If you live in Glasgow you already know the drill. You leave the house in sunshine, get soaked by lunchtime, see a rainbow at 2pm and somehow end up sunburnt by 4. Scottish weather doesn't just change. It changes its mind, repeatedly.
Weather matters around here more than most places. So much so we've developed an extensive vocabulary just to describe the multiple types of rain we get and yet every weather app on the market treats Glasgow the same as any other city. Generic icons, generic forecasts, zero personality. That felt like a problem worth solving.
So we built Braw Weather. A weather app that actually gets what it's like to live in Scotland.
The taps aff question
Let's be honest about why this app exists. I wanted a widget on my iPhone home screen that tells me one thing: is it taps aff or taps on?
For the uninitiated, "taps aff" is the Scottish declaration that it's warm enough to remove your top. In most countries this requires genuine heat. In Scotland, around about 17 degrees and a bit of sun will do it. "Taps on" means keep your layers. Which, realistically, is most of the year.
Braw Weather has a dedicated taps aff indicator. It factors in temperature, wind chill and conditions to give you the verdict. And yes, it's available as a home screen widget so you can check without even opening the app.
Widgets everywhere
Speaking of widgets. We went a bit overboard with these because honestly, checking the weather in Scotland should be as frictionless as possible. You need to know what's happening right now, not in five taps' time.
Braw Weather supports:
- Home screen widgets in multiple sizes. Current conditions, daily forecast or the all-important taps aff status
- Lock screen widgets so you can glance at the weather without unlocking your phone
- iPad widgets for your bigger screens
- Midge forecast it's not just the general weather conditions we care about, it's also if these little eejits are going to be out to eat us
The lock screen widgets were particularly fun to build. There's something satisfying about seeing "Taps Aff" right there on your lock screen before you've even picked up the phone.
Scots weather vocabulary
As I mentioned Scotland has some of the best weather words in the English language. Probably because we need so many of them.
Braw Weather includes a Scots vocabulary section so you can learn (or remind yourself) what words like "dreich", "smirr" and "haar" actually mean. It's partly educational, partly just a celebration of how brilliantly specific Scottish dialect is when it comes to describing rain. We have about forty words for it and every single one captures a slightly different kind of misery.
The weather descriptions throughout the app use Scots terms where they fit. Because "light drizzle" doesn't quite capture what's going on outside the way "smirr" does.
Weather showdowns
This is the feature that makes people laugh and then immediately start sharing screenshots.
The showdown feature compares your local weather against random cities around the world. Open the app in Glasgow on a February morning and it might tell you "it's colder here than Moscow right now" or on that one nice day in June, "it's hotter here than Madrid." (unlikely).
It gives you proper bragging rights or commiseration ammunition. Either way, it's more interesting than just seeing a number on a screen and I bet at least a few times a year you'll hear "it's... {condition} than {place}" comparison.
Built with SwiftUI
Braw Weather is built entirely with SwiftUI, Apple's modern UI framework. After rebuilding One Walk A Day with SwiftUI back in 2024, we've been doing more and more native Apple development. SwiftUI's widget support in particular made this project a natural fit. Building widgets in SwiftUI is much simpler than with React Native apps.
The app also supports iPad natively. Not a stretched-out phone app. A proper iPad layout that makes use of the extra screen space.
Why we built it
Add Jam is a software agency first and foremost. But we've always had a thing for building our own products too. It keeps us sharp, it lets us experiment with new tech and occasionally it lets us scratch an itch that no existing app quite reaches.
Braw Weather started as that itch. Living in Glasgow and obsessively checking multiple weather apps before deciding whether to bring a jacket or if I can look forward to being taps aff. It felt daft that none of them could just tell me in plain Scots what I wanted to know.
Download Braw Weather
Braw Weather is free on the App Store for iPhone and iPad. Download it here and find out if it's taps aff where you are.
