How Outside? works
Outside? compares the forecast with the preferences for the activity you choose. The result is apreference match, not a safety assessment, a medical judgment or an official warning. The thresholds below are product defaults chosen for this tool, not researched comfort or health limits. Scoring version 1.
What it looks at
- Feels-like (apparent) temperature, from the forecast.
- Chance of precipitation and precipitation amount for each hour.
- Sustained wind and gusts.
- Weather type (for example rain, snow, fog or thunderstorms) and whether it is daylight.
It does not check air quality, UV, pollen, official weather alerts, visibility detail, terrain, trail or road surfaces, or water conditions. A good match says nothing about those.
Activity presets
You can change each activity's comfortable range and its rain and wind tolerance under Preferences.
| Activity | Comfortable feels-like | Temperature weight | Rain weight | Wind weight | Default rain | Default wind |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Outdoors | 12 to 26 °C | 40% | 35% | 25% | Some rain is fine | Some wind is fine |
| Walk | 8 to 25 °C | 40% | 35% | 25% | Some rain is fine | Some wind is fine |
| Run | 5 to 20 °C | 50% | 25% | 25% | Some rain is fine | Some wind is fine |
| Bike | 10 to 25 °C | 30% | 30% | 40% | Avoid rain | Prefer calm |
| Hang out | 18 to 27 °C | 45% | 35% | 20% | Avoid rain | Prefer calm |
“Outdoors” is meant for casual, land-based time outside. It is not a model for swimming, climbing, boating or remote hiking.
How an hour is scored
Each hour gets three penalties between 0 and 1:
- Temperature: 0 inside your comfortable range, rising to 1 when the feels-like temperature is 12 °C outside it. Humidity is already part of feels-like, so it is shown but not counted again. Wind is part of feels-like too, and is also counted on its own because it affects effort, especially on a bike.
- Rain: the larger of the chance of precipitation and the amount, each compared with your tolerance:avoid rain reaches 1 at 40% or 0.5 mm per hour; some rain is fine reaches 1 at 70% or 2 mm per hour; rain doesn't bother me reaches 1 at 100% or 5 mm per hour.
- Wind: how far sustained wind and gusts exceed your tolerance (prefer calm: from 10 km/h, gusts from 20 km/h; some wind is fine: from 18 km/h, gusts from 30 km/h; wind doesn't bother me: from 28 km/h, gusts from 45 km/h).
The score is 100 minus the weighted penalties. If any single penalty is high, the score is also capped so that one unacceptable factor cannot be averaged away by good ones: a fully unacceptable factor always gives a poor match. Scores of 75 or more are a Good match, 45 to 75 Mixed conditions, and below 45 aPoor match. If any needed value is missing, the hour shows Limited data instead of a guess.
Reasons name a factor only when it is noticeable, so a 5% chance of rain is not described as “higher chance of precipitation”.
Weather that is always flagged
These are shown whenever they appear in the forecast, whatever your preferences, and those hours are never suggested. They are conservative app rules, not official hazard thresholds, and no flag does not mean no hazard.
- Thunderstorms in the forecast. Check local conditions and official alerts.
- Freezing precipitation in the forecast.
- Strong gusts in the forecast. (gusts of 50 km/h or more)
- Heavy precipitation in the forecast. (10 mm or more in an hour)
- Very hot feels-like conditions. (feels like 35 °C or more)
- Very cold feels-like conditions. (feels like -15 °C or less)
- Snow or icy conditions may affect surfaces.
Fog is shown as a note but does not by itself exclude an hour.
Best times
For the length you choose (30 minutes to 2 hours), Outside? checks every start time in the next 24 hours: now and each following hour. A window's score combines the average of its hours (70%) with its worst hour (30%), so one bad hour counts against a longer outing. Windows with missing data, flagged weather, a poor hour or night hours (when “Daylight only” is on) are not suggested. Up to three non-overlapping windows are shown, best first; ties go to the earlier time. Poor windows are never added just to fill the list.
Hourly approximations
- Forecasts are hourly. Temperature, humidity and sustained wind are taken at the start of each hour; precipitation, its chance and gusts describe the hour that follows. A 30-minute outing uses the whole hour's forecast, and precipitation is never scaled down for a shorter outing.
- An hour counts as daylight only if it is daylight at both its start and its end, so dawn and dusk hours are left out of daylight-only suggestions.
- “Now” comes from the provider's current conditions and is kept separate from the next-hour match.
- Times are shown in the selected place's time zone, including across daylight-saving changes.
Freshness
A forecast is refreshed after 15 minutes. If it can't be refreshed, it stays visible; after an hour suggestions are paused and the forecast is marked as earlier, and after two hours it is no longer shown.
Data sources
Weather data by Open-Meteo, licensed underCC BY 4.0. Location search uses data fromGeoNames via Open-Meteo. Forecasts are model output for a grid area, not street-level observations, and can be wrong.