National Park Service App Reviews

Great start!!. You totally exceeded my expectations with this app. It’s truly welcomed!! Of course, it’s a start. Those that rated lower were expecting the world then some, you can’t have all that from day one. For a v1 it’s excellent! Keep it up NPS! One thing that I did not see mentioned in the reviews I read was iCloud sync. I wish I can sync my favorites and lists with my iPad via iCloud. That would be a nice addition for a future update. Thanks for the hard work!

Great, but missing Jr Ranger info!. The new National Parks App is really great, significant improvement over the previous version. The cards for each park are nice and show most of the info you need— but afaict there is no info on the Jr Ranger program. There is a section for passport stamps on each parks card, but not jr Ranger. Some parks let you print the booklet ahead of time, while others require you to be in person to get the booklet. Some parks let you mail or email the booklet and get a badge through the mail. Some do cards instead of booklets. There is a lot of info that could be added under a jr Ranger heading for each park. Having a way to track which badges you have earned would be helpful too. Or maybe jr Ranger could get its own app!? 😃 That would make a lot of families who plan vacations around national park badges very happy.

Feature Suggestions. 1. Enhance the ability to give app feedback feature to make it easier for users to provide feedback. 2. Notify all parks to update their profiles and improve park photos to make them more appealing. 3. Introduce the NPS app account feature, allowing users to access the NPS pass and enjoy additional features. Having an account would be beneficial. 4. Implement a feature that enables users to view all parks on the map with just one click. 5. Consider using Apple Maps instead of Map Box, as it offers a cleaner and more visually appealing look. 6. Revamp the app's user interface, making it more modern and visually appealing. 7. Explore the utilization of new iOS features to enhance the functionality and user experience of the app. These suggestions aim to improve the NPS app's usability, appearance, and overall user satisfaction.

Great, but would benefit from some usability updates. Just downloaded the app, and absolutely love the ability to manage and track all of the national park information in one place. That said, I wish there were an option/button when you are within a park or monument to add to your organized lists. Currently, the only option is to add it to favorites. Having more organization functionality within the “explore full park” page for each would greatly increase ease of use for tracking.

Good resource, needs updating. My wife and I have been using this app for the past couple years and it’s been a good resource for visiting national parks. We appreciate being able to download parks for offline use, and the hiking trails listed for some parks is very useful. However, some parks are lacking info, such as trail info, and we’ve recently noticed that some national monuments are missing altogether. For example, we’re currently in Organ Mountains-Desert Peaks National Monument, east of Las Cruces, NM, which isn’t listed, and we were in Ironwood Forest National Monument near Tucson, AZ last week, which is also missing. We like to keep the list of places we’ve visited (also a great feature of the app) updated as we travel, but can’t add these national monuments until they’re included in the app. We’d appreciate seeing these updates in future versions.

Great App…love download for offline…want export/share to app on other devices. I really love this app; it has helped tremendously in trip planning, and the download for offline use is extremely helpful. The list capability is also especially helpful for trip planning and keeping track of which parks we have yet to visit on our quest to visit all. It would be helpful to be able to export and/or share a list and automate downloads for parks on the list with another user.

Great App but…... There are a few things that could use an update. I love the photo idea where it places the NPS logo in the corner, but it can take forever to go thru my photos to pick an old one. Please add the option to select photos from your Albums. I have all my photos in Albums and it would be so much faster to find a photo if I could access them. And the logo needs to have more pixels, it is blurry when added to photo. And it would be nice to be able to add a park to ones visited while you have that park open. Thanks - I hope these are easy fixes.

Excellent app, needs some bug fixes. Love that I can download whole parks’ info for use offline. Came in handy when I was at Yellowstone and Grand Teton in sept. For some reason the “what to see” tile wouldn’t load for me when I was out of cell range. If the data was dowloaded to my phone why wouldn’t it open? Having the moving maps on my phone that worked with the phone’s gps was priceless. I wasn’t unsure of where I was on a trail at any time in either park on that trip. I have a 2 year old iPhone 13 and battery life wasn’t an issue. This app is light years better than when NPS had separate apps for each park.

Great app!! Some frustrating errors…. I love this app! I love that I can download parks for low service areas, keep track of the ones I’ve visited, and see passport stamps. However, recently it has stopped connecting or loading any time I’m not connected to WiFi. I’ve triple checked all my setting but it just won’t load on cellular. Which is a bummer- because I love to check the map while on the road to make sure I’m not missing any!

Useful app but info not available from other devices. The information on the NPS Park app is very helpful. It contains detailed information about the parks, history, access, parking, lodging, and other amenities. A few areas of improvement would be: 1. to be able to retrieve information saved on one device from another device For example, if you save all the parks that you have visited over the years onto one phone, you can’t retrieve it from a tablet or laptop. On top of which once you get a new phone there’s no way to transfer the information. You have to enter it all over again since there’s no way to retrieve that history. 2. The app has a lot of good information but is not the most intuitive to navigate. Frequently you are told where you can locate information, but there is no link provided to let you go to that page. 3. A note to the NPS developers. While there are buttons on each page that ask whether the page was helpful, there is no place to provide general feedback so that the end-user could provide suggestions.

