As you know, planning and organizing a trip in a campervan takes a lot of time and effort. On all of my trips, I use a lot of apps that make it easier to drive a van. I will give you my list of the most important apps. All of the apps in this post are free to use but some of them do have a premium version if you want some extra features.
1.Park4Night.
Where are we going to sleep today? That’s one of the questions that are in the minds of most of the campers. As campers are subjected to a lot of work, it’s good to have references to places where other people have already slept and there was no trouble. These are the types of apps that the VanLife community desires the most.
It is the first app that I use when I am looking for an area to stay. Is it the most complete app out there right now? Probably not, but it does its job pretty well. It has the most information and overnight stays. They now have more than 35,000 points. However, most of them are in European countries. So, if you are in Europe, everywhere you go, you’ll be close to a point.
The information is shown on a map, and you can narrow your search by choosing the type of place that you want to look for like the public and the private places, motorhome parks, service facilities and rest areas, campgrounds, off-road destinations, and other natural places.
If you want to take your time and look at the map, you can ask the app to show you the overnight accommodations that are near where you are at the moment. You can sleep better at night knowing that other people have done this before you and there haven’t been any problems. Everything has a description, photos of the location, and a detailed set of reviews and opinions from other users.
In order to have access to the whole application database when not online, you must pay for a premium membership, which is worth considering, in my humble opinion.
2.CaraMaps.
One of the most interesting things about the CaraMaps app is that it not only lets you search for places to stay the night when you’re on a road trip in your camper van or motorhome, but it also has all of the other features you can use in the same app.
With CaraMaps, you can choose a place to stay while also learning about all of the fun things to do in the area. It’s because of the people who use CaraMaps that enlists everything that you could do in that area while resting for the night.
If you want to plan your trip’s itinerary step by step, you can use this free app. It has a feature that lets you record each stop on your itinerary in stages, so you can plan your trip step by step. If you want to talk to people who are part of the CaraMaps community and are near your location, you can use this app’s chat feature, which is available in five different languages. This is what I find most interesting and unique about this app.
CaraMaps hosts, like AirBnB hosts, can welcome tourists from all over the world who contact them through the app.
3.iOverlander.
There are times when the first two options don’t work, so we go to iOverlander for help. You can find places to stay and things to do, like consulates and mechanics, all over the world. It is mostly a community that speaks English, and there are places to stay and things to see, that you will absolutely love.
If you want to go somewhere that isn’t in Europe, this app is great because many of its users have “offroad” cars and drive their 4 x 4 cars there. This makes it great for trips outside of Europe, like going to Morocco or other exotic places.
4.Parkopedia: Find parking.
Every time you go to a big city, you’ll have a hard time finding a parking space. In this case, we use the Parkopedia app to help us. This app has a lot of information about parking lots in a lot of different cities around the world.
The app will ask you about where you want to go and how long you want to stay in the city. It will then show you a number of different parking options that you can choose from.
In addition, it will give you a list of the private parking lots and car parks in the city, and give you an idea of how much it will cost to park for the time you want to stay. This app also lets you search for parking on the street, where it lists places where you can park for free and places where you have to pay for parking.
You will find that in many cities, even walking a few minutes could save you a lot of money on parking.
5.Find Water: Drinking water.
If you don’t have water, you won’t be able to live. Also, in a van, of course. It’s a big part of every camper’s job to look for water sources where you can cook, wash dishes, shower, and so on.
It’s not very hard to get water in America because almost every town has a source of water that is safe to drink. Gas stations are another place where you often fill up your water tanks because many of them have a faucet that gives us free water to drink.
However, when I need a water source the most, it seem to disappear into thin air. To solve that I use the “Find Water” app. This app shows you the drinking water stations that are closest to where you are right now. Because some of the sources aren’t the best you can choose from a ton of other ones.
The app is certainly on Google PlayStore but I am not sure about the App Store. I can tell you that we have it installed and that everything works.
