The 5 Best Air Quality Apps For Android

Depending on where you live, you may not have ever paid much mind to the quality of air that you're breathing. Air is air, right? What difference does it make? Well, it makes a lot of difference — poor air quality caused by local pollution, natural disasters, and unusual atmospheric events can lead to breathing difficulties and health complications, especially in the young, elderly, or immunocompromised. Obviously, you can't just not breathe air, but at the very least, you can arm yourself with the knowledge to take preventative measures.

Multiple Android apps provide all sorts of helpful information on your local air quality, including forecasts of bad conditions, safety recommendations on outdoor activities, and even full maps of surrounding areas to show you where the cleanest air can be found. (You could use a weather app, but the air quality information is usually limited.) If you're concerned about air quality, keep one of these apps handy on your phone so you can get the details at a moment's notice.

To get the most up-to-date information on air quality and safety, you need information flowing in round-the-clock. To accomplish something like that, though, you'd need atmospheric sensors all over the world! Well, good news, that's exactly what's powering IQAir's AirVisual app. AirVisual uses a veritable army of sensors to track air quality and weather patterns in over 10,000 cities in 80 different countries. Odds are good that AirVisual has the details on your hometown, plus every other town around it.

Besides its breadth of information, AirVisual is also very user-friendly, rendering its air quality info using a simple, color-based system, supplemented by numerical scores. If you're seeing red, stay indoors. If it's green, it's good to head outdoors. The app even provides a seven-day forecast of air quality predictions to help you plan your activities in advance. If you're concerned about the detrimental effects of poor air quality, AirVisual can help with that as well. When the air quality is bad, the app can provide advice on how to mitigate the effects, such as wearing masks and closing the windows.

The United States has many agencies with a vested interest in national air quality, including NASA, Environmental Protection Agency, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Should all of these agencies combine their collective atmospheric wisdom, it's pretty much a given that the scope of their knowledge would be breathtaking, air pun unintended. As it happens, that's exactly what went into the creation of the EPA's AIRNow app.

The AIRNow app provides round-the-clock local reports on air quality, particularly both ozone and fine particle air pollution. This differentiation helps you to understand where exactly the pollutants are coming from, which in turn gives you more specific ideas on managing their detrimental effects. In addition to the overall map of your city and its surroundings, the AIRNow app allows you to add multiple specific cities and towns to your personal tracker. This can be beneficial if you have elderly or atmospherically-sensitive family elsewhere in the country so you can keep an eye on their breathing safety.

With something as ephemeral as air, it's easy to assume that if there's some air pollution in your city, it's absolutely everywhere. However, much like litter or water pollution, air pollution can be more localized than it appears. If you want to get into the real nitty-gritty of your home's air quality, the Plume Labs app provides not just a detailed map and statistics for statistics, but goes even deeper than that.

Plume Labs' air quality map provides street-by-street air quality monitoring for major towns and cities around the world, showing you when and where things are a bit hazier than usual, as well as providing a three-day evolving forecast. With this information, you can still go outside even when the air quality isn't as good by planning a walking route around the less-polluted areas of your city. The app even comes with a Clean-Air Coach feature, advising you on where to go to find the cleanest air nearby when out on a jog or cycling.

In addition to airborne pollutants, one of the biggest factors in air quality is airborne allergens like pollen. In the spring season especially, pollen density can make or break a day outdoors. For the most up-to-date changes in your local allergy index, we've got two words for you: Air Matters.

The Air Matters app shows constant air quality information in the United States and Europe, drawn in real-time from your nearest atmospheric monitoring station. This gives you regular updates on the presence of both air pollutants and allergens like pollen, as well as an idea of how those pollutants and allergens will come and go throughout the day via a 24-hour forecast.

What makes Air Matters particularly cool is that it's not just for outdoor air quality. The app can be synced up with a Philips Smart Air Purifier or Kaiterra Laser Egg Air Quality Monitor to give you regular updates on the air quality in your own home — in the former case, it can even be used to remotely activate and adjust your air purifier's settings.

The most important thing to consider when talking about air quality is how it can potentially affect the health of you and your loved ones. Some individuals, especially children, can be extremely sensitive to airborne pollutants, so it's up to you to stay vigilant and monitor the atmosphere for their safety. To aid in that endeavor, you can't do much better than the BreezoMeter app.

The BreezoMeter app not only receives regular air quality updates from atmospheric monitoring stations in 94 countries, but with the power of machine learning algorithms, it makes regular predictions of how those pollutants will be coming and going over the next few days.

These predictions are backed by over 300 million geographical data points that show the movements and paths of airborne pollutants and allergens. Additionally, the BreezoMeter app provides customized health recommendations for you and your family to help keep you safe. You can even tag specific locations near you to get constant updates on that spot's air, keeping you out of the red zone.