← Cobalt

Support

Weather forecasts, severe weather alerts, and your own weather station.

Get in touch

Cobalt is made by one person, and I would genuinely rather hear about a problem than have you put up with it. Questions, bug reports and feature requests all go to the same place: Nick@NickSaulino.com. Telling me your device, your OS version, and what you were doing when something went wrong makes it much easier to fix.

Using Cobalt

The same tips as the Guide inside the app, reachable from the help button in the top bar. A few gestures differ between Android and iPhone; where they do, both are shown.

Your places

  • Add a place. Tap the add-place button in the top bar to search for any city.
  • Save your location. Tap "Use my location" to see weather where you are, then long-press that chip to save it as a place.
  • Hold a place for more. Long-press any saved place to rename or remove it. On Cobalt Plus the same press is where you turn on history, severe weather alerts, and rain starting soon.
  • Keep history for a place (Cobalt Plus). Long-press a place and turn on Keep history. Cobalt records conditions there every 15 minutes, for one saved place.
  • Reorder your places. The place you pick moves to the front of the row, so the ones you check most stay nearest.

Weather stations

  • Connect a station. Tap the add-place button, then choose to connect a station, to add your own Ambient Weather, Ecowitt, Davis, or Tempest station.
  • Rename a sensor. On a station, long-press an extra sensor to give it a custom name.
  • Threshold alerts (Cobalt Plus). Long-press a station, turn on Threshold alerts, then add rules like "wind above 20 mph". Up to two stations.
  • Compare with a place (Cobalt Plus). Long-press a station and pick Compare to. Every reading then shows how your yard differs from the forecast, and tapping one charts both.

Reading the forecast

  • Hour & day details. Tap any hour or day for details, then swipe left or right to move to the next one.
  • Scrub the charts. Drag across a chart to read the value at any point.
  • Refresh. Pull down to refresh the current conditions.
  • Chart any reading (Cobalt Plus). Once history is on, tap any reading to chart its last day, week, month or year. Drag along the chart to read any moment.
  • Changed since yesterday (Cobalt Plus). Under the 10-day list, a card shows what moved since yesterday's forecast for the same days.

More

  • Widgets.

    Android: Add a Cobalt widget from your home screen and point it at a place, a station, or your location.

    iPhone: Add a Cobalt widget from your home screen, then long-press it to pin one of your saved places, or leave it following the app. Your station gets its own widget.

  • Alerts (Cobalt Plus). Tap the gear, then Alerts, to send alerts to this device, choose the daily briefing's place and hour, and set quiet hours.
  • Forecast page. Tap the gear, then Forecast page, to hide any reading or card you don't use. It's a miniature of the page: tap a tile to hide it, tap again to bring it back.
  • Settings.

    Android: Tap the gear for units, time format, theme, motion, location, your subscription, and the live notification.

    iPhone: Tap the gear for units, time format, theme, motion, location, and your subscription.

Cobalt Plus

  • What Plus adds. Cobalt is free. Plus adds alerts on your phone, history, your station next to the forecast, 10 saved places instead of 2, as many stations as you like, every extra sensor, and the full set of widgets refreshed every 30 minutes.
  • If Plus ends. Nothing is deleted right away. Places and stations past the free limit are locked, history and alerts pause, and everything comes back if you resubscribe within 90 days.

Common questions

My station stopped updating

Station readings are fetched using the API key issued by your station's own network. If that key is regenerated or revoked in your Ambient Weather, Ecowitt, Davis, or Tempest account, Cobalt can no longer read the station. Remove the station in Cobalt and add it again with the current key.

I don't see any severe weather alerts

Alerts come from the US National Weather Service, so they appear for locations in the United States. Forecasts work worldwide; alerts do not.

I turned down the location permission

That's fine. Everything except "Use my location" works normally, and you can add any place by name from the top bar. If you change your mind, grant the permission again in your device's system settings for Cobalt.

Where does the weather data come from?

Forecasts come from Apple Weather. Severe weather alerts come from the US National Weather Service. Station readings come from your own hardware, by way of your station network's API.

Privacy

What Cobalt collects, what it doesn't, and how station credentials are handled is covered in the privacy policy.