Great idea! Needs improvement!. Loving the concept behind this app. It makes a lot of our hopes and dreams of visiting all these places seem within our reach. But there are some serious quality of life issues with this app, some previously mentioned in other reviews. The BIGGEST problem is users cannot add locations to their favorites/visited places directly from the map. We are forced to scroll through 500 line items to find our places, when simply clicking it from the map view would be really easy and more fun. Please consider making the map more interactive. People interested in this stuff ARE MAP NERDS and we need to be able to click on things in the map, and play with filters to find what we want a little easier. GREAT EFFORT SO FAR! God bless America!

Great app - Better than I expected!. This app has some pretty impressive features. One that I’ll highlight is the interactive maps. We were at Yellowstone and wanted to go to Daisy geyser. When you click on the map it shows the trails, a pin where the geyser is, and a blue dot where you are. I downloaded the Yellowstone section and it worked perfectly. The download stalled for my wife’s iPhone and we didn’t realize it until we were there.

You fixed it!. After the latest update (1.16) the app was no longer opening! It kept crashing but looks like you fixed it! Thank you so very much! It’s a nice build now that’s it’s working again. For everyone out there who was having issues like me, this is what I did to make it work again. I had to completely delete the app and then reinstall it. Unfortunately I lost all my data in the process. That is a bummer and have to start logging all my stops again but it’s worth it. The version is very smooth and doesn’t freeze up anymore! It was worth it. This app is great and so are the people who work on it for us. Also, for those of you who wants your lists back, they are still there, under favorites you can make as many new lists as you like just like before. This app helps tremendously with all your NPS needs and planning. May I remind everyone also that’s it’s free! Safe travels everyone and happy exploring!

Love the app!!. We drive a semi for a living, and love having the NPS app! So when we are stationary for a day or two, we get on the app to see what is close that we can go see. The only thing I can think of to improve, would be to add a section “Places I’ve Been To” where we can visually see all the locations we have visited (without having to look in our Passport book)

Marketing with little useful content. App has nice look. Beautiful even! Initial search for Glacier Park was straight forward and fast. It worked so well, I expected to get exactly what I wanted. No Joy. I was looking for a list of all the hiking trails in Glacier all shown on a map and with a map of each named hike. Also expected a comparative list of hike attributes: Name, trail head location, hike distance, difficulty, min and max elevation, some important location pics, parking, special notes. All downloadable to be used OFFLINE. GOT NOTHING. App listed two self hikes - none I wanted. Map itself may have had some information, but kept getting lost in the zoomed OUT or zoomed IN clutter or emptiness. All the information might exist, but not under HIKES or on the Map that I could find. App linked to the Glacier website (useless without internet), which had just a bit more information, but also no useful information to me. Looks like the app was designed by marketers in the middle of a big city who never hike. Like I said though, the app itself is Beautiful ... just not very useful.

Just Why?!!!. The App used to provide Passport Stamp info and now for many parks, nada, nothing, even when there are and should be details provided. Worst experience leaving me to call every visitor center before traveling to confirm national parks/sites support the stamps still and availability. NPS has been failing lately with ex. Apostle Islands just making all the location stamps the same without distinction of Bayfield, Little Sand, or Ashland (NGLVC). Every location has the same stamp and leaves the Passport experience sad and felt unimportant to the Ranger in charge (making the passport stamp decisions) there.

Works well! Accurate GPS!. This app really works well. I wanted to write a review. I used it for Sequoia/Kings Canyon in California, and Hawaii volcano park. Both times it had excellent GPS to guide us through the trails, even when other GPS was not working. Very accurate maps, and they give updated information on road closures and path closures that are very useful to plan out your visit. Very useful and highly recommend if you were going to any national park. You can also purchase entrance tickets ahead of time through the app that you can save on your phone.

Can’t see the number of units visited. Under “my list” I have a list called “parks I have visited.” It is supposed to have a number after that, showing how many park units I have visited. It doesn’t show the whole number. It shows “2…” so I can’t see my total. Can you please enlarge that field? This one issue is why I gave it four stars instead of five. Otherwise it’s a great app and I love it!

Great app!!!. I am using this app for planning daily activities while traveling in 2021 to several national parks and want to congratulate the designers, developers, and NPS on producing something that is truly useful! From park maps, to schedules of ranger-led programs, to lists of what to do and see, and much, much more. The search function is powerful and helpful to find the park of interest, with the added functionality of switching to map view to find a park -- I highly recommend this app to anyone traveling to our national parks. ( I'm using the app on the iPhone 8 running the latest iOS).

Recommendation for future updates. Would love to see a place where you can see a list of all national parks and check off which ones you have been to. And then have a list left of those you haven’t been to. There’s no place to narrow the list down to main 63, and no place to see list of ones you haven’t visited. A list of what i have visited isn’t as encouraging as a list of ones I still need to see. Give us a challange and maybe a way to track progress against friends or even general public. It would drive more people toward the app!

I love this app. My goal is to visit all national parks. This apps gives me useful info about all of the parks. It also allows me to create lists: one for parks I have visited already, another for parks I will visit in the near future, and a third for the other parks. It makes my preparation easier. The app is not always stable, but I am happy to see new releases coming out to improve that. Despite those minor challenges, this app deserves 5 stars!

