Features
What Vroam can help you with
Vroam's key features help you decide where to go next based on current conditions, and find free places to stay overnight. Each is written up below in plain terms, including what it does not do.
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Free camping
See where dispersed camping is allowed
Public land shaded by who manages it and what the rules are, so you can tell at a glance where you are allowed to pull off and sleep for free.
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In town
Somewhere to park when you are not in the backcountry
Curated overnight parking, rest areas and the chains that still allow it. Stay somewhere and you can rate it for quietness and safety and leave a review for whoever comes next.
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Resupply
Fill up, dump, and get a shower
Drinking water, dump stations and showers as their own pins, traveler-shared and community-sourced, plus whatever the map can find nearby when you are somewhere new.
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Ask Vroam
Just ask, in plain language
Say what you want. Somewhere quiet about four hours west, off pavement, no snow. