Meteo-Qt – An Elegant Weather App for Linux Desktops

Meteo-qt is a Python 3 and Qt 5-based application for Linux desktops that displays weather information in desktop panels and desktop notifications, and a 6-day weather forecast in its own window.

Meteo-qt Weather Status
Meteo-qt Weather Status

It gets Weather information from OpenWeatherMap and is licensed under the GNU General Public License version 3 (GPLv3).

Features in Meteo Qt

  • Daily forecast with wind and cloud information.
  • 6-day weather forecast including humidity, precipitation, pressure, the wind, and cloud info.
  • Customize the font size and color in the tray menu.
  • Proxy support.
  • Desktop notifications for weather updates.
  • Temperature unit options (Celsius, Fahrenheit or Kelvin).

Install Meteo Qt on Linux Systems

Before installing Meteo you need to add its runtime dependencies to your system (assuming you don’t already have them installed) via the terminal:

On Ubuntu/Debian, Derivatives

$ sudo apt-get install python3-pyqt5 python3-sip python3-lxml

On Fedora

# dnf install python3-qt5 python3-sip python3-lxml

On Arch Linux

# pacman -S python-pyqt5 python-sip python-lxml

On openSUSE Leap

# zypper install python3-qt5 python3-sip python3-lxml

Next, clone the meteo-qt repository and install it as shown.

$ git clone https://github.com/dglent/meteo-qt.git
$ cd meteo-qt
$ sudo python3 setup.py install

How to Use Meteor Qt in Linux

You will need to sign up to OpenWeatherMap for a free personal API key that you’ll use to set up your desktop app.

After creating your account and logging in, go to home.openweathermap.org and click on “API Keys” to copy your key from there and paste it into Meteo’s settings.

OpenWeatherMap API Key
OpenWeatherMap API Key

Remember to set the “System tray icon” option to “Temperature” if you would like to use Meteo with an app indicator to prevent the fonts and icons from being either too small or too big they overlap.

Meteo-qt Weather Settings
Meteo-qt Weather Settings

Is Meteo Qt your preferred weather app for Linux? It sure has more features than our previously covered Simple Weather Indicator. If that’s what you use because you don’t know about Meteo then you probably should take Meteo for a spin – you just might prefer it.

Don’t forget to return to share your experience with us in the comments section.

Divine Okoi is a cybersecurity postgrad with a passion for the open-source community. With 700+ articles covering different topics in IT, you can always trust him to inform you about the coolest tech.

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17 thoughts on “Meteo-Qt – An Elegant Weather App for Linux Desktops”

  1. Meteo-qt is much too finicky for me, seems to lose its settings and is difficult to repair. My-weather-Indicator is a much more stable, easy-to-install and reliable app.

    Reply
  2. Meteo-qt on my Ubuntu 20.04 Unity desktop used to have a “Toggle window” option in the dropdown menu which opened a window showing the current day’s hourly temperatures and rain, wind etc as well as forecasts for upcoming days. This feature has disappeared from both my desktop and laptop meteo-q installations, rendering the app virtually useless. How do I rectify this?

    Reply
  3. After many hassles I eventually got Meteo-Q running on my desktop, but the laptop, with identical OS (Ubuntu 20.04 LTS Unity) it does not work.

    Reply
  4. Since upgrading from Ubuntu 18.04 to 20.04 my Meteo-qt does not show the previous “toggle window” option. How do I rectify this, please?

    Reply
  5. Trying to install in Ubuntu Mate 18.04 after the last command I get: ModuleNotFoundError: No module named ‘distutils.command’

    Reply
  6. Very happy with Meteo-Qt in my Ubuntu 18.04 Unity desktop, now trying to install Meteo-Qt in my identical Ubuntu 18.04 laptop 64 bit I end up in a dead end with: error: can’t copy ‘meteo_qt/translations/meteo-qt_bg.qm’: doesn’t exist or not a regular file. What went wrong?

    Reply
    • Had same problem.
      Careful reading of the complete error log led me to:

      apt-get install python3-distutils
      apt-get install qt4-linguist-tools

      I needed these additional packages that were not installed by default. I am working in Debian buster with the LXQt desktop.

      Reply
  7. Hello everybody,

    I was looking for an Argos Script/Python (Gnome Shell) on my new Ubuntu 19.04 OS. I didn’t find anything acceptable. On the GitHub web site I found “Meteo Qt” but for me, as a frenchy (nobody is perfect), it was not so easy. With your explanation, Martins, it was very clear. Now I have en splendid widget with a lot of accessories working very well. Thank you very much

    Reply
    • It’s all about preference. It’s what I would do. But there are people who will rather use a weather app and not have anything to do with customization.

      Reply
  8. Layout and component grouping needs improvement. For example in the window where the 6 day forecast is displayed there is hardly any space between the 6 days at the top and the detailed info in the middle. Overall this application looks almost identical to the hundreds of other applications that do the same thing.

    Reply
    • This is one of my issues with many apps in the Open Source comm. They look identical to the tons of others available for use and sometimes they have the exact same features.

      And about the UI components; Yes. Someone who pays attention to detail like I do 🙂

      Reply

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