Whereabouts

Whereabouts is built for places where signal comes and goes. Any map you open stays on your phone by itself; to make a whole area work with no signal at all, save it above. Tap a saved area if you ever want its maps off your phone again. And for one-tap access, add this page to your home screen: it opens like any other app, even in a dead spot.

You never need to think about updates. The app fetches the newest houses whenever it opens with signal and gives itself a fresh start each morning. If an area you saved gains new or revised maps, its button changes to “Update”: one tap brings it in line. Saved maps stay on your phone through all of this.

Every village drawing in this app is the work of Dr A Colin Day, who has spent more than twenty years mapping the villages of the north of England, house by house and name by name, and giving the results away free: 2,800 maps and counting, still updated by his own hand today. Long before this app existed, his maps were finding front doors for delivery drivers, healthcare professionals and anyone else a satnav had given up on. Whereabouts adds a search box and hands the directions to your maps app. Colin has given this project his full support to build on his foundations. If it ever finds you the right door, the thanks belongs to him.