TrailBivvy
Play the video
Play the video
21.5 seconds · no sound Made from screen recordings of the beta app on its bundled trail data, with a simulated position and time. Map: © swisstopo · © BAFU/FOEN, cantons · Source: FOEN · © OpenStreetMap contributors
Transcript and description

A short motion-graphics video. Every app screen in it is a screen recording of the TrailBivvy beta app on its bundled trail data (built from OpenStreetMap), with a simulated position and time; the clock in the status bar is fixed by the simulator and does not match the app’s simulated time. The edit shortens pauses where nothing moves, speeds up some motion, zooms in on parts of the screen and uses transitions between shots; no app content is added or changed, and titles, captions and transitions stay beside or behind the phone. There is no music and no voice-over.

On screen

  1. 0:00“Where could I sleep tonight?” The TrailBivvy app icon.
  2. 0:02Sleep Tonight — “Huts, campsites, shelters you can still reach before dark” Screen recording: Sleep Tonight on the short bivouac trip Adelboden – Ammertepass – Lenk, planned from a simulated position. Within reach tonight: Berghotel Engstligenalp and the trip’s planned bivouac area, Upper Ammerte basin, with arrival times.
  3. 0:04Rules — “Rules explained, with sources — never guessed” Screen recording: the planned bivouac area Upper Ammerte basin. The terrain is not assessed by TrailBivvy; the rules status is “Caution”, with the date of the checks and the official layers checked, each with its source.
  4. 0:07Map — “Official national maps where available” “Download your trek before you go” Screen recording: the Via Alpina stage Kandersteg – Adelboden on the swisstopo map, with the route, huts, official zones and the simulated position, labelled “Demo position”.
  5. 0:09Route — “Every stage at a glance” “Elevation profile, climbs, huts and water” Screen recording: “Find my current stage” opens the stage Lauterbrunnen – Griesalp; a finger slides along its elevation profile.
  6. 0:12Trails — “58 trails (Europe and the USA) · 27 short bivouac trips (Switzerland)” “85 in the catalogue · offline packs made from OpenStreetMap data” Screen recording: the Route tab, where “Explore trails” counts the trails and the short bivouac trips together, then the trail catalogue, filtered to the short bivouac trips.
  7. 0:16Safety — “Emergency numbers, available offline” “Safety tools stay free, without a subscription.” Screen recording: the Safety screen with the emergency numbers for Switzerland and the position, which the app marks as simulated, not a real position.
  8. 0:18TrailBivvy — “Offline trek & bivouac planner” “In beta — not yet on the App Store” trailbivvy.com End card. Screen recordings from the beta app · simulated position and time.

From 0:02 to 0:18, “Screen recording from the beta app · simulated position and time” stays beside the recordings the whole time, and the map credit while a map is on screen.

Map: © swisstopo · © BAFU/FOEN, cantons · Source: FOEN · © OpenStreetMap contributors

TrailBivvy app icon

TrailBivvy Where could I sleep tonight?

TrailBivvy is an offline-first iPhone app for long treks and thru-hikes. Late in the day it shows where you could stop for the night within your remaining daylight and walking time — and says plainly what it does not know.

Web app public · mobile apps in beta

The TrailBivvy web app is public: use it in your browser at app.trailbivvy.com. The iPhone and Android apps are being tested in a closed beta, with no public download and no release date yet.

How it handles rules Browse the trails

Screen recording from the beta app · simulated position and time Map: © swisstopo · © BAFU/FOEN, cantons · Source: FOEN · © OpenStreetMap contributors

The core principle

Terrain and rules, kept apart

TrailBivvy never tells you that a place is legal or allowed for the night. Rules for overnight stays depend on the country, the region, the municipality, protected areas, the season and the landowner — and no dataset holds all of them.

Terrain

Does the ground look physically suitable? Slope, surface, shelter, water, hazards and the weather at your arrival time. The current build has no terrain data for the trails yet, so TrailBivvy does not rate the ground: the planned areas of the short bivouac trips are marked “terrain not assessed”.

Rules

Is there a known rule about overnight stays in the downloaded data — a protected area, a national or regional rule, a season?

The two are assessed separately. A known restriction always outweighs good terrain, and missing data stays “unknown” — it never turns into a green light.

The most permissive thing TrailBivvy ever says:

No restriction found in the downloaded data — local rules may apply.

Bivouac suggestions are generalised search areas with a radius of at least 200 m, never exact pitches, so that quiet places do not turn into crowded spots.

Every status is shown as a symbol and words, never by colour alone

  • Looks suitable — no restriction found in the downloaded data. Still check locally.
  • Caution — caveats about terrain, weather or rules.
  • A known restriction or unsuitable terrain rules it out.
  • Unknown — not enough data. Check locally.

Watch the video

In the iPhone beta

What TrailBivvy does

Every feature below exists in the current beta of the iPhone app. Where the data has limits, we say so.

  • Sleep Tonight

    Overnight options within your daylight and walking-time budget: campsites, huts, shelters and village accommodation from open data on every catalogue trail, plus the planned bivouac search area of a short bivouac trip. Each one shows the arrival time, effort, detour, weather at arrival, nearby water, the rules situation and how confident the data is.

    Generated bivouac search areas would need terrain data, which catalogue trails and imported routes do not have yet, so only the short bivouac trips offer bivouac search areas, each its own planned one. The app does not know whether a hut or campsite is open — check with the operator.

