AccessiWeather v0.9.0

Changed

• New default sounds: The alert and notification audio has been completely replaced with a warm, gentle set of wooden-mallet tones. The old pack was full of piercing high-frequency tones - some dumping most of their energy into the harsh 3-6 kHz range - and one alert ran a jarring 12 seconds. The new sounds stay in a soft, low register (around 200-500 Hz), are short, and are grouped by severity so an advisory, a watch, a warning, and an extreme alert each sound distinct without ever being shrill. Prefer the old set? It's still available as "Classic Default", a downloadable optional pack in the sound manager, with the worst ear-piercing tones softened.
• Forecaster Notes can now show official NWS Surf Zone Forecasts for regional beaches where available, with surf/beach condition alternatives from supported global sources when an official SRF product is not available.
• AccessiWeather can now automatically tune NOAA Weather Radio for qualifying alerts that use Specific Area Message Encoding (SAME) when you turn on the opt-in setting on the Alerts tab, then stop after the duration you choose when a reliable station match is available.
• NOAA Weather Radio now opens independently of saved weather locations and keeps playing after you close the player until you press Stop or exit the app.
• The NOAA Weather Radio Station Finder now has clearer modes for searching all stations, browsing by full state or territory name, and finding nearby stations by coordinates.
• NOAA Weather Radio stations can now be saved as favorites, with a Favorites finder mode and optional nearby-station lookup from your saved AccessiWeather locations.

Fixed

• Air quality, pollen, and UV readings now show the current hour instead of a forecast hour. AccessiWeather was reading the far end of Open-Meteo's multi-day hourly forecast, so the AQI, dominant pollutant, "current" pollutant breakdown, and hourly trend could all reflect a time days away rather than right now.
• The Air Quality dialog's hourly forecast now shows real clock times (like "2:00 PM") instead of generic "Hour 1" through "Hour 12" labels.
• Screen reader announcements work again in installed builds — the Weather Assistant now auto-reads replies, and other spoken announcements are back. The installer was shipping without the speech library's native component, so announcements were silently skipped.
• The {precip} and {precip_chance} tray placeholders now show real values instead of N/A. Precipitation chance comes from the current hour's forecast (observations never include it), and Open-Meteo's current precipitation amount now reaches the tray.
• Canadian locations now show barometric pressure in kilopascals, such as 101.3 kPa, when using automatic units.
• Current conditions and tray text now omit feels-like or heat-index details when they are unavailable instead of announcing them as N/A.
• "Launch automatically at startup" now survives app updates. Windows startup registration moved from a Startup-folder shortcut to the standard registry Run entry, and AccessiWeather repairs it on every launch — so an update can't silently uncheck the setting or stop the app from starting with Windows.
• The startup checkbox no longer unchecks itself when Windows is slow: checking startup status is now instant instead of relying on a PowerShell probe that could time out right after a reboot or update.
• Disabling AccessiWeather in Task Manager's Startup apps is now respected — the Settings checkbox shows it as off, and re-checking it in Settings turns it back on properly instead of appearing enabled while never launching.
• Upgrading from an older version now migrates the old Startup-folder shortcut automatically, so you won't get double launches or a stale shortcut pointing at a removed install.
• Saving Settings after turning on automatic startup now returns to the main window faster while still updating the OS startup registration.
• NOAA Weather Radio SAME auto-tune now starts again when an existing qualifying alert materially escalates, while still ignoring routine updates and cancellations.
• NOAA Weather Radio auto-tune now starts only for the first issuance of a qualifying SAME alert, reliably stops after your configured playback duration, and no longer restarts for later updates or cancellations of the same alert.
• Feels-like and heat-index readings now ignore implausibly warm provider values when the current temperature and humidity do not support them, while keeping valid humid heat-index and cold wind-chill readings.
• Unknown or uncategorized weather alerts now have a mappable default sound, and missing custom-pack event sounds fall back to the matching default sound before generic notification audio.
• NOAA Weather Radio Station Finder now repopulates stations when leaving an empty Favorites view, so you no longer need to reopen the radio dialog.
• Feels-like temperatures now keep showing in tray text when only one temperature unit is available, instead of falling back to N/A.
• Editing a location now tells you when the new name is empty or already in use, instead of silently discarding your changes.
• The tray text format dialog now warns you about unknown placeholders or unbalanced braces before saving, so a typo like {tmp} can't quietly end up in your tray tooltip.
• Closing the Add or Edit Location dialog while a search or current-location detection is still running no longer risks a crash.
• Weather history's "Today vs Yesterday" section now reads naturally when both days have the same temperature, instead of "is 0.0°F about the same than yesterday".