Love the offline features. It’s great to be able to download a park, and you can easily do that even over a wireless connection. I like that it notes parks near me and prompts me to take a look at them. I wish the mapping feature was more resilient. For example, when wandering through the National Mall I want to be able to look at a map that has the (hundreds of) points of interest on them so when I’m next to one of the (is it thousands?) monuments I can look at my phone zoomed in, click on the pin, read the blurb, then easily go back to the map. Some parks have maps you can navigate, some don’t, and most require you to go back to the park Home Screen to get the map rather than having a button back to the map. I will always want one of the printed brochures. But with this app, I could get behind having a free app and paying $1 for a brochure. Or, like Smithsonian museums do, ask for a $1 donation for the printed map.

Helpful/Not Helpful. The app worked great at Black Canyon of the Gunnison, then was much less useful at Rocky Mountain. What would really be helpful is more fidelity to the information given out at the entrance stations. Trying to figure out how to find the hikes you see on the map on the brochure can be daunting and may not be possible on the app, as the names of the hikes are inconsistent. Also, what shows as an alert at one park may not show a similar issue at another park, voila! Surprise! Incorrect information is often present, as well. For example, the operating hours of Visitor Centers may be considerably incorrect. Once you have downloaded the park you’re interested in and no longer have internet access you are at the mercy of an unreliable app. We had multiple issues that wasted valuable vacation time due to these issues. You can’t use Covid as an excuse after this much time.

Essential. Our family took a road trip this summer, visiting 10 parks & monuments in less than a month. Having a resource that gave us road & trail maps (which would show our location in real time), shuttle schedules, and other park information, turned out to be essential to getting the most out of our days. Some parks had better levels of detail, but I never regretted downloading for offline use.

Great information but needs a good editor and developer for updates. I know the park system is complicated, but it needs some work. The filter lists National Park and National Parks as 2 categories. Between them isn’t even a complete list of all the national parks. There is a list for parks I’ve visited. It took forever to figure out how to add to that list. I wish it could be done from the park’s page. Hope someone gets a chance to work on this. Overall a great resource that needs a little tweaking.

Only partial offline data?. I installed this app before a trip to Guadalupe Mountains National Park. I had the app save the park’s info for offline use because of it’s remoteness. However, I was disappointed to discover it only downloads parts rather than all the content. For example, under self-guided tours you get the McKittrick Canyon Trailhead, but if you click on the links to trails that start there (such as The Grotto or Permian Reef Trail) you are presented with “No Internet Connection.” As a result, it ended up being useless for our McKittrick hikes.

A Nice Beginning. I love the app layout and the picture banners for each location however, the descriptions for each park are extremely limited. For the Great Smoky Mountains park for example, it would be great to see a list of all of the majors trails, waterfalls, lookout areas and campgrounds each with their own photos, description and location on a map. Without being able to see the individual interest points within the park, all the app really does is show you where the park itself is along with amenities. Mapping the amenities would be helpful as well. Lastly, having a satellite option of the map would be even more helpful.

Great; although, where’s the forests?. This app is fantastic it shows pictures and allows you to make a list of places you have been or want to see. You can look at the different activities the park has to offer as well as pull trail maps. The app is really user friendly and FINALLY there’s a map tailored to where I want to go!!!! I’m just disappointed that the National Forests aren’t on here! I can name a few forests that are visit worthy: Ouachita, San Juan, Jarbidge, Superior, White Mountain, Gallatin, etc. I would have given the app 5 stars if it had the forests.

Good data, tough to download for offline use. The maps and information are both great. But it is difficult to get the data to download for offline use. When in Shiloh earlier this week the download repeatedly got stuck at 10%. After multiple restarts we gave up. Only to find it to start downloading after 20 minutes of being stuck at 10%. We chalked this up to the remoteness of the park. Here in Vicksburg we tried to download the Vicksburg data while on wifi and it again got stuck at 10%. Waited overnight and the download never finished. Restarted the app and download without any luck. Still trying to download for offline use.

They ruined a perfect app with the recent update. I absolutely loved this app, and they’ve ruined it by not knowing how to not fix what wasn’t broken. They’ve removed the function that lets you see the NUMBER of parks and NPS sites you’ve visited, and they’ve removed the function that lets you make your own lists. (For example, I had a list of just US presidential sites I was tracking, and they’ve deleted it without notice, which cost me valuable information I was depending on the app for. I went from LOVING this app to now HATING it and am looking for a replacement. I don’t see a single improvement in this new version.

Newer version with offline audio content is great. Visiting all National Parks is on our bucket list. We've been to almost 50 so far and the latest version of the NPS app is very nice. We just did New River Gorge and the app, with its offline audio tours, was a great help. Cell coverage is spotty but we could download all maps and offline tours and do everything without any issues at all. A lot of 3rd party contracted apps aren't great but I was impressed with quality and content of this one.

When It’s Good, It’s Great. Today is Feb 22nd, when you open the app, it says the Fort Pickens Visitor Center is open. When you go to the website, there is an alert saying the Fort Pickens Visitor Center has been closed since Jan 25th. We love the National Parks and use this app a lot for historic information, park trails etc. Do NOT rely on any realtime info on the app or the website. If it’s critical… say you want to do something specific in a short period of time, a guided tour or a movie… contact the Park by phone. If the person doesn’t sound informed, politely ask for someone else to speak with. Even calling is risky- we received very faulty info 3x this past year requiring change of plans and disappointment.

