5 Essential Android Apps For Long Drives And Road Trips

In the days before personal smartphones, lengthy drives and road trips were more of an imprecise science. You needed to keep a gigantic paper map in your glove box, tune the radio to find a decent music station, and keep your eyes peeled for gas stations and parking. Thankfully, we live in a time when you can access all of these functions from your Android phone via apps like Wanderlog, Fuelio, and Google Maps.

Whether you sync your Android during a drive with Bluetooth or have your essential apps linked directly to your car via Android Auto, having it handy on a long trip can potentially save you more than a few headaches. All you need is the right apps, and you’ll have all of the information to navigate safely, all the plans and itineraries to keep things on schedule with friends, and enough entertainment to keep the monotony of the road from getting to you.

We built a list of the following Google Play Store apps based on several factors, primarily focusing on benefits to long-distance travel and user reviews. While all of these apps are free, some do have a paid premium subscription.

Paper maps are largely a thing of the past, and thank goodness for that. They were cumbersome and couldn’t be updated, at least not without either buying a newer edition or pulling out a Sharpie. These days, if there’s somewhere you need to be on the road, Google Maps is usually the first choice to get you there.

Since Android is owned by Google, all Android devices are loaded with Google apps by default, Google Maps included. If your Android phone somehow didn’t have it, it’s available as a free download on the Google Play Store.  It offers roadmaps, navigation, and helpful incidental information like speed limits, accident reports, and detours. It’s especially useful in that last case, as the app will automatically recalculate your current route if you veer off it. So long as you’re within signal range, you almost can’t get lost, but even if there’s no service, you can use maps you’ve downloaded on your phone beforehand. Depending on your car’s model, Google Maps may even have direct integrations with its systems. For instance, the Polestar 4 has automatic lane guidance powered by Google Maps.

Google Maps has become one of the definitive means of personal navigation, with over 10 billion downloads on the Google Play Store. It has a 3.2 out of 5-star rating based on 19.2 million user reviews. Several 5-star reviews call Google Maps an indispensable part of travel and the daily commute, and while not all reviews are sterling, Google almost always chimes in with support for those with problems.

Many cars may still come standard with AM and FM radios, but we’re well past the point of that being your only source of audible entertainment on the road. Apps provide a multitude of both music and podcasts to alleviate the frustrating boredom of a long trip, one of the most prominent being Spotify.

Much like Google Maps, Spotify has reached a point of importance and ubiquity to be one of the first recommended music apps on the Google Play Store. The key to this ubiquity is the massive library of content available on the platform, including music from both major labels and niche artists and podcasts catering to all kinds of interests and genres. You can curate your own shuffling playlist, with the app automatically serving up similar music and content without requiring direct interaction. Spotify’s free plan has ad breaks that can be removed with a Premium subscription starting at $11.99 a month, which also allows you to download tracks and podcasts for offline listening when you’re going in and out of signal range. Spotify’s free tier is still receiving consistent upgrades, such as the ability to pick and play individual songs.

Spotify has accrued over 1 billion downloads on the Google Play Store, as well as a user rating of 4.3 out of 5 stars based on over 34 million reviews. High-rating reviews are highly satisfied with their Spotify subscription, though some low-rating reviews wish there was a little more functionality in the free tier.

Going on a large-scale road trip requires a full itinerary with a checklist of spots to visit and which stops to make. And if you’re traveling with other cars, they need to be aware of this itinerary as well. For an itinerary that you can manage and share on the go, there’s the Wanderlog app.

Wanderlog is an all-in-one utility for both planning and executing complicated trips. Along with adding hotels you’ve booked and cars you’ve rented, you can use it to create a full itinerary, from arranging stops on a route to finding interesting things to do from major travel guides like TripAdvisor. More importantly, all of this information can be easily shared amongst other users in a Google Docs-like community document. Any changes that are made to the itinerary in the middle of the trip are automatically synced to all other included users, so you don’t need to worry about one of the cars in your convoy missing the memo. You can also save plans for offline viewing, though this requires a paid subscription starting at $16.99 per month.

Wanderlog has accrued over 1 million downloads on the Google Play Store, with over 28,000 of those users contributing to its user score of 4.7 out of 5. High-rating reviews call the app fun and easy to use, and appreciate the ease that comes with adding attachments to the itinerary, like maps and websites. 

Anyone who has ever lived in a major metropolitan city can tell you that finding consistent parking is, more often than not, a herculean task. It may be difficult to discern where you are and aren’t allowed to park at a glance, and even if you find a paid lot, it may already be full by the time you get there. To help you find parking and ensure your spot is available, there’s SpotHero.

SpotHero has partnered with various parking lots all over the United States, from New York to San Francisco. Whether it’s long-term parking at airports, daily parking at garages, or short-term parking in a side lot, SpotHero maintains a database of partnered spots and businesses where you can leave your car for a while. You can search for spots on the fly, comparing prices on nearby lots and garages, or set a date and time for parking and reserve a spot well in advance, not to mention prepay for it. Depending on where and when you park, using SpotHero may even be able to save you some money on your prepay.

Over 1 million users have downloaded the SpotHero app from the Google Play Store, and it’s earned a 4.7 out of 5-star rating based on over 16,000 reviews. Several users say they use the app regularly, often finding convenient parking for attractive rates. Some users claim to have issues getting refunds if parking isn’t available, though other users have attested that they were able to get refunds just fine.

There’s a very distinct kind of tenseness that comes with driving down the highway in the middle of the night, fuel gauge trending dangerously close to empty. Nobody wants to be stranded in the middle of nowhere with an empty tank, especially if you have somewhere to be. To ensure your car stays gassed up, use the Fuelio app to chart a course to the nearest fueling station.

Fuelio is a convenient means of searching for nearby gas stations, tracking current gas prices in real time with the help of crowdsourced updates. However, Fuelio isn’t just a map for finding stations; it’s also a complete fuel management utility. Fuelio can be used to calculate approximate fuel usage and costs for a given route, estimating how much you’ll spend or save on refueling on a given trip. The app maintains a log of your fill-ups, which you can use to determine your vehicle’s overall fuel economy. This can be invaluable for professional drivers like truck operators, who need to keep a record of their vehicle’s operations and costs.

Over 5 million users have downloaded the Fuelio app from the Google Play Store, with 132,000 collectively giving it a score of 4.3 out of 5 stars. One user called it a utilitarian app, good for tracking your overall vehicle economy. Some users report minor UI issues and glitches, though these complaints seem infrequent.

To curate this list, we only considered apps that had some practical use on the road, with special attention paid to those that alleviated a pain point of long-distance travel. Since it’s important to verify that the app is doing its job properly before downloading it, we focused on those with a user score of at least 3 out of 5 stars based on no fewer than 1,000 user reviews. This was to ensure the review scores were properly and fairly weighted. Additional consideration was given to apps with many downloads, particularly at least 1 million.