look. before you scroll any further.
this is the fifth app i've shipped. four are dead. one of them was a flashlight and even that one couldn't find an audience, somehow. so when i tell you this one is "different" please understand i am also lying to myself a little, and i need you to let me have it.
campybara is what i wish existed when i was driving a happy campers van around the ring road in 2023 with no plan and the wrong shoes. a map of every campsite, every hot pot, every public pool, every free parking spot. one app. icelandic. friendly. nordic-coded but not trying.
side note: the capybara in icelandic is flóðsvín. literally "flood-pig." which is an objectively terrible name for an app and i considered it for about 40 seconds. but the flóðsvín is, somehow, my spirit animal — vaguely soggy, perpetually unbothered, hangs out in hot springs, somehow loved by everyone — so the bear stays. yes i know it's not a bear. yes i know it's a giant rodent. don't email me about it.
same app. two completely different vibes.
the first time you open it, it asks if you're a tourist with a van or a reykvíkingur trying to find free parking in 101. that's it, that's the trick. pick one and the entire app reskins. mode change is one tap in settings later so feel free to pretend you're a tourist on weekends.
"welcome to campybara, pick a vibe"
for the first six months of this app's life, every new user landed on a parking-only map titled "free parking · sniff out a free spot." which is fine if you live here, but if you're scott from manchester who just rented a camper, you assume you've installed the wrong thing and uninstall in 90 seconds. yes i lost real users to this. yes it haunts me. yes it's fixed now. moving on.
a map, but with the right dots.
the data is the moat. every campsite in iceland, every public pool, the alpine huts in the highlands, every disc-zone bay in mosfellsbær. if it didn't exist in OSM i imported it. if it imported wrong i deduped it by hand at 1am yesterday. there's a fair chance i missed your local pool, in which case i'm sorry, please tell me.
"i'm in selfoss and i need a hot pot, then a tent"
mid-zoom is where the app actually earns its install. orange droplets are hot pots and pools. green tents are campsites. brown houses are huts. the numbered bubbles are clusters because i'm not draw-calling 4,250 markers, calm down.
※ flúðir has three pools within 200m of each other and they all overlap on the map. yes i've seen it. it's on the list. the list is long.
brown houses = "you should probably call ahead"
fjallabak, landmannalaugar, þórsmörk corridor. the huts are real, the phone numbers are real, the f-roads will absolutely void your insurance if you didn't tick the box at keflavík. the app does not check this for you. i'm not your dad.
two buttons that fix 90% of complaints.
complaint #1 was "what's the orange droplet." now there's a `?` button that tells you in 5 seconds. complaint #2 was "show me only campsites under 4000 kr that are open today." filters do that. genuinely the two highest-roi changes per line of code i've ever written. groundbreaking work over here.
"what's on the map?" — answered without a tutorial popup
the icons in the sheet are the actual drawables on the map. so when i inevitably change the campsite icon to something more fluorescent, the legend updates with it. one source of truth or whatever they call it on the medium articles i don't read.
real ISK. no "$$" out of "$$$$" nonsense.
free, under 2000 kr, under 4000 kr, anything. "open today" cross-references the operating-season metadata so you don't drive 60km to a campsite that closed in september. the trail/walking-paths section is off by default because OSM trail data in iceland is, scientifically speaking, a hot mess.
tap a marker. get the answer.
reykjavík campsite, with the receipts
english title (because your phone is in english). icelandic subtitle. a distance pill that knows where you are. pills for what's actually in the campsite — showers, electricity, wifi. and then the killer move: nearby hot pots & pools, sorted by distance, tappable.
this is the entire pitch in one screenshot. you came for a tent and you're leaving with five pools you didn't know existed. you weren't supposed to see those pools yet.
laugardalslaug. with a small bug.
open in maps, website, call. all three work. the line that says
is:Laugardalslaug is an OSM tag prefix leaking into the UI
because i forgot to strip it before shipping. yes i know. yes it's in
the v1.0.3 list. yes i've thought about it during showers. moving on.
sky lagoon, found by accident
scott from manchester didn't bring a guidebook. he tapped an orange droplet. now he has a 14,000 kr spa booking and a really good instagram story. you're welcome scott.
same app, but for finding parking in árbær.
black P = a chance at not getting a 4500 kr ticket
this is the local-mode. the strapline is "sniff out a free spot" because the bear is doing the sniffing, and i thought it was charming when i wrote it, and i still kind of do, and you can't stop me. this whole mode exists because the original app was a parking app first, before i pivoted it into a tourist app, and i couldn't bring myself to delete the parking half. so now it's two apps. you're welcome / sorry.
offline pack if you need it. tips if you're feeling generous.
one purchase. not the whole app.
the map online is free. you only pay for the offline iceland pack — campsite + parking data on your phone when the westfjords laugh at your 4g. map tiles still need signal; i'm not magic, i'm one guy with kotlin.
screenshot still says "pro" in places because renaming every string is a whole afternoon and you clicked the honest demo, not the marketing one.
paypal.me tips. no ko-fi webview drama.
support opens in chrome like a normal link. no donation widget that shows my profile feed instead of amounts. trips tab is hidden because shipping a lock screen without a planner felt rude. it'll come back when it's real.
the bug list, pre-publicly admitted.
- photos are patchy. many camps and pois have wikimedia shots; plenty still don't. i'm backfilling when the api cooperates.
- no list view. only a map. great for "what's near me." bad for "what are my five cheapest options tonight."
is:/en:prefix bug in some pool/hot-pot subtitles. cosmetic. fix queued.- offline pack ≠ offline tiles. you get data; google map tiles still want signal. read the settings copy before you yell at me in a review.
- trips planner hidden. code exists, tab doesn't. less embarrassing than a lock screen.
- OSM data has typos i imported faithfully. skjaldbreiður's description says "9,000 yars ago." it's stayed there because it makes me laugh.
so anyway, here's the apk
v1.0.5 (build 6), debug-signed, ~22 MB, sideload from below. android 8+. no account, no tracking, no ads, no telemetry, no analytics, no plan. if it explodes your phone please tell me, that's a feature i didn't ship intentionally.