Good, could be great with some tweaks. Recently went to Boston and used this app for the Freedom Trail self-guided tour. It was a bit hard to find in the app as the NPS app seems to be park focused with all other NPS things being secondary. The two improvements I would make are: Make it easier to find things that aren't parks. Allow playback speed adjustments for self-guided audio tours. I enjoy the delivery, but sometimes people need to rush a bit on short stays so having a 2-3x playback speed option for audio would be nice. Podcasts apps like PocketCasts do this week, even allowing trimming silence from audio.

Hangs up with limited cell service. The ability to download for offline use is handy, but if cell service is limited, the app hangs up, apparently trying to check for updates. When that happens I have to turn off cellular data to get it to respond. Also, please add time zone information for all Visitors centers and other facilities with operating hours. This is especially important in Arizona for the many sites that may be in Navajo land, and on a different zone than the rest of the state, and important to have the information offline.

Very good, but lacking a few things. First I must say that I am really impressed with the quality of this app! Big kudos for well-thought out functionality like the offline feature. There’s a few things I think you could improve on: -enable adding a park to lists from its info page. It was getting tiresome searching for parks, then having to jump to lists, then back to search. -missing newer parks like Grand Staircase-Escalante -coordinate with others like National Forests who also do stamps to include them (ex: Red Canyon) -break the trails down for user-friendly searches. For example, I’ve been to Pompey’s Pillar but I had no idea it was part of a trail and was frustrated when I couldn’t find it. -add a passport stamp check-list/feature -some stamp images don’t match up ex:Yellowstone NP, Albright Visitor Center shows Mammoth Visitor Center.

GREAT APP, one helpful tip. This app is GREAT. One thing I wish they would change is when you click on a park, I wish there was a button to push that says “I Visited” so it is added to the list “Parks I Have Visited.” It’s a bit of a hassle to access your lists, click on the visited parks list, search for the park, and then add it to the list, and then go back to the park page or home page. I think it would be more simplified to just have a button or something that could add it to the list right away. Overall, a VERY well put together app. The layout is nice. NPS is shining as usual.

Good App, Needs Some Updates. Love having this app and there is a ton of great information that’s easy to access. In addition to the big miss of adding parks to a list directly from the park, my biggest issue is the the inconsistencies with the park closures and visitor center hours! I’ve gone to multiple parks this summer and noticed the app will have completely different hours than what actual locations have. Perhaps the rangers can verify and have the developers update to reflect current hours. Obviously, things are a bit wonky with COVID, but it is frustrating. Even a ‘call for current hours’ would be better I think.

Please warn users that lists will need to be recreated!. I updated to the newest version w/out reading reviews. I immediately regretted updating and even tried to reset my phone from an i-cloud backup. I had created lists of parks I had visited by year and parks I visited overall in the previous version and then those lists were completely gone. Now that I’ve remade my parks visited list (took a bit of time) I do really like the ability to add a note to each park and to customize my own list order, so maybe the hassle was worth it after all. It should serve as a reminder (to me as well) that this is NOT the most secure way to preserve you personal park travel history, though it is the most convenient…for now.

Really poor design. What surprises me is the high average rating this app gets. Some poor decisions include: You can see parks on a map but you cannot navigate to a park by touching on that map. Any recent graduate in computer programming can implement that in a day or two. Enter a park name while a filter is applied, for example, Wyoming state, and the list will show completion for the names matching the text you enter, even if outside that state. After you select the suggested name the app tells you there is no such park (nless you clear the filters). Check various links for more details and it will send you to Safari (why not open an in-app browser?)

Looking Great, So Far. This is a long overdue app that might allow more efficient ways to vist our nation’s treasures. What’s lacking, following an admittedly brief look, is detail, especially for RV users. There was a recent Covid-related boom in RV sales and now they’re on the road. These vehicles range from tiny tow-behinds to large 45-foot motorhomes that need 240v 50-amp electric service if parked for more than a few days. Campsite information is critical for any RVer planning a stay in a National Park Service facility and this app could be the perfect place for it.

Offline maps are sick!. Some really awesome features in this app- good mix of visitor information related to fees, history, hiking, camping, AR & guided tours, and more. To top it off, they made entire parks available for download offline. I have access to maps with my location when I’m hiking areas with no service. Amazing resource, I only wish it wasn’t limited to just National Parks & Monuments!

Awesome start. Hoping for many more features.. Honestly this is one of my favorite apps. Even if I’m not traveling, I like to load the app and explore parks from afar. I love how much love and energy went into this app. It’s obvious that the content comes from people who love the parks as much as we do. Here’s what I’d love to see: Improve offline access: being able to save parks for offline use is awesome. However, the app spends a really long time trying to load when you don’t have internet access before finally giving an error message and then loading after a delay. I wish the app would start in offline mode (offline is default) and then access the internet once the app is loaded. Sort by ability or activity level: I wish I didn’t have to load every single item in a list to see if a trail or thing is ADA accessible. Maybe add an icon to the items on a list… or add a filter. Passport stamp locations: I love this feature. Can the items on this list be clickable? Take me to the entry for that visitors center, so I can find info on accessing it. More pictures: I’m disabled and physical access can be an issue. It’s so cool to be able to see places I’ll never be able to visit. Show me the super advanced hikes I’ll never get to. And show us more wildlife we might have trouble seeing on our visit! I’ve got a million suggestions but you all are busy people. Thanks for making a cool app. Looking forward to updates.

