboards and earn achievements. It stays off until you turn it on in Settings, and the weather, collecting, and your score all work without it.
- A new Game Center pane in Settings shows your achievements and leaderboards. Share a single Ling or an achievement on a card of its own.
- On battery power chooses what happens when you unplug: change nothing, switch to Automatic, or pause the effects. Plugging in restores your previous setting.
- Hide effects over selected apps in Advanced, while the weather carries on everywhere else.
- Weather now plays along the tray beneath the menu bar, and a swipe of the cursor pushes settled leaves around.
- With VoiceOver running, the cloud in the menu bar opens the tray as a popover that VoiceOver can follow, and more controls have clear labels.
- Weatherling now speaks Polish, Dutch, and Traditional Chinese.
- Fixes for rain in Stage Manager and Mission Control, weather disappearing while dragging items in some apps, overlays from other apps hiding the weather, browser link previews being mistaken for full screen, syncing pausing at startup, the tray closing on the first click after you open it, weather settling on address bar menus in some browsers, and Weatherling holding up logging out, restarting, or shutting down.
What is Weatherling?
Weatherling is a tiny weather system for your Mac. It is a menu bar app that makes rain fall among the windows you already have open: drops land on the top edge of a window, gather along the edges and in the corners, and find their way down the sides. It is an ambient visual effect, not a forecast app, with no radar and no seven-day outlook. You decide whether it is raining, and how hard. Or, new in 1.6, turn on Sync with Your Weather and let the weather where you live set the scene.
A passing drizzle, a proper downpour, or a quiet snowfall, set from the menu bar and then forgotten about. The weather stays click-through while you work. Optional interaction lets you pick up Lings when you feel like a break.
How the weather works
Rain falls from the top of each display and lands on whatever is exposed. Because Weatherling reads the front-to-back order of your windows, a drop can fall in front of one window and behind another, which is what makes it read as weather in the room rather than a sticker on the glass. Water that lands on a title bar travels along the top edge, pools in the corner, and runs down the side.
Turn the intensity up and the edges overflow into small waterfalls. Slide toward snow and it settles along the window tops instead. Turn it down and it is a drizzle you stop noticing, which is the setting most people end up leaving it on. The draggable windows on this page are a live web illustration of the same idea, so you can try the behavior before you install anything. As for why a quiet rain works so well, the research is in why rain on your desktop can feel calming.
The rain can have a sound as well as a picture: a looping recording of a downpour, off until you turn it on, with its own volume and no claim on whatever else is playing. The control window on this page plays the same recording, so you can hear it before you install anything.
Make it yours, then pass it on.
Weatherling 1.7 is now available on the Mac App Store.
Save your favorite scenes as templates, with a name and an emoji, and share them as a link. Rain, snow, fog, sunlight, leaves, and grass can each take a color of your own.
Grass now grows along the tops of your windows. Rain helps it along and wind bends the blades.
More Lings to collect, and optional Game Center leaderboards and achievements for collectors who like a little competition.
Weatherling 1.7
Weatherling 1.7
Weatherling 1.7
Weatherling 1.7
Weatherling 1.7
Weatherling 1.7
Weatherling 1.7
Weatherling 1.7
Weatherling 1.7
Weatherling 1.7
Weather sounds and optional Ling sounds have separate volume controls. Interaction and Ling sounds are off by default. Leave the Lings to their adventures, or turn them off for weather alone. Optional floating points show what you earn when you collect a Ling. See the full release notes for new features and fixes.
How to Make It Rain on Your Mac Desktop · How to Make It Snow on Your Mac Desktop
More on the blog: Weatherling 1.4 is here: autumn leaves and new Lings · Weatherling 1.3 is here: snow and a little more company · Weatherling 1.2 is out! Meet Dan the Ling · Weatherling Reached #13, Then #8, in Mac App Store Utilities
What you need
- macOS 14.0 or later. Sonoma, Sequoia and Tahoe are all supported, on both Apple silicon and Intel Macs.
- No screen access. Weatherling never asks for Screen Recording or Accessibility. It reads the window positions macOS already shares with every app, never their contents. How it works without Screen Recording.
- Sandboxed, with click-through weather. It runs in Apple's App Sandbox and does not modify other apps. Lings respond to your mouse only when you turn on Interactive.
- Every display, or just the ones you pick. Each active display gets its own overlay, and you can leave the weather off on the screens you would rather keep clear.
- $1.99 once, on the Mac App Store. No subscription and no in-app purchases. Get Weatherling and the App Store installs it and keeps it up to date.
Questions people ask
How do I get rain or snow on my Mac desktop?
Install Weatherling from the Mac App Store and open it. Its icon appears in the menu bar: click it, turn the weather on, and set the intensity, wind, and depth. Rain or snow starts falling among your open windows right away, with no Screen Recording or Accessibility permission to grant.
Is it a screensaver or a wallpaper?
Neither. A screensaver takes over the screen when you stop working, and a live wallpaper sits behind every window. Weatherling draws on a transparent layer among your windows while you keep working, so rain lands on the ones in front and passes behind the ones further back.
Can I still click on things?
Yes. The rain and snow are click-through, so you can keep clicking, typing, and dragging as usual. Lings are click-through too unless you turn on the optional Interactive setting.
Does it work with more than one display, and with Spaces?
Each display gets its own weather, and you can switch it off on the ones you want to keep clear. The weather follows you to every Space.
What about full-screen apps?
By default the weather steps aside on a display while an app is full screen, so a film or a presentation stays clear. If you would rather it kept falling there, turn on Fall over full-screen apps in Settings.
Can I just watch the Lings?
Yes. Interaction is off by default, so you can leave the Lings to their own adventures. You can also turn Lings off in Settings or the menu bar for rain alone.
Does my Ling score go online?
Only if you turn on Game Center. Your score and collection stay on this Mac, and Game Center is off until you turn it on in Settings. Then your lifetime and weekly scores and the achievements you earn go to Apple’s Game Center. Sharing is your choice too: Share My Score creates a card on your Mac for you to share through another app or website.
Will it drain my battery?
It is built to be light. At default settings it averaged about 3 to 4% of one CPU core in my latest measured run. With Automatic on under Performance, it lowers its frame rate on battery, in Low Power Mode, or when the Mac is running hot, uses even less when only sunlight or fog is showing, and stops drawing entirely while the Mac or its displays are asleep. You can also turn Automatic off and move the slider toward Least Energy. My performance measurements explain the CPU and memory costs I have observed, and why I do not yet claim a battery-life figure.
Can it follow the weather outside?
Only if you want it to. Weatherling is an ambient effect, not a forecast, so out of the box it rains when you want it to, as hard as you want, whatever it is doing outside. Sync with Your Weather follows the rain, snow, fog, sunlight, and wind where you are, using Apple Weather. It is off until you turn it on. Type a city or ZIP code, or use your Mac’s approximate location, and Custom Sync chooses how much of each element follows along. Invert turns it around, so a grey day outside brings sunshine to your desktop.