A product of McGlaflin Labs · In development
Don't just go places. Understand them.
Bearings is a travel companion for iOS and Android. It watches where you are as you drive or walk, and tells you the story of the place you're passing through — the history, the landmarks, the culture, the reason the town is named what it's named.
What it does
You tell Bearings where you're headed and what you're curious about. From there it works in the background, like a passenger who happens to know the area. When you approach something worth knowing about — a battlefield, a mill, a mountain pass, a state line — it speaks up, for as long as the subject deserves and no longer. When there's nothing interesting nearby, it says nothing.
You can interrupt and ask it questions out loud, the way you would ask a person in the passenger seat. And when the trip ends, you can save it: the route you took, every story you heard along the way, and any photos you added, kept as a journal entry you can reread later or share with a link.
Features
- Location-aware narration Stories arrive as you reach the places they're about, not queued up in advance or read off a generic list.
- Depth that matches the subject A major landmark gets a real segment. A minor one gets a sentence. Importance drives length, so nothing is padded.
- Ask anything, out loud Interrupt with a question about what you just heard or what you're looking at, and get an answer in context.
- Built for the car Audio-first and hands-free, and it yields the floor when your navigation app has a turn to announce.
- Trip journals Save a completed trip with its route map and every story from it, then revisit or share it with a public link you control.
- Tuned to your interests Tell it you care about geology, or architecture, or food, and what it chooses to talk about shifts accordingly.
Availability
Bearings is in active development and testing ahead of release on the App Store and Google Play. If you'd like to hear when it's available, join the list below — we'll email you at launch and won't use your address for anything else.
Who builds it
Bearings is designed, built, and operated by McGlaflin Labs, LLC, an independent consumer software studio in Charlotte, North Carolina. Bearings is the studio's first product; the studio itself isn't limited to travel software.
Legal
Bearings' Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply to all use of the app.