Plate 1 Lands End, San Francisco, 37.78° N
Waymark lays a parchment fog over the real map of the world. Walk, ride or drive, bring in years of old routes, and the fog lifts wherever you've actually been. It all stays on your iPhone.
Waymark A private atlas of everywhere you've been
Free. Waymark Plus is a one-time purchase.
For iPhoneNo accountStays on your phone
New ground 290,485 m² 3.2 km
Newcomer. Every atlas starts as a blank page.
Scroll to walk
Plate 2 How it works
Waymark records in the background with the screen off, and can start by itself when you set off. GPS runs only while you're moving and sleeps when you're still, so a normal day costs a few percent of battery.
About 50 metres either side of your route and 80 around a photo, or 10 or 95 if you'd rather. Every area and percentage counts what the fog shows up close.
Every new street counts. The card under the map gives your share of the place you're looking at, like 12.162% of San Francisco; the City tab adds the ground around home, your county in the US, and any place you track or search for. Climb from Newcomer to Atlas, with 33 medals along the way.
Plate 3 Sample atlas: five cities, 123 journeys
Your photos, your Google Maps Timeline and your old GPX files already know where you've been. Waymark reads them on your phone and fills in the map in one go.
Every import shows a preview first, and can be undone.
Where and when each geotagged photo was taken. The photos stay on your iPhone.
The export from your phone, or an older Takeout file.
From Strava, Garmin, Komoot, AllTrails and most route apps.
Your Sync folder, rebuilt as routes.
Workout routes, read straight from Health.
Plate 3½ City
The City tab shows the place you're in and how much of it you've explored. Invite friends through iCloud and race them for it, all time or this week; they see your share, never your map. Every walk, ride and drive stays in the journal, as the ground it cleared.
Free. Plus is a one-time purchase.
Get Waymark on the App StorePlate 4 Scratch map
Countries, states and cities fill in from where you've actually been. The places from before Waymark, you scratch off by hand. Your passport puts it all on one page to share: all time, a year or a recent month.
10 countries
Tap a country to scratch it off.
Pl. IV The world, scratched off The United States, by state Cities, as you explore them
Equal Earth · Natural Earth 1:110m Albers · Alaska and Hawaii inset, not to scale An example atlas
Plate 5 Levels and medals
Your level grows with every path you'd never taken. The first few come in a day; level 100 takes years of wandering; Atlas, at level 1,000, is there for the few who never stop.
Level 27 · Pathfinder. You've started finding the ways between places.
Atlas is about 190,000 km of paths you'd never taken.
For new ground, long days, early starts, new countries, and a few you'll find by accident. They have a tab of their own.
Terra Incognita Silver
Every stretch of path you'd never taken before, added up.
Globetrotter Gold
The world, one continent at a time.
Early Bird Bronze
The city before it wakes up belongs to you.
Plate 6 Privacy
No account, no ads, and your location is never sold.
No account No ads No trackers Never sold
Many free apps pay for themselves by passing your location to advertisers and data brokers, often through code you never see. Brokers resell it, and in 2024 the US Federal Trade Commission banned several of them from selling people's sensitive location data. Waymark is paid for by a one-time purchase instead, so there's nothing to sell.
Map pieces come in; your map never goes out. Waymark downloads the map from OpenFreeMap and terrain from Amazon Web Services, like any map app. Read the privacy policy
Plate 7 Waymark One, later
A small tracker that logs your walks all day without touching your phone's battery, and aims for weeks between charges. Today it's a working prototype on a bench, not a product. If enough people want one, we'll build it.
Pricing Free, and one purchase
The free app is complete: no ads, no account, no limits on your history. Waymark Plus is how you support it, with a few ways to make the atlas yours.
Free
and it stays that way
Make the atlas yours. Pay once, keep it.
$5.99, once
No subscription. Pay once and keep it. Family Sharing included. Plus is what pays for Waymark, so it never needs ads.
Get Waymark on the App StoreDownload Waymark, swipe through four short pages, and allow location, then Always, so walks count even when the app is closed. With Record automatically on there's nothing to press: go for a walk and the fog clears. The quick start covers your first day.
No. Your routes, places and photo locations stay on your iPhone, and Waymark never receives them: there's no account and no Waymark server. The app only downloads the map itself, map tiles from OpenFreeMap and terrain from Amazon Web Services, which see your IP address and which pieces of the map were asked for, never your routes. Two things go out only when you use them: an address you type to set a place goes to Apple's search, and if you join a friends group, your name, the city you were last in and how much of each place you've explored are shared with that group through iCloud, never your map. If you turn on Back up to iCloud Drive, a daily backup goes to your own iCloud Drive.
GPS runs only while you're moving and sleeps when you're still, so a normal day costs a few percent of battery, and usually under 10 % even on a long one. About 1–3 % an hour while walking with the screen off, 2–5 % on a day with an hour of walking, and under 1 % a day with Places only. These are estimates; the one day we've measured so far, with a 4 km walk, used about 3 %. The screen is the big one: 10–20 % an hour with the map open, as with any map. More on battery.
No, if you allow Always location. Waymark can start by itself when you set off and rest when you stop. You can also start and stop it yourself, or use Places only to note cities and countries for almost no battery.
Yes, all of them. Waymark reads geotagged photos, Google Maps Timeline exports, Strava's account archive, GPX, FIT, TCX, KML and GeoJSON files (from Garmin, Komoot, AllTrails and others), Fog of World's Sync folder, and workouts straight from Apple Health. Everything is read on your iPhone, and each import shows a preview and can be undone. Bring in your history walks through each one.
Recording does: GPS needs no connection. Terrain is kept on your iPhone once it's downloaded, so the contour lines work offline too. The base map needs a connection the first time you look at a new place.
No. Waymark is free, and Waymark Plus is a single purchase of $5.99 in the US that adds a replay of all your history on the map, a Home Screen map widget, the Night map and the Chart map. Pay once and keep it. Everything that records, imports, exports and measures stays free.
Yes. Replay plays your history back on the map in order: the fog lifts where you went, photos appear where and when you took them, and the date ticks along. Busy days get more time and empty months pass quickly. It never draws inside a hidden place, and you can share it as a video. The last 30 days play free; Waymark Plus plays all of it. The sample atlas, offered the first time you open Waymark, plays whole for everyone.
Yes, with your passport: one page of the countries you've been to on a world map, with their flags, how many states and cities, the ground you've explored and your share of the world, for all time, a year or a recent month. Share it as a story or a square image. It shows only counts and countries, never where you were, and it's free.
No. Your iPhone is all you need. Waymark One is a small tracker for logging all day without your phone; today it's a working prototype, and it isn't for sale.
Turn on Back up to iCloud Drive and Waymark keeps a daily backup in your own iCloud Drive. Restore it on the new phone and everything comes back. You can also save a backup file and keep it wherever you like. Backups, step by step.
Not yet. The fog is drawn by code written for iPhone. If Waymark does well there, Android is the next thing to look at.
iPhone only for now. Workouts recorded on an Apple Watch come in through Apple Health.
Simon Ilincev, in Ithaca, New York. Write any time: simon@simonilincev.com.
The support pages cover recording, imports, backups and Plus. For anything else, write to simon@simonilincev.com.
Waymark A private atlas of everywhere you've been
Free. Plus is a one-time purchase.
Reading this on a computer? Point your iPhone's camera here.
