adds slick-looking dark theme to its News ather app

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Published 4 Dec 2014

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Disclosure

resurrected its long dormant News ather app this year, after leaving it untouched since the launch of the Nexus One.

A new update to version 2.2 adds some nice touches, including a dark theme, more detailed weather data, the ability to search for articles by topic.

The weather card now has larger graphs a vertical slider for swiping through the forecast for temperature, precipitation, wind, humidity.

google news weather

Get a detailed weather graph with temperature, precipitation, other essential data.

You also now get the slide-out interface that displays your + profile picture background. From here you can also change customize news topics to peruse. After you do a search, you can add that term to your personal list.

The itors’ cks section also adds curated stories from ’s “top publishers,” though there are no specifics as to which ones are part of the select club. Typically it’s larger, high-traffic publications you’re probably familiar with.

google news topic

Choose a specific news topic will provide suggested articles to read.

The dark theme looks great, may especially be useful for low-light reading. The accompanying widget also now gets a dark option, which helps visually separate it if placed by the Search bar on the home screen. Unfortunately, these dark themes don’t have a lot of true black, opting for dark grays instead. So, while it’s easy on the eyes in low light, it might not be a huge battery saver on AMOD displays.

You can wait for the update to hit your device or grab the A from Android lice.

y this matters: The News ather widget is a great way to live up your home screen, as it displays the current temperature a steady feed of headlines. Years ago, it was one of the first differentiators to clue me in to the benefits of Android, as the home screen was more “alive” in comparison to the stale static icons on iOS. It’s great that brought it back, as it is becoming one of the best ways to stay current with the news get a quick glance at the weather forecast.