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The must-have travel apps that will transform your summer holiday
Load up your device with these useful tools to travel smarter this summer
Smartphones are steadily rendering other devices – and even physical media – obsolete. Your phone is now your camera, newspaper, library, map, entertainment hub, shopping portal, and more. This versatility becomes even more crucial when travelling.
Forget bulky guidebooks and single-purpose gadgets, your phone can streamline your packing. Sure, it can’t replace your wardrobe (yet), but it can replace many other items you’d have once lugged around the world. And it’s a boon for planning too.
At least, it is if you have the right apps. So here are our top picks to get you started.
- Planning your holiday
- Booking flights
- Travel money and essential services
- Activities and excursions
- Coming home
Planning your trip
Skyscanner
You might feel loyal to an airline, but many people feel more loyal to their bank accounts. Skyscanner makes it a cinch to explore options for air travel, refine plans by way of various filters, and potentially unearth routes and bargains you’d otherwise never have considered.
Free; Android, iOS
Todoist
When you’re thousands of miles from home, suddenly remembering you’ve forgotten an essential item or not completed a task at home is not ideal. Todoist lets you fashion reusable lists, with the added benefit of working cross-platform and even allowing you to delegate tasks to other people in your party.
Free; Android, iOS
Booking.com
This one uses the slogan “hotels and more” on the Google Play store, but it’s the “hotels” function we’re here for. This app lets you peruse all kinds of places to stay during a trip – from swish hotels to quirky apartments – digging into the finer details and then figuring out whether your budget can cope.
Free; Android, iOS
DB Navigator
Planning journeys by train, at home and abroad, can be a nightmare. Google Maps makes a reasonable attempt to provide details, but if you’re in Europe, DB Navigator is a better bet for planning journeys – although you’ll need to visit individual operator websites to buy your tickets. Heading to the United States? Try Wanderu instead.
Free; Android, iOS
Atlas Obscura
Plenty of apps can tell you what’s popular in your destination. But Atlas Obscura instead directs you to curiosities off the beaten path. Over 20,000 unexpected places are included within the app. You can plan where to go and track where you’ve been, and even contribute somewhere new upon making a discovery of your own.
Free; Android, iOS
For your flight
FlightAware
Plane-tracking apps can be overloaded with features for enthusiasts. But when travelling, you just want to know when your plane will take off – and where it is right now. FlightAware gets you to such details at speed, and pleasingly has a button labelled with what’s on the mind of many a traveller: Where is my plane?
Free + IAP; Android, iOS
Readly
Magazines are great, right up until you need to shove a dozen of them into your in-flight bag and then carry them around. For the price of a couple of publications, Readly provides instant access to over 7,000 of the things – and countless back issues. You can even share your subscription with up to five friends.
£12.99 per month / Android, iOS
White Noise+
If you find flying stressful and overbaring, with this app you can drown out noise by way of customisable ambient soundscapes you arrange on a grid-based mini mixing desk. On Android? White Noise (99p) does a similar job, even if it’s not nearly as fancy.
Free or £11.99; iOS
Money and essentials
NordVPN
VPNs overplay their hand regarding security, but are worth using to encrypt data on public Wi-Fi. They can also spoof your location to access geo-blocked services or go shopping. NordVPN is my favourite – it’s reliable, fast and feature-packed. If you sign-up, do so via the website, which offers far better details than anything you get in-app. Free; Android, iOS
Find out more about how to save money on holidays by using a VPN in our guide.
Currency
There are so many currency apps, but this one makes my list for its no-nonsense approach: add currencies; select one and tap out a value; instant conversions. Pay and you get historical charts and real-time rates too, but unless something bad happens to the economy where you’re staying, the one-hour rates ‘delay’ should be fine during a holiday.
Free; Android, iOS
Spending Tracker
There are more advanced budget apps out there, but who wants the hassle when on holiday? This app is designed to help you define a budget, quickly log expenses, make sure the sum total of the latter doesn’t look like it’ll get too much bigger than the former, and otherwise get on with your holiday.
Free or £2.99; Android, iOS
Monzo
Whether or not you throw all your savings into a Monzo account, getting one (and the app) isn’t a bad idea if you’re travelling with friends. Monzo promises that foreign transactions are free from fees, and the app lets you split bills with a few taps. It’ll even give you a spending report when your trip’s over.
Free; Android, iOS
Find out more on how to find the best debit and credit cards for travelling in our guide here.
Activities and excursions
Tomorrow.io
Most weather apps provide data without context. This one’s different. For each saved location, you can select activities you might like to partake in. It’ll then outline when will next be a good moment for a spot of golf, eating outdoors, or a swift run.
Free; Android, iOS
Google Translate
When you don’t speak the local language, Google Translate has you covered. You can download languages for offline use, to keep translations – and even conversations between two people – flowing without internet access. And you can even point your camera at menus and signs, whereupon the app will attempt to decipher them on the spot.
Free / Android, iOS
Google Maps
Chances are this one’s already on your phone. But you might not realise how handy Google Maps is when travelling. You can store massive chunks of maps offline, whereupon turn-by-turn directions will continue to function. And when you’re back online, you can quickly explore what’s local – and even how busy places of interest are at any given time.
Free; Android, iOS
AllTrails
Google Maps is fine for navigating a city – not so much for the great outdoors. When you fancy hiking, AllTrails gives you over 400,000 routes to explore, each of which displays its distance, time and elevation. Subscribe and you can download maps for offline use and, handily, get a nudge if you make a wrong turn.
Free + IAP; Android, iOS
Ski Tracks
If your idyllic getaway involves skiing or snowboarding, this app ensures your time won’t be wasted and you can track your progress on the pistes. Switch it on as you start your day and it’ll suck in data you can peruse later to see how you fared and compare with friends – including geolocated snaps for those all-important snowy selfies.
£1.89; Android • £1.99; iOS
Tides Near Me
Whether you’re planning a trip to an island temporarily linked to the mainland during low tide or keen to show off your surfing skills, you’ll need to know about upcoming tides. This app is a simple yet effective way to explore nearby tides and those all-important times for the current day or week ahead.
Free; Android, iOS
Coming home
Snapseed
Your phone takes great photos. But to do more with them, reach for Snapseed. Google’s image editor is packed with user-friendly filters and tools, including perspective correction and text overlays. Best of all, edits are non-destructive, so you can rethink when you turn every holiday snap into grainy black and white and realise that doesn’t quite hit the spot.
Free; Android, iOS
Timeshifter Jet Lag
Travelling halfway around the world for the holiday of a lifetime? Exciting! Except when you return home and jet lag turns you into a zombie for a week. This app cleverly helps you adjust your sleep/wake cycle during the days before your journey, so you’ll have a good chance of staying awake at the office.
Free + IAP; Android, iOS