Checking the weather on Ubuntu doesn’t have to mean opening apps or browser tabs, or cluttering up your desktop panel with icons and applets. Sometimes all you need is a window—wait, I mean a desktop widget — like the one in this post.

The Desktop Widgets GNOME Shell extension is an alternative to Linux weather apps like Mousam, CLI options like wttr.in, and the many panel applets available.

It displays weather information directly on the desktop itself, where it’s visible at any time (making it particularly useful when you have multiple monitors or want at-a-glance information without switching windows).

Prefer apps? Try this one
Mousam is a weather dashboard app for Linux

The extension began life as a desktop clock, but has since expanded to include a weather forecast widget. Like the clock, the weather component is highly configurable.

You can customise most elements, from the font family and style to the colour of the symbolic weather icons it uses to convey conditions.

With a bit of patience and some creative thinking, it is easy to create some truly unique looks that help add a bit of personality to your desktop.

Of course, with any weather-related doohickey, it’s the meteorological data that is the main draw. This widget pulls data from the same provider as GNOME Weather/Shell.

You can see current weather, an hourly forecast (up to 12 hours) and a daily forecast (up to 7 days), and add more than one weather widget on your desktop at a time, each showing different forecast for a different location.

Alongside visual options (backgrounds, borders, padding, spacing, colours, opacity), the wether-related options allow you to set a location (uses the same location database as GNOME Weather), set temperature unit, and polling interval (how often it refreshes).

The default look – but you can customise it heavily

Each of the three main come with additional options you can tweak and elements to show/hide:

  • Current Weather
    • Icon set (full colour or symbolic)
    • Humidity
    • Weather description
    • Feels like temperature
    • Location label
  • Hourly Forecast
    • Number of hours (up to 12)
  • Daily Forecast
    • Icon set (full colour or symbolic)
    • Thermometer scale
    • Number of days ahead (up to 7)
    • Date format (default is %a, e.g., Mon, Tue)

For passive “what’s the weather going to be?” checks, it’s a solid option. No animations, no garbled fonts, and no weather.com branding staring back, just weather — as pretty or as basic as you like, right on your desktop.

Want this weather widget on Ubuntu?

To add it to your Ubuntu desktop (Ubuntu 24.04 LTS or later), first install the (excellent) Extensions Manager app from the Ubuntu repos: 

sudo apt install gnome-shell-extension-manager

Open Extensions Manager and search for “Desktop Widgets”. Click ‘Install’ on the result and, once installed, page back to your list of installed extensions in Extensions Manager, click the ‘cog’ icon next to ‘Desktop Widgets’, and go from there!

On Ubuntu, you need to disable the DING extension (which manages desktop icons) to be able to freely move this widget. Once in place, you can re-enable DING – or not, up to you!

Alternatively, if you prefer installing your shell extensions the ol’ fashioned way (via a browser), you can grab this wonderful widget from the web:

Get Desktop Widgets (Desktop Clock) on GNOME Extensions