Though you might appreciate the clean, unfussy minimalism of the Linux terminal, it can also be extensively customized using a few lines of code, as shown in our guide. However, developer Veirt has pushed things far beyond giving the CLI a new lick of paint with Weathr. This is a Rust-based app that teleports real-time ASCII art-based weather animations to your terminal backdrop.
The above animated demo provided by Veirt shows the terminal at night, during a thunderstorm. Here you see a moonlit backdrop flecked with rain, with an occasional fork of lightning piercing the night sky. This ASCII animation isn’t random; it is driven by tapping into real-time weather data provided by Open-Meteo and using auto-location detection. Veirt says that the animation engine can pull in “animated rain, snow, thunderstorms, flying airplanes, [and] day/night cycles.”
If you want to enjoy these real-time weather backdrops in your terminal, so you no longer need to look out of the window to check the real-world weather, your Linux machine will need Rust installed. Veirt shares a guide to setup, installation, and configuration. Moreover, you can test/simulate weather conditions to make sure Weathr is working properly. In the UK, for example, you might want to simulate a sunny day, for a change.
Weathr has been released on GitHub under the GPLv3 license, and Viert thanks/credits Open Meteo and ASCIIArt.EU for sharing their resources.
This fun and almost useful app has a development roadmap that includes support for other weather APIs, binaries for ARM64, hotkeys to control the animations, and more.
We’d also like to see some seasonal frills added. Imagine the extra fun of adding Santa and his sleigh whizzing by during the 12 days of Christmas, or animations featuring the Easter bunny, Halloween witches on broomsticks, occasional fireworks, falling leaves, and so on…
As mentioned in the intro, we have previously published a guide to customizing the Linux terminal with rainbow text, ASCII Art, and more. If you think Weathr might be a little bit too distracting, you can still spruce up the terminal with a fresh look – and include subtle nuggets of information like CPU temperature, IP address, and (also) even the latest weather conditions, without making a big show out of it.
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