Great start. Great start to the app. I appreciate it, but there needs to be more things that make it user-friendly. -I should be able to add a park to my visited list from the park info itself. Right now there’s a star to add it to your favorites list. It would be easy to add a checkmark or something similar. So that it would immediately go onto a “Parks I have visited” list. -there should also be a wish list, again with an icon that you click that immediately put that park into the wish list. -any of these lists should be able to be looked at in map form. This way I can easily plan a road trip. -you should be able to sort on the map parks according to type… National Park versus national seashore versus historic monument. -once you’ve gone through the intro opening pages you should not have to go through it again. I’ll post if I come up with others, but I really do appreciate this app and look forward to using it more and more!

Excited about the NPS app. Since we are big fans of the NPS, I’ve been already exploring this app looking forward to getting more familiar with it. I have the app on both my iPhone and iPad but don’t see where they automatically back up to the cloud or sync with each other. I see where there is a settings option but nothing that seems to allow for setting up anything. Otherwise, this should be wonderful app for those of us who love the National Parks. Thanks

Under construction. The app looks like it’s going to be great but it’s still definitely under construction. I looked at Pictured Rocks national lakeshore. There is no park map. And under things to see or things to do there is no mention of the rock formations! That is why most people come to the park. The trails are to places with cool rock formations. Also disappointed that the only trails listed are those which are less than one mile. I hope that’s not a theme throughout the app. Need to highlight the amazing geology of the parks.

Poorly Executed. I'm at Big Bend and tried finding a map of the roads, paved and rocky, but it's not there. From the Persimmon Gap entrance the guided drive apparently has NO audio. The map in the app doesn't move along as our vehicle drove through the park. In contrast, The Road to Hana, app was terrific when we were in Maui last year. It cost $19 but it worked flawlessly! I waited in line at the next ranger station to seek assistance with the app. First ranger was reading a book at the counter and claimed she never heard of the NPS app. The 2nd ranger also was unfamiliar with this app - shouldn't these employees have some training? The 3rd ranger said she knows about the app but never found it to work! Great! Just what I needed to hear.

A Work in Progress. I love the National Park Service & want so badly to love the app, but it's been super glitchy for more than a year now. It freezes up every time I try to use it, often after just one or two taps. If this were fixed, I'd give the app five stars as it's so helpful to have all the info in one place & be able to use it offline. Some of the newer park sites (ie, Blackwell School NHS) are in the app but can't be added to any lists. Would really appreciate an update that fixes this issue.

Nice App, Convenient. Since the passport app went away, this is a great alternative to keeping track of what parks you wish to visit, which you have been to, and spots to locate passport stamps. Another big plus is being able to download park data so you can access it offline or without data in some of the more remote areas. One of the features I really enjoy is the create a postcard where you can upload photos and get a little logo and park name over your images, the drawback to this (for me so far) has been the app doesn’t load your entire camera roll so you can’t access older photos. Hopefully the next update fixes this, but otherwise rejoice! An up to date app with all your park needs is here!

The app I’ve been waiting for. This is a great app - nice work NPS! One suggestion for the developers: it would be nice if you could filter the 423 NPS units by their ‘type’. I’d love to just see a list of the 63 National Parks or 85 National Monuments etc. I’m working my way towards visiting all 63 National Parks and it would be helpful for me if I could browse the list of just those parks or see a map with only those parks. Scrolling through all 400+ can be cumbersome - especially on a phone.

Great way to find and explore. I like this app because I like to explore National parks. With this app I get a tour of what to see in each one of these parks. It’s a preview of inside information and details that can help you plan your trip accordingly to the area. I wish it would also include state parks as well getting information is sometimes hard when looking up information on state run parks. Thanks Matt J

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Maps don’t work?. App looks great with heaps of information but the maps are all blank? Hope it is just a one off glitch.

Fabulous. Great information on all national parks, monuments and more! Use it all the time!!

Fantastic App- except the maps won’t show. What a fantastic app to browse info on the National Parks & use for planning a trip. Only (major) issue - the maps aren’t showing - just a black screen🙁

Search function not great. Search function not great

Finicky. It seems not to actually like working off line even when a park is downloaded. Specific information can be hard to find

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Needed it for one trip now planning one more. Got the app to plan a trip to Yellowstone it helped me so much I am using it to go to South Dakota to see Mt Rushmore and more. Loads of info to help plan any trip to a park

Latest version doesn’t start. I like the app but since the last update it doesn’t start. It loads a NPS logo on a splash screen then it crashes

Error Message. The tiles keep getting stuck on this grey loading screen and says “the data could not be read because it isn’t in the correct format”… then it crashes. Super inconvenient.

Great for planning a visit, less so for practical use. Love the app in that it has SO much information available in what to do and see in the parks, however the map element of the app could be greatly improved. For example, it would be so much more useful if it identified what he pins are instead of having to tap on the pin to be told what it represents. Also, the user experience would be much smoother is there was a filter for “Favorites” so you can see your chosen points of interest on the road map.

Useless. Nearly useless app Does not have hiking trails in glacier national park haha

Frustrating. Overall a great idea but needs lots of polish to make me trust it, dates/hours can’t be relied on. I was expecting it to be so much better, maybe in time but at the moment frustrating.

No Self guided Tours found. Online it says this app has self-guided tours, where you drive along the highway and it reads out to you the points of interest and history as you drive. But for the life of me, I cannot find that feature.

