BearingsDon't just go places. Understand them.
Bearings is an audio guide for the place you're actually standing in. Walk or drive anywhere and hear what happened here, who lived here, and why the street has that name. No route to follow, no checklist to finish.
On a computer?Point your iPhone camera here to get Bearings on your phone.
Free to start. Try it on a simulated route before you go anywhere, then every new account includes 20 stories, with no subscription and no card. iPhone, iOS 17 or later.
How it works
Three things, then put the phone away.
1
Say what you're curious about
History, architecture, music, food, sports, local legends, or anything you type in yourself. Two people walking the same street hear different things.
2
Start walking or driving
Bearings follows where you are and speaks up when something nearby is worth knowing about. It keeps talking with the phone locked and in your pocket.
3
Ask about what you see
Something catches your eye? Ask in plain language and get an answer about the thing in front of you, not a search result.
What it sounds like
Press play. This is the app.
Loon Mountain, about two miles off from here, got its start with Sherman Adams — a New Hampshire native and Dartmouth man who'd just left his job as Eisenhower's chief of staff and quipped he was heading off to operate a ski lodge. That lodge became a full resort by 1966. Somewhere along the Kancamagus, about five miles off from where you are now, sits a little wood-frame farmhouse called the Russell-Colbath House — built around 1831 by Thomas and Amzi Russell, it's the last surviving homestead from the days when families actually lived and farmed in the Swift River valley, before the whole area got folded into national forest land. Heard on a drive along New Hampshire's Kancamagus Highway
Themes
See one place through a single lens.
Explore London through the Beatles, Rome through the ancient world, a mountain road through its geology. Bearings suggests themes that actually fit where you are, plots the related places across the whole city, and you can always type your own.
Get your bearings.
Free to start, and it works the first time you walk out the door.
On a computer?Point your iPhone camera here to get Bearings on your phone.
For iPhone, in the US and Canada.