Fog of World

Please read the entire review! This app is great and one-of-a-kind: any similar apps in terms if tracking require a subscription fee that is simply not worth it. Yes, a $30 price is expensive at first, but it is absolutely worth it. As someone who travels VERY often, it’s so cool to be able to see everywhere I visit. I’ve been using the app for 6 months now, and can speak on its functionality. I would say the cons are as follows: phone battery drain will be noticeable (I lose ~10% through FOW on a 14 Pro Max), if you forget to load the app every once in a while tracking will stop, and it is difficult to remove unwanted tracks. However, it needs to be taken into account that this app is 15 years old (meaning it has a history and is unlikely to be deleted). Furthermore, there are external websites and tools to delete unwanted lines (or add if you want). At the end of the day, it comes down to this: if you are interested in seeing your map fill up, it’s worth it. Whenever I go for a drive, boat ride, or hike, I am always conscious of not only tracking potentially new lines, but exploring new places and seeing new sights! If you have $30 to spend, it’s better than any game you will ever play as an adult!

This app has been around for years (I’ve been using it since 2017,) and the fact that it still works on modern OSes and models is a minor miracle and justifies it’s relatively high price tag. This app is great—it inspires me to go down streets I’ve never been in my hometown, travel via new methods, and when visiting a new place, helps me stay pleasantly lost, rather than hopelessly so. That said, its feature set hasn’t really changed in all those years, and given that this app is now a decade old, I think some new features would be warranted. Chiefly, I think there needs to be some “re-fog” option (say, at 5-10 years, or even an adjustable setting with the time frame of your choice) so you can see where you have been at one time, but not recently. Cities especially are constantly changing and I don’t think an area should always indefinitely look like it’s been explored—I don’t really want to impact my explored stats, mind you, but I do want to see where I haven’t been in a while (maybe implement it as an optional layer or onion-skinning feature, or a heat map view—the competing app World Uncovered has a feature to show how often you visit places, so that might be another way of doing it, although if you mostly track for new spots it would be of limited utility versus a fading mechanism.)

I downloaded this app the day I moved to New York City about a year ago. It’s fascinating to see how much of the city I’ve explored, and it’s fun to level up by “un-fogging” more. It makes you truly realize how much - and how little - you’ve explored of this big world of ours. I always had an adventurous spirit and like to spend my days off exploring, and this app helps me by showing me places I still haven’t been to so I’m not aimlessly hopping on a train and somehow finding myself surrounded by the same familiar sights as any creature of habit would. I find myself leaving the house more and just walking the streets in places I never would have known about Unless this app didn’t subtly bring to my attention that I’d never been THERE before. I even find myself taking the scenic route home from work just because I haven’t unforced that one block a quarter mile away. I’m walking more just to make sure I don’t lose signal in the tunnels of the MTA, and I’m seeing sides of this city I never even knew existed. After one year, a few trips to Virginia, and a couple road trips to the mid-west, I’m just over level 100 and it feels like a cool accomplishment. And I haven’t even left the US with this app yet! And the best part is that all your fog data is saved to iCloud, so when I upgraded to the new Xs Max I didn’t have to start all over, I just picked up right where I left off. This App is fabulous in every way I can imagine. It’s so perfectly executed, and does exactly what you’d want it to do and then some. I recommend it to everyone, especially those who travel a lot and want to keep track of all the places they’ve been. I hardly ever write reviews but this is an exception because I think everyone should have this app and it’s worth every single penny I payed for it. Please, do yourself a favor and download this as soon as you can. You really won’t regret it!