Disappointing. Don’t waste your time with this app. Downloading doesn’t work - tried more than one park several times and it consistently got hung up at 40%. Info on what to see is alphabetical instead of geographic or by type of feature. Predictions for geyser eruptions are not as up to date as the info on the NPS website.

Downloading not working. I found the app and started exploring and when I went to download the information for Yellowstone it only got to 41% and froze. It won’t continue on from there. The information I skimmed thru seemed thorough and great, wish it would download

Works for me with Yellowstone NP. Works for me!

Ne peut plus lire les info. Ne peut plus lire les info

Need Dog Friendly Filter. It would be awesome if there was a filter for dog friendly trails.

Stuck at 40%. Have tried to down app on iPad and iPhone and restart, delete app and re-download and nothing works. Stuck at 40%

Stuck downloading and exhausted iPhone battery. App looks full of promise. But when I went to do download for Shenandoah NP the progress bar stuck at 40% and stayed there, fairly swiftly gobbling up the iPhone’s battery and heating up the phone, even though the phone was concurrently charging on the regulation Apple magnetic charger. Tried restarting the app and the download process to come to a similar outcome of the download getting stuck at 40 percent. The first 40 percent downloaded quite promptly.

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Love the National parks. I really like the app and the ability to view the national parks. I wish there was a way to mark on the map the ones I’ve visited to tell them apart from the others. That’s the only thing I can think of that I would change. I know you can click on visited ones and it shows the ones you’ve visited, but I would like see them marked differently to help plan trips.

Handheld Adventure. The app is a great way to explore NPS sites close to your location. When traveling across the country, I was able to visit locations I would have never known existed without the app. Great way to get outdoors to enjoy and explore what NPS has to offer.

Great app!. This app is surprising good and a fast way to get park info and create different lists so you know where you been and where you would like to go, plan trips, etc. The reason for 4-star review is that the number of offered parks is still not comprehensive (at the time of this review, maybe be by the time you read it). The app support and progression and features otherwise make it a 5-star app and worth the download.

Great Resource. Glad to have this app, especially, now that the Passport app went away. We enjoy keeping track of all of our visits! Thank you. It would be great to be able to also sort on the exact type of Park. It would be fun to see how many of the National Parks we still have to visit, as well as, National Seashores, etc.

Almost - hoping it evolves. It’s great to have all the parks in a single app! (Although still bizarre that this wasn’t the original approach.) The app still needs some basic features, mainly organization within the park list including separation (ie. bullet points), maybe a way to jump to the first letter (ie. click on ‘G’ when scrolling), and filtering by park units and/or region. Hope these reviews are considered and the app will only improve!

CarPlay would make the app better. Went to Gettysburg recently and tried the app for the first time. Very useful if you don’t wish to use the paper map provided at the Visitor Center. My only request is can this be available for CarPlay? It makes it more convenient and safe to use while driving.

Great app!. Simple and easy to use and access parks offline. Missing the ability to discover parks on the map and see them all. The challenge is that you have to define a filter before you search. Which means you can’t see all the parks on the map at the same time. You have to know what state, name, etc.

Nice app, but need improvements.. It is nice to search by state to see the sites. I have two suggestions to make this even better. 1. When viewing a park, it would be nice to market there that you have visited it. 2. When in the section to add visits, it would be VERY helpful to select it by state or at least have it sorted by state. Having it in alphabetical by all parks is overwhelming.

NPS app is excellent. The NPS app is one of the best traveling aids I have used. The layout is logical in design and easy to follow. The maps are easy to use, due the clarity of the base maps. And to be able to search for all NPS sites by my location makes planning easy. Notice the key word throughout this review - EASY - to use. Thank you for your efforts, the app is an aid to all.

miserable search, unintuitive, sad. This is government at its worst. If the developers of this app put themselves in the shoes of a visitor to a park for a moment, they would see that this app is basically useless as a practical assist to finding things to do nearby, quickly. I'm just exhausted trying to navigate it. Do you think the NPS will listen to all the negative feedback for this app and radically redo it? What are the odds? They've checked a box, no matter that it's completely unusable -- that it could be 10x better with some care and common sense.

Needs Wallet feature and Sync capabilities. Great app. Needs to have the ability to keep your logon synced between devices and web logon for all the parks you visit. It would be nice to have the ability to add your yearly parks pass to the Apple iOS wallet app so you don’t have to carry your physical card with you when entering a park. Keep up good work.

Very Helpful & User Friendly. I’m using this app for the second NP road trip, first on the East coast, now on the west coast. It has absolutely made our trip better & easy to plan. It saved us a lot of time knowing which park entrances & visitor centers are open, what highlights & hikes to do in the time we have available, etc. If you are going to a park, get this app before you go.

Glad to see NPS is back but need to save visit information. I used the old passport app and loved it. Was great recording my experiences. This app is great with full information on all the parks. Just disappointed there is no way to record at least date of visit. All we can do is add to list of parks visited or want to visit. Would love more options but still glad to have this online resource available again. Thanks NPS!

Great app!. I’m really enjoying this app! I like the imagery, maps, facts, and the ability to download information about the park to use offline! The only thing I can’t figure out is how to create an account within the app - if that’s even a possibility. Otherwise, it’s awesome!