    Watch the video

    Screen recording from the beta app · simulated position and time Map: © swisstopo · © BAFU/FOEN, cantons · Source: FOEN · © OpenStreetMap contributors

  • Offline maps and downloads

    Official national maps where available — swisstopo in Switzerland, IGN in France, basemap.at in Austria, BKG in Germany, IGN España in Spain, Kartverket in Norway and USGS in the USA — with Apple Maps elsewhere. Download a route corridor before you go; downloads resume tile by tile and are rate-limited.

    In the current build, offline map tiles can be downloaded in Switzerland, Liechtenstein, France, Austria, Germany, Spain and the USA; whether each provider’s terms allow offline storage is still being reviewed. Elsewhere — including Italy, the UK, the Balkans and Scandinavia — there is no offline base map: carry a paper map.

    Watch the video

    Downloading the whole Via Alpina in Switzerland, with size estimates for each level of map detail
    Download your trek before you go

  • Short bivouac trips

    Two days, one night, no lifts: walk from a bus or train stop in Switzerland to a bivouac search area, and on to a stop the next day. TrailBivvy built these trips from open and official data — OpenStreetMap paths, federal geo.admin.ch layers such as hunting ban areas, wildlife rest zones and mires, and public-transport stops.

    Short bivouac trips in the current build 27 · Switzerland

    See the short bivouac trips

    Each overnight place is a search area with a radius of at least 200 m, not a pitch. TrailBivvy does not say whether you may spend the night there: each trip shows what the checks found, and where no rule was found, the rules stay “unknown”. Ask the municipality or the landowner and follow signs on site.

    Watch the video

    Screen recording from the beta app · simulated position and time

  • Stage profiles and planner

    Browse stages with an elevation profile, climbs and markers. Reverse, combine or split stages and plan a multi-day trip. On the trail, see the distance and ascent remaining and an arrival time based on DIN 33466, adjusted to your own pace as you record trips.

    Off-route alerts are debounced and take GPS accuracy into account, to avoid false alarms.

    Watch the video

    Screen recording from the beta app · simulated position and time Map: © swisstopo · © BAFU/FOEN, cantons · Source: FOEN · © OpenStreetMap contributors

  • Safety tools

    Your coordinates in decimal degrees, DMS, DDM and Swiss LV95; share your position through the iOS share sheet; the nearest settlement, hut, shelter, transport and water; and emergency numbers for the country you are in. Mountain weather from MET Norway, adjusted to your altitude, cached with its fetch time, with a thunderstorm-risk indicator.

    Emergency numbers are being checked by a person before release. Near a border the app can pick the wrong country; 112 works across Europe. The thunderstorm indicator is not an official warning.

    Watch the video

    Screen recording from the beta app · simulated position and time

  • Trail catalogue

    Catalogue trails are built into the app as offline packs made from OpenStreetMap data. OpenStreetMap is open, crowd-sourced data that is not officially surveyed. You can also import your own GPX, GeoJSON or KML route.

    Trails in the current build 58 · Europe and the USA

    Route data © OpenStreetMap contributors, available under the Open Database License (ODbL).

    See the trail list

  • Trip recording and GPX

    Record a trip with track statistics, stored compactly on your iPhone, and export it as GPX. Import routes as GPX, GeoJSON or KML; imported files stay on your device.

    Imported routes carry no rules data, so overnight assessments on them read “unknown — check locally”.

  • 34 languages, your units

    English and 33 other languages, including Arabic and Hebrew with a right-to-left layout, Japanese, Korean and Chinese. Distances in metric or US customary units, or automatically from your device settings.

    The translations are machine-assisted and still need review by native speakers.

  • Private by design

    No account, no analytics, no ads and no third-party SDKs. Trips, waypoints, photos and notes stay on your iPhone and never reach a TrailBivvy server. Map tiles are requested from the map providers without identifiers; weather goes through TrailBivvy’s own relay to MET Norway with a position rounded to about 1 km, and your IP address is not passed on.

    Read the privacy policy

    Watch the video

Screenshots from the beta of the iPhone app, with a simulated position and time.

Common questions

Does TrailBivvy tell me where wild camping is allowed?

No. TrailBivvy never says that a place is legal or allowed. It assesses terrain and rules separately and shows any restriction it finds in the downloaded data. When it finds none, the most it says is “No restriction found in the downloaded data — local rules may apply”. Signs, local rules and the landowner always have the final word.

Why do I often see “unknown”?

“Unknown” means the app has no rules data for that place. The data contains a country-level overnight rule only for these countries: Croatia, England, Finland, Greece, Iceland, Norway, Portugal, Scotland, Sweden and Wales. Some protected areas add rules of their own, such as Swiss federal hunting ban areas, French national park core zones and some US national parks. Everywhere else the state stays “unknown” unless such an area applies — for example in these countries: Switzerland, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Germany, Slovenia and United States. Imported routes have no rules data at all. “Unknown” never means “no restriction” — check locally.

When can I download TrailBivvy?

The iPhone and Android apps are in a closed beta test and not on the App Store or Google Play yet. There is no release date. The TrailBivvy web app is public: you can use it in your browser at app.trailbivvy.com.

What does it cost?

Once TrailBivvy is released, downloading it will be free. Using the app will require a yearly subscription, TrailBivvy Pro: about CHF 18 / €23 / £20 per year, with the exact local price shown in the App Store and in the app before you buy. Eligible new subscribers get a 3-day free trial first. The subscription renews automatically every year unless you cancel it at least 24 hours before the renewal date, in your Apple Account settings. The safety tools — your coordinates, emergency numbers, the nearest help and sharing your position — stay free, without a subscription. Apple handles the payment, and the app has no ads. In the TrailBivvy web app, TrailBivvy Pro costs €22.99 per year including VAT and is sold through Link (Stripe): see TrailBivvy Pro on the web.

All questions and support