Modular Weather App With Hobby-Specific Modules and Side-By-Side Historical Comparison

mobile app real project • building

A thread on r/AppIdeas hit a nerve with hobbyists who are sick of weather apps being either an ad-stuffed everything-bagel or a $20-per-vertical silo (Surfline, Magicseaweed, Solunar). The recurring complaint that came up twice independently in replies: "compare today's weather to yesterday's so I can adjust my equipment." Users want one minimalist core with snap-in modules for surf swell, fishing barometric/solunar, solar UV/cloud opacity, and ski powder/avy risk — and a historical-comparison view nobody currently does.

builder note

Don't try to ship every module on day one. Pick the activity where users already pay (surfers pay for Surfline, fishermen pay for Fishbrain Pro) and undercut with a clean module. The historical "yesterday vs today" view is the wedge feature that nobody else has — lead with that, not with the modular framework.

landscape (5 existing solutions)

Niche weather is a crowded but balkanized market: every hobby has at least one ugly specialist app, and the only "unified" competitor is Carrot — which is a personality-driven generalist, not a hobby-decision tool. Nobody has shipped a clean modular shell with paid hobby module add-ons and a default historical-comparison view.

CARROT Weather Modular widgets exist but it's a snarky general-audience app on a $20+/yr subscription with no real surf swell, solunar, or solar irradiance data.

Windy Best-in-class wind/marine maps but built for desktop-style data nerds, not a single-tap activity decision ("is it worth driving to the lake at 3pm?").

Surfline / Magicseaweed Surf-only, premium subscription. User has to install another app for fishing, another for solar, another for hiking.

Fishing Barometer / Solunar apps Solunar tables and barometric pressure trends, but visual design is stuck in 2012 and there's no sharing of location/calendar context with other activity modules.

Apple Weather / Google Weather Free baseline but explicitly cannot show yesterday's actual conditions vs today's forecast, which was the most frequently-requested feature in the source thread.

sources (3)

reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/AppIdeas/comments/1sbxukd/a_modular... "I'm tired of weather apps that try to be everything for everyone, resulting in a cluttered mess of ads and useless data... If you don't toggle the module, it's like it doesn't exist. No bloat." 2026-04-01

reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/AppIdeas/comments/1sbxukd/a_modular... "i'd like an app that compares today weather to yesterdays weather so that i can adjust my equipment." 2026-04-01

reddit https://www.reddit.com/r/AppIdeas/comments/1sbxukd/a_modular... "The one feature that I'd love to see is what the weather was yesterday. I always want to compare the forecast to past days and it's a pain... if I'm using weather to predict outcomes of an activity that I'm getting into (sailing it's blowing 10 today and it topped out at 6 yesterday I may need to bring some different gear)." 2026-04-06

weatherhobbyoutdoorsfishingsurfingsolarsailing