Please add a list of all the parks. The first thing I wanted to look at was a list of every park! I’m getting ready to retire and one of my goals is to visit as many of them as I can. The app wants to show me parks near me, and I can find a national map, or search for activities, but I just want to browse an alphabetical list of all the parks. Otherwise, this looks like a great app, I’ll have to run down to the Everglades and give it a test!

Absolutely my favorite app. This is a remarkably well built app with an incredible breadth and depth of features. The developers thought of so much - from offline downloads (really helpful when you’ll be off grid) to the ability to favorite and plan future trips. The user experience is one of the best out there. Well done!

Wish I could pay for annual pass. Great app, but I wish I could subscribe to the annual pass in this app and have it in my digital wallet (and be able to share that with my family). Having a recurring pass would mean I wouldn’t need to worry about paying at the entrance and the parks would have steadier income.

Excellent app! (With hope for a few tweaks). What a nicely designed app. Thanks for making it for our usage. I hope to see two features in the future: 1) a full map view of all 420ish parks (and not just a few of the parks at a time when you search by state, activity, or name. And 2) on that full map, a way to show (by pin or color) all the national park sites you have thus far visited. Thank you!

Love the app!!. We drive a semi for a living, and love having the NPS app! So when we are stationary for a day or two, we get on the app to see what is close that we can go see. The only thing I can think of to improve, would be to add a section “Places I’ve Been To” where we can visually see all the locations we have visited (without having to look in our Passport book)

Great App!. Thank you so much NPS for creating such a great app! I’ve been waiting for this for a very long time and now it’s safe to say that I don’t need those individual park apps anymore. I know you guys are still working on it to make it perfect and I can only imagine that it’s gonna be an amazing all around app for every nature / National Park lovers! Well done!

Great job so far!. For such a new app and for being an app from a government service it’s surprisingly really great. I would imagine the developers themselves are passionate about our parks because it’s been a great experience so far. Just here to say keep up the great work and I look forward to what cool features will come with future updates. Finally a one stop shop for the parks. Kudos!!

It’s great to have all of this information available, but…. I wish there was an “account” feature that would allow me to save my settings and lists and allow them to sync between devices. If I’m missing this somewhere, please help me out here. An option to save and use current America The Beautiful Passes would be great as well to have.

Great. I love the app. I would really like to have a “visited” button on the info page. So when you are at a place visiting you can just click it and it will automatically add it to your visited list instead of having to go over and find it manually. That would make it perfect!!

Bug won’t load anything. I love this app and I’ve used it for months, but for the last few days, I’m able to search up national parks but when I try to look at the “things to see” “things to do” “hikes” etc categories, they’re in a perpetual state of loading until I just get an error message. It’s been frustrating as I’m currently on a trip that requires that information.

Missing National Monuments. We absolutely love this app! We noticed that there are a few national monuments missing from the app. Those that we have visited but are not in the app are: Kasha-Katuwe Tent Rocks National Monument; Pompeys Pillar National Monument; Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument; Vermilion Cliffs National Monument. Thanks for all the effort your team puts into this app. We use it all the time! Steve & Paige Sessions

Amazing app, a few glitches. I love this app. I’m a huge national park fan and have used this app and its offline features countless times. With the newest update, I’ve run into a glitch where it freezes abruptly and I have to close and reopen the app. But other than that, this app is amazing and I love using it to keep track of parks I’ve been to and where to go next

One thing needed. I’m a Parks geek and use this app a lot. One thing is missing. Where to find those iconic entrance/welcome signs in each Park (where/if there are any). Aside from visitor centers I’d wager more people stop for photos at these signs than anything else. Tell us where they are and include a photo!!!!

Just Why?!!!. The App used to provide Passport Stamp info and now for many parks, nada, nothing, even when there are and should be details provided. Worst experience leaving me to call every visitor center before traveling to confirm national parks/sites support the stamps still and availability. NPS has been failing lately with ex. Apostle Islands just making all the location stamps the same without distinction of Bayfield, Little Sand, or Ashland (NGLVC). Every location has the same stamp and leaves the Passport experience sad and felt unimportant to the Ranger in charge (making the passport stamp decisions) there.

Download maps. Downloading maps terrible some take 30 seconds the one I am downloading now 3 weeks and far as I can tell only at 40% NPS sent me a response to my review that no one else is having an issue downloading maps. I read the reviews and other people are saying the same thing. They did ask me to send them what kind of phone I have what operating system I have XR and current 300 gigabytes still available. Now what NPS As of yesterday still not able to download the larger maps available for download

Just a few tweaks. I enjoy this app and have used it at several parks in the past two months…sleeping Bear Dunes in Michigan, Kitty Hawk in North Carolina and Monocacy National Battlefield in Maryland. It would be nice if I could store an image of my America The Beautiful National Parks Pass within the app so it could be accessed for entrance to the parks. I have a pass but did not have it in my wallet when visiting any of these sites.

NPS rules!. Love this app so far! Seems like it’s got a bit of everything! The only thing I wish was on here is camping and backcountry stuff! It would be great to be able to reserve backcountry sites through here or at least see what’s available in both backcountry and regular campgrounds! Other than that love this app!

Great App but one thing…. Love the app but you should be able to include the dates you visited when you add them to your list. I collect passport stamps and this would be a great addition to the app. I’d give it 5 stars if that was available. Otherwise, it really beats using the website and so much better!