6.Wifi points with Wifi Map.
Have you been left without data? What if you’re on a trip overseas and don’t have roaming service? If this sounds like something that can happen with you then, WiFi Map is for you.
Because they have a database of more than 100 million Wi-Fi networks, Wiki Map can help you find free Wi-Fi networks all over the world.
There are a lot of Wi-Fi networks that can be found in places like pubs and restaurants. People who have already connected and shared the password with others who are using the app to join are the most likely to find them. The app also shows the download speed of each Wi-Fi connection, making it easy to figure out which network has the fastest download speed.
If you want to connect to Wi-Fi from a van or other mobile device, we think that you need to use a Wi-Fi amplifier to do it. If you want to extend the range of your Wi-Fi network when the signal is weak, you need an amplifier. An amplifier does this by re-transmitting the Wi-Fi signal. Many of the cheaper Android phones also have the feature and you could use it to your advantage.
7.Meteoblue.
Meteoblue is one of the most complete and easy-to-use weather forecasting apps on the market today. When I want to check the weather, this is the first thing I go to.
The following are some of the features that the app has:
- You can look at a lot of different weather maps like cloud maps, temperature maps, wind maps, etc. So, you can see where the weather is going to be better and choose where to go based on what you see.
- Instead of looking at the map, the app has a feature called “Where2Go” that tells you where the best time to go will be in the next few days. This feature is called “Where2Go.”
- Forecasts for the next seven and 14 days of the next week and a half. Multi-models are used to make a weather forecast for the next few days (that is, several weather maps). Based on whether or not these multimodels agree, it will be possible to judge the reliability of a weather forecast.
- Meteo-grams are shown graphically, and a lot of information about the weather is given.
- People can get information from multimodels.
There are many more features and because you can download it and use it whenever you want, you can look at all of the features at your own pace.
8.Rain Alarm.
Getting Rain Alarm on your phone is very important if you want to know when it’s going to rain. In this app, you can see the rain radar in real time, so you can figure out when it will start to rain in your area by watching the storms move.
9.OsmAnd.
It is a GPS app that works even when it isn’t connected to the internet. It has maps of the whole world that are always being changed. It’s very simple to use: When you open the app, you can download the parts that you want to look at later and store them on your computer’s hard drive. From there, you can travel without any problems.
In addition, this app has a lot of useful features for people who travel a lot. For example, it tells you about places to go, like restaurants, supermarkets, mechanics, gas stations, and so on. Another thing is that it uses all of the information from the Wikipedia of travel guides from all over the world, called wikitravel. This is the most powerful and unique thing about this app, in my opinion. In this way, you can get free and offline tourist guides from all over the world in one app. This app includes guides in many languages and from many countries, so you can get them all.
10.Sygic.
Because it has TomTom maps, it might be the best GPS app on the market right now. The app has routes that are both accurate and up-to-date, radar alerts, speed limits, and other features.
The app, like OsmAnd, lets you download and choose the areas and countries that you want to keep offline, as well as the countries themselves. There are two GPS apps that you can download and try to see which one gives you the best results in the area you want to go to. The level of detail and up-to-date information on the roads can vary a lot from one area to the next.
Sygic also has a traveler feature that shows the most popular places to visit in the area you’re in.
Bonus: Wikiloc.
Lastly, we’d like to discuss Wikiloc. When I want to go hiking, mountaineering, mountain biking, or kayaking, I utilize this app. There are a great number of routes that have been submitted by users, many of which include photos and a full description. Thousands of routes have been put up by people who use the site. Most of them have pictures and a detailed description of how to get there.
Using the Wikiloc app, you can save any track and follow it in another app. You can also use the same Wikiloc app to follow the route.
These are almost all of the apps that I use while I am on the road in my van.
I hope they help you as much as they have helped us.
How about you? What mobile apps do you take with you when you go on trips? Please write down what you think in the comment box below!
