Best, most useful travel apps

It’s the usual struggle: the storage on your phone is limited, and you’d rather keep all the pictures of your trips than lots of useless apps. You’ve read about so many of the best travel apps recommended by bloggers and travel sites, but it’s hard to choose! After years of travelling and experimenting, we’re glad to share our 5 favorite travel apps, how we use them, and why we will keep using them. Of course, they are all free!

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Best app for maps, reviews and more: Google Maps app

Quite obviously, we use Google Maps when we travel. But the thing is, we actually use it even when we do not travel! When we see a cooking show about a specific restaurant, we star it. A friend shows a picture of the sunset he saw from a hill, we star it. My sister ate delicious pasta alla carbonara that she ate at Tonnarello in Rome: we starred it and labeled it “carbonara Laura”! It became much easier to find later. Google Maps becomes an archive of all places you are interested in, complete with opening hours, reviews, link to the official website… And it’s so easy to use it on the go, to find more. So much better than TripAdvisor. As you may already know, you can download most maps and view them offline (but it’s not possible to star places offline).

We also love to let Google Maps track our steps. Even though it uses some more battery, you end up with the itinerary you followed in the “your timeline” menu. It can be even more precise if you check in a place when you are there.

Google Maps is fantastic also to help you remember: snap a picture of where you are or what you see, and then take a screenshot of Google Maps – with your location and the time.

Best app for flight fares tracking: Hopper

While Skyscanner or Google flights do a great job at comparing flight prices and helping you find cheap destinations, Hopper monitors flight prices and how they increase and decrease, and tells you when to book the best fare.

Simply insert your destination and date, and hit “watch this trip”. There’s other parameters such as “avoid long layovers” so you can create multiple alerts with different dates and preferences. And in the end, you can book through them, and help them survive with the commission earned.

We find it one of the best travel apps available, matched with Google Flight tracker.

Best app to store your own ideas: OneNote

Compared to Evernote, or Google Documents, we find OneNote easier to use and more adaptable to the way we take notes before, during and after a trip.

I’m not sure which is the best feature of OneNote: having it on all our devices – iPhone, iPad and laptop – or being able to share notebooks with other people. These two features make it so convenient to use at home and on the go! Just create a new page for each task or topic. We jot down on the laptop flight prices and hotel names while preparing a trip; on the phone, we keep track of expenses, things we learn, stuff to remember while travelling; we review afterwards while tidying up pictures or writing posts. Usually, I’m the one taking notes, but it’s so convenient for Darek to have access to them.

Need to remember what time flights, trains and buses are? OneNote. Hotel booking confirmations and details? OneNote. Phone battery died? OneNote available on iPad or on partner’s phone. No Wifi? OneNote works also offline, and will synch all devices when the internet is back. The most useful travel app ever!

Best app for money and currency exchange: Wise

There’s nothing worse than finding out that your bank or the ATM machine cheated you out of your money through fees and commissions. How is it possible that withdrawing 100 EUR worth in Polish Zloty costs 12 EUR? I worked hard for those 12 EUR! This was the first reason that made me get a Wise multi-currency account and debit card, (formerly TransferWise Borderless card) and I immediately loved all the other features.

No more hidden fees on card payments and ATM withdrawals, no more trips to the exchange office to exchange cash! In 20 seconds and 3 clicks on the Wise app, you can exchange money to dozens of different currencies. The exchange rate used (the official one) is shown very clearly, as well as the commission paid (always very low).

For example, if you have 500 EUR on the card, but you’re about to book online a hotel in Oslo, just exchange some of the EUR to NOK, and the Norwegian hotel will charge your card in Norwegian Crowns. Or don’t: the hotel will charge in NOK, but you will see the payment taken out from your EUR, with the exchange rate and the commission cost clearly stated.

Last but not least, opening an account is free and getting the Wise debit card is super cheap (7 EUR in Italy, 5 GBP in the UK, as of March 2021)! No reason to wait. Read our post for more details about Wise and the multi-currency debit card or order your Wise card now.

Best app for picture editing: Snapseed

While I’m not a very artistic person, I recognize that a picture is often worth a thousand words. Even when I do my best to take a picture the best I can, sometimes it just does not contain all the details I remember with my own eyes.

This is why I like Snapseed: it allows even me, with my limited artistic capacities and patience, to adjust the light, the colors, the shadows, just enough to turn the picture I took into what my eyes actually saw, without a fake photoshop effect.

No beauty filter, no oversaturated colors, no perfectly white teeth or pink sunset: just a better picture than what my phone took. If I can do it, you can do it too!

We hope you learned something new! Tell us in the comments, what are the best travel apps for you?

Cheers!