👍👍. I love this app on our last trip I was able to use it offline, it works well, I went to places that I would have no idea existed if it weren’t for this app and it’s free no ads. Would definitely recommend downloading if you travel.

Failed to load data. I’ve been trying to research parks/conservation areas however I kept getting the “data failed to load because the format didn’t match” error. I also wasn’t able to save the parks for offline use. I like using this app but please look into it if you haven’t already.

Great app for National park nerd!. I have been using this app to visit many National park this year. Yellowstone, Yosemite, Grand Canyon, Grand Teton…etc. I have to say this app helps me a lot for trip planning. And also self guided tour is one of the best part of this app for solo traveler. This is the app you shouldn’t miss if you are going to visit National park in the future. 👍👍👍😁

Great, but would love better Passport Integration. Love this! Transitioning from the virtual passport app, this has a lot of information, but sadly it is missing the Regional Stamp information. The old passport app said if a Park or Site had a Regional Stamp and for what year which made it easy to plan out my passport pages. Would love if that could be incorporated, easy five stars if so.

Love. I love this app. I use it all the time when I travel. I mostly use it on my iPad as I plan my trips but then use it on my phone while at the parks. It would be cool if I could sync them…so it would save any notes that I made on my ipad to the phone. Is this in the works?? Also in case I ever get a new iPad I’d hate to lose all of my lists I made. Making it sync would be awesome Also…maybe a watch app?? Just an idea

Missing number of parks visited count. The app is visually improved and the interface seems a bit better. We lost the ability to see how many parks we have visited, a feature we found very useful. I hope some day we will be able to access our data across devices.

Not too useful in offline mode. Even when a park is downloaded for offline use, the app still takes several moments to try connecting before giving up, then opening a park takes several more moments before the option to use offline data is offered. Why not load the offline data first and then add anything else if available? There is very little connectivity on Southern Utah in the Mighty Five and so far this has not been very useful.

I have one need: see a map with all parks and make visible parks I have visited. Good app, I have searched across all apps to find a simple app that allows me to filter only NP’s, ans then show which ones I have visited. This app comes close… but no cigar. Hoping for future updates you can merge the “places I have visited” to be indicated on the “find a park” section.

What a comeback.. I was pleasantly impressed by the quick fix to the latest version. Adding the create a Postcard of a visit to a NPS site is great, especially since it has the NPS logo and park’s name on it. You can create a National Park Site album in your photos and then move each postcard to the album. Only thing I hope you add back is the total number of parks visited. That was a feature of lists but is not included in the parks visited section.

Offline maps are sick!. Some really awesome features in this app- good mix of visitor information related to fees, history, hiking, camping, AR & guided tours, and more. To top it off, they made entire parks available for download offline. I have access to maps with my location when I’m hiking areas with no service. Amazing resource, I only wish it wasn’t limited to just National Parks & Monuments!

Really?. There are lots of park and hiking apps that provide detailed information. This isn’t one of them. I’m standing in Jockey Hollow Park and pulled up the map looking for hiking trails which are all around me. Only one was shown. Also, despite multiple picnic areas, only one was shown. There is just so much information you can provide in an app, and this doesn’t. Maybe other parks are better, but with Jockey Hollow, you’re better off with other apps that provide a lot more information.

Paper Maps Still Better. At this point I’d prefer you pay cartographers to draw decent trail maps and then distribute those on a stripped down website. At least then I could save them to my phone a use them when I’m out of cell service range. Downloading the Data option doesn’t seem to work. Maps are poorly drawn and labeled (just the trails I mean - the background contour maps are fine). Sometimes there are waypoints but they aren’t labeled or don’t carry useful metadata. Just slapping geo data into a map is not good mapping practice.

Ideal! FREE and super helpful resource!!. We recently used this app in Yellowstone, Redwood, Arches and Canyonlands. We could not have enjoyed our trip more and the app made deciding which trails to take, where to go, where to stay and overall navigation seamless. Intuitive, beautiful and so easy to use… kudos to the NPS for putting out this FREE gem!!

Beautiful app. Very useful app that has every unit of the system in one place! Very straightforward interface with things to do and important information for getting around the park! My main suggestion would be to include the official brochure maps in addition to the park tiles map: it’s usually easier to read and better highlights important locations and other features.

All in One. This is amazing - all of the NPS units in one convenient app! I’ve been waiting for something like this and it’s so helpful when planning trips. One bug I noticed - I added Channel Islands NP to my “Parks I have Visited” list, and the image for the park in the list is gray, it’s not the header image that shows up for other parks. Maybe just a bug with this one but I’m sure it’ll get fixed soon. Thank you for this, NPS!

Thank you!. We love this app already! The first suggestion I have is the ability to add notes to any item on a list (park or place in park). This would allow the app to be the ultimate resource for our adventures, while being able to jot things down for our blog later on. Keep up the great work!

Work in Progress. The app looks great for the first release. A couple things that would seem intuitive but aren’t included in the initial release. You can’t see a map without entering a location in the search box. I can’t check off a park I’ve been to when I’m visiting the park location. When visiting a park on the app the map only shows up when you click on Visitor Center or Places to Go->Sites. How’s about a simple Map icon?

Best app. I got this app when visiting Death Valley. The pass is a 7 day pass so we are going back a second time and checking to plan what to see next. It has more details than any application I’ve ever used. Helpful information and tips to even fun facts. Great job on this application!