How Yonder works

How a Journey works

A Journey is a drive with Yonder running. You open the app, turn on Guide, and drive. Yonder keeps track of where you are and which way you’re heading, and it looks up what’s near that path.

When a place passes the test described below, Yonder writes a short story about it and a natural voice reads it aloud. The text stays on screen for anyone who wants to read along.

Your phone can stay locked in a cup holder. A Journey keeps running in the background, which uses noticeably more battery than normal phone use, so plug in for drives over an hour.

How Guide decides when to speak

Guide speaks only when something near your route is worth a story. Several checks run before any narration plays.

The place has to be one worth volunteering, which rules out a bare administrative fact like a census figure. It has to sit on or near your path at a moment when you can still connect it to what you see. And the sources have to say enough to support a story with a real detail in it, such as why a town exists or what happened at a bridge.

Then Yonder compares the places around you and picks the strongest. It also keeps variety in mind. A place you heard about in the last 30 days doesn’t come back, and after two stories of the same kind, such as two name-origin stories, it prefers a different angle.

When nothing clears those checks, Guide stays quiet. Long silences are normal on rural roads and in places the sources cover thinly. Your Journey keeps tracking the route the whole time.

You can set how often Guide talks. Low is about one narration every 10 minutes, Medium about every 5, and High about every 2 to 3. Free accounts start on Low, and Yonder Pro starts on Medium.

Ask

Ask answers a question you have about where you are. Say or type something like “What’s that mountain?” or “Why is this road called that?” and Yonder answers from your exact location and the places near it.

Ask can cover subjects that Guide wouldn’t volunteer, because you chose to raise them. The answer still has to rest on the sources, and Yonder doesn’t make up a detail it can’t support.

Where stories come from

Yonder uses four public sources. Each contributes something different.

Wikipedia supplies the history and description of towns, landmarks, landforms and buildings. OpenStreetMap supplies what’s mapped around you, such as peaks, bridges, historic sites and viewpoints. GeoNames supplies place names and where they sit. The Historical Marker Database (HMDB) supplies the text and setting of roadside markers.

Yonder doesn’t use commercial business listings. It also doesn’t read the open web at large.

Sources on every card

Each story appears as a card that names its source. If a story says a mill closed in a certain decade, you can open the source and read the original.

The narration itself is written by Yonder, so it can phrase things differently than the source does. When the sources are thin, Yonder says less rather than filling the gap.

Yonders and sharing

A Yonder is a story you’ve saved. Every story you hear can become one, and your Yonders collect in the app so you can revisit them after the drive.

You can share a Yonder, or a whole Journey, as a link. Anyone you send the link to can open it, and on an iPhone with Yonder installed it opens in the app. You can delete your saved Yonders at any time from within the app.

Safety in motion

Yonder is built to be heard. Stories play aloud so the driver’s eyes stay on the road, and you can Ask by voice.

Passengers can read the text on screen. The driver shouldn’t.

Yonder doesn’t give directions. Use your maps app to get where you’re going.

Your location

Yonder uses your location while the app is in use and while a Journey is running. During a Journey, location can continue in the background or with the screen locked so narration keeps going.

To find nearby places, Yonder looks them up by coordinates with the data sources above. The privacy policy lists each service that receives data.

We never sell your location data or share it with advertisers.