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This article was published on April 8, 2016

Facebook is testing weather alerts in its mobile apps


Facebook is testing weather alerts in its mobile apps

Is Facebook the first app you launch on your phone when you wake up? It might make more sense to do so, if the social network rolls out a new feature that it currently appears to be testing.

Some Facebook users in the UK are now seeing weather updates in their News Feed on both Android and iOS. They show up as cards, with a greeting based on the time of day, a brief description of the weather, an accompanying illustration and a link to view more detailed information.

Clicking through the link shows you the temperature at the current time as well as the maximum and minimum temperatures through the rest of the day.

Facebook is displaying weather information in users' News Feeds
Facebook is displaying weather information in users’ News Feeds

A second link on this expanded card takes you through to Weather.com’s site with a report for your location, though in our experience, the page that launched in Facebook’s in-app browser didn’t load properly.

The new feature should come in handy when you’re trying to figure out what to wear for the day or gearing up to make small talk, whether in real life or on the social network.

We’ve contacted Facebook to learn more about this feature and will update this post when we hear back.

Thanks to Jennifer Hassan for the tip.

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