Compare · · By Matt Senter
Rain and Snow Apps for Mac, Compared
There are more ways to get rain or snow on a Mac than you might expect: overlays that fall over your apps, scenes that sit behind them, screensavers, and weather apps with effects attached. This is a comparison of the ones you can get today, what each one does, and what it costs.
Who wrote this. I make Weatherling, one of the apps below, so read this with that in mind. Every claim about another app comes from its website, its Mac App Store listing or its GitHub page, and I have included the places where other apps do more than mine. Everything was checked on November 4, 2026. Prices and features change over time.
The short answer
- For weather that lands on your windows and mixes several effects at once: Weatherling.
- For free snow that settles on your windows: Snowhush, which also runs on Windows and Linux.
- For free rain with focus tools: RainStorm, with a Pomodoro timer, app blocking and a storm scheduler.
- For weather that stays behind your work: Weatherling, where Depth sets how far it recedes behind your windows.
- For lightning: StormScreen, whose bolts flash across the screen.
- For rain only when you step away: Rainy Day, a free screensaver.
- For a forecast as well: Weather Screen.
At a glance
| App | What it is | Price |
|---|---|---|
| Weatherling | Rain, snow, leaves, fog, sunlight, wind and grass among your windows | $1.99 once, Mac App Store |
| Snowhush | Snow, rain and leaves that settle on windows and the Dock | Free, direct download |
| Rainaissance | Rain and snow behind or over your windows | $6.99 once, free trial |
| RainStorm | Scheduled storms over your windows, with focus tools | Free during launch, Mac App Store |
| RainDesk: Ambient Weather | Weather scenes behind your windows | $3.99 once, Mac App Store |
| RainDesk | Rain over your apps, with Dock impacts | $3 a month or $25 lifetime, direct |
| StormScreen | Rain and lightning overlay | $5 once |
| Drizzle | Rain or snow on your screen | Free, Mac App Store |
| Weather Screen | Weather app with desktop effects | Free, with a subscription option |
| Rainy Day | Rain-on-glass screensaver and wallpaper | Free, open source |
| Let It Snow | Snowfall with wind and flurries | $4.99, optional Pro upgrade |
| Let It Snow Desktop | Simple snowfall, with a behind-windows mode | Free, Mac App Store |
| iSnow | Snow that piles up, plus Santa | $1.99, Mac App Store |
| Snowy! | Holiday snow and string lights | Free, Mac App Store |
Four kinds of weather app
The biggest difference between these apps is where the weather lives, and that decides what your desktop will feel like.
- Overlays over your windows. A click-through layer on top of everything. The weather is always visible and falls across whatever you are reading.
- Scenes behind your windows. Closer to a live wallpaper: the weather shows in the gaps between apps and never covers your work.
- Weather among your windows. The app knows where each window is, so weather can land on it and collect along its edges. Weatherling and Snowhush are built around this.
- Screensavers. Weather when you are idle, nothing while you work.
The apps
Weatherling
A menu bar app that puts weather among your open windows. Rain runs down window edges, snow settles on window tops and moves with the window, and any effects can run at once, with optional sound, local weather sync and Lings. It needs no Screen Recording or Accessibility permission.
Where it falls short: it has no timer, scheduler, thunder or lightning, it is Mac only, and there is no free trial, though its home page has a web demo.
Snowhush
The closest app to Weatherling, and free. Snow settles on window tops and the Dock, slides off a shaken window and parts under your cursor. It runs one mode at a time, lists no sound, and also runs on Windows and Linux.
Rainaissance
Falling rain, dripping rain and snow, with physics-based splashes on the bottom edges of windows. It supports full-screen apps, multiple displays, a global hotkey and optional rain sounds, and is sold directly with a trial download.
RainStorm
A click-through overlay with recorded storm sounds, plus a storm scheduler, Pomodoro timer, app blocking, quiet hours and meeting detection. Its site makes no claim that the rain reacts to your windows.
RainDesk: Ambient Weather
21 scenes of rain, fog, snow, leaves, petals and fireflies, with 17 local sound layers and optional 25 or 50 minute focus sessions. By default the scene stays behind your windows, so it works more like a backdrop than weather on your work.
RainDesk
A different app with the same name, sold directly. It offers intensity, speed, angle, color and opacity controls, presets and a Pomodoro timer. Rain sounds and snow are listed as coming soon.
StormScreen
A click-through overlay whose standout is lightning, with bolts that flash across the screen. It has five presets plus your own, keyboard shortcuts and multiple monitors, and its license covers up to three Macs. Its listing does not mention sound.
Drizzle
A menu bar app with rain or snow animations, ambient sounds, adjustable direction and multiple displays. Its listing mentions responsive window interactions without saying how they work.
Weather Screen
A weather app first, with forecasts in the menu bar and more than 15 desktop effects based on current conditions or your own choice, plus ambient sounds and battery-saving modes.
Rainy Day
Raindrops slide down glass over photographs, as a full-screen screensaver when you are idle or as an animated wallpaper behind your windows. It asks for no permissions.
Let It Snow
A long-running Mac snow app, first released in 2011. It has a sense of depth, wind, flurries and a menu bar pause. A Pro in-app purchase adds snowflake styles, multicolored snow and more snow.
Let It Snow Desktop
Simple controls for quantity, flake size and speed, with per-display settings and a desktop-only mode that keeps the snow behind your windows.
iSnow
Snow piles up on window tops and along the bottom of the screen while Santa and his reindeer fly past. It can also show the sun and moon crossing your desktop, with the current moon phase.
Snowy!
Falling snow in front of or behind your windows, from a light flurry to a blizzard, with holiday string lights and Christmas wallpapers.
What is not in this list
lo-rain, a well-known early rain app, is no longer available: its developer now lists it as a historical app. Rain Screen's Mac App Store listing is gone too. I left out apps that only play sounds, digital rain in the style of The Matrix, and hobby projects you have to build yourself.
How to choose
Start with where you want the weather. If it should stay out of the way of your work, pick Weatherling and use Depth to set how far it recedes behind your windows. If you want to see it over everything, pick an overlay. If you want it to feel like weather in the room, landing on the windows you are using, pick an app built for that. Then decide whether you want extras such as lightning, a timer or a forecast, or just the weather.