Weather forecasting apps are popular and quite rightly so. We all want to know if rain or sunshine is expected, but which app is the best? Here are two apps with brilliant weather widgets.

There are dozens of weather forecasting apps for Android phones and choosing right one for your device is difficult because there are so many good ones. Scores in the Google Play Store are in the 4.5 to 4.9 range for many weather apps. If you need some help choosing, here are a couple of great apps.

All weather apps have widgets, but some widgets are better than others. Ones that show a pretty picture along with the current weather conditions are pointless. If I want to know if it is raining or sunny, I can simply look out of the window. It's right next to me.

To be useful, a widget has to show what the weather will be like in the future. I know what it is like now, what I want to know is whether it will rain this afternoon, if tomorrow will be good for a picnic or whether I will need a coat and umbrella when I go out. Here are two apps that have particularly good widgets, although the second is far better than the first.

Weather Live: Forecast & Rain Maps

Price: Free | By: Apalon Apps | Size: 32 MB | Android: Not stated

Weather Live can be run as an app in the usual way when you tap it, but it comes with no less than nine different widgets for your home screen that display the weather and the forecast in a variety of different ways. The sizes range from a tiny 1 x 1 tile (same size as an app icon) to 4 x 4, which is huge.

Many widgets only show the current weather, with today's minimum and maximum temperatures, but there are a couple of good ones. The smaller of the two shows the current conditions and what is expected over the next eight hours. Small icons show sun, cloud or rain, and the temperature is shown underneath. This is very useful.

The biggest widget shows the most useful information and it looks very good. The only problem with it is the wasted space at the top. It's like 4 x 1 of empty space. However, the widget is packed with information like the current weather conditions such as maximum and minimum temperatures, what temperature it actually feels like, wind speed and direction, visibility and so on.

The widget is in two parts and the lower part looks to the future. It shows the weather hourly for the next eight hours. There are icons showing cloud, sun and rain, and the expected temperature below each hour. Below this is an overall summary weather icon, max and min temperature for today and the next three days, which is useful to know when you are planning on being outside.

Open the app and there is more information. You can see an hourly forecast for the next 24 hours and a daily forecast fir the next 14 days. This is excellent. The app shows a few more things, like the times the sun and moon rise and set, and the air quality. Photographers know that sunrise and sunset are great times to shoot because the light is special and Weather Live shows the best times to take photos. There is also a useful precipitation map.

This is a great weather app, but there are many adverts in the free version. They can be removed if you don't mind paying for the app. I saw a special offer in the app, a subscription that worked out at £0.79 (around $1) a month. That is cheap and if you want to keep your sanity, you will pay for it to remove the ads.

This is one of my favorite weather apps and the amount of information that can be displayed is very good.

Weather & Widget - Weawow

Price: Free | By: Weawow Weather App | Size: 8 MB | Android: 4.4

Weather & Widget has an almost perfect user rating on the Google Play Store of 4.9 and it is well deserved. It is an excellent app and is so good I paid for it and I rarely pay for anything. It can be used for free and has small ads, but it is only the price of a coffee to go ad-free and it is worth it. It is a one-time fee and not a subscription.

There are 11 weather widgets to choose from for your home screens and they range from simple, but beautiful photos with current weather conditions overlaid on them to daily and weekly forecasts. I have a widget on the home screen that forecasts the weather for the next six hours and on the second screen I have another widget that shows a daily mini forecast for the next week.

What makes this app so good is that the widgets are highly customizable. You can choose the font size, widget height, choose a location for the forecast, select the contents of the widget, hiding or showing items, set the update frequency, whether to show the forecast location and current time, choose the widget design and the buttons to show or hide and more. It has so many features you can design the widget show exactly what you want and how you want it.

With 11 widgets each with many customization options, the variety of widgets is infinite. Well, maybe not infinite, but more than I can calculate. It is like a weather widget construction kit and it is a great idea.

Tap a widget or the app icon and the full app opens and this has so much information and detail, it is brilliant. It shows the hourly forecast for today, tomorrow and the day after, the actual temperature, what it feels like, amount of rain expected, wind speed, air pressure, cloud cover, humidity, dew point and UV index. It is one of the most comprehensive weather apps around and it has everything you could wish for.

The app also shows a 10-day forecast with conditions displayed every six hours throughout the day and night. It has a useful animated weather map that shows wind speed and direction, and rain. It shows air quality information, when the sun and moon will rise and set, and more.

This is fine as a free ad-supported app and I didn't see too many ads. However, it is so cheap to buy, I bought it anyway. It it excellent and is recommended. It is the best of the two apps.