14 Travel Apps You Didn't Know You Needed

We’re just a few days away from setting off on our almost month long sabbatical. I wanted to share some trip apps that don’t fall into the Google Maps and Waze category. More like “How did I not know these existed?” category.

Some of these are our favorites and others crowd-sourced from our community.

This is your park and playground finder for road trips. We’ve picnicked at some pretty interesting parks during past trips and we really should’ve used this app to find a better one!

This one finds the quirky and totally different roadside attractions that you might’ve missed otherwise. The filters are specific too, so you can narrow things down based on what you’re looking for.

A location based audio tour app with hundreds of options for national parks, state parks and other scenic drives. Download the tour for your destination and GuideAlong will play entertaining and informative facts about the locations history, geology and wildlife.

Think self guided audio tour, but you don’t have to leave the car.

Basically Google Maps for the outdoors. One of our favorite features is the stroller friendly filter, which helps you find cool trails, waterfalls and paths you can bring the whole family on.

Need to know what’s at your next exit? This app gives you an easy rundown of what’s at the next exit. Think food, gas stations, chargers, parks, entertainment and more. It honestly has a very throwback internet feel in the best way.

Now you don’t have to rattle off what you saw on the exit sign 😂

Perfect for any kid who understands time but not necessarily distance. You enter your destination and it shows them the time left in the trip. Super simple to use and hopefully stops the “How much longer?”.

If you travel with friends or even other families, this is the perfect app for trip collabs. You can share ideas, flights, suggestions and even budgets all in one place making planning group trips so much easier.

Just forward all of your trip confirmations to TripIt and it creates a schedule for you all in one place. Great for overall plan details, but even better for double checking dates, times and catching our accidental double bookings.

Think of this as your go to packing list, but with a smart assistant. Packpoint builds your packing list based on the weather at your destination and the activities you have planned.

If you’re like us, you’ve seen these amazing looking spots on Instagram or on TikTok and thought Where is that?

With Dream Trip, you upload the video and it gives you the location details. Awesome for those short clips you find with not enough location details.

Do you struggle with jet lag? We do!

Timeshifter helps you adjust based on your flight times and circadian rhythm. This app takes the thinking out of when you should be asleep, waking up or getting light exposure.

Polarsteps is your visual travel journal.

It tracks your route on a digital map that you can easily share with friends and family while you travel. You can also add photos during your trip that you can later turn into a printed photo book.

Take a 1 second video everyday of your trip and the app turns it into one seamless recap video. Such an easy way to capture a trip that doesn’t take much effort.

Remember those giant maps people would put on the wall and color in the state or pin the country they visited?

This app is the digital version. You can record your entire travel history from a ton of different categories like states, countries and even cities. Weirdly satisfying if you love to see where you’ve been.

There are so many creative apps out there. What’s a travel app you love? Drop it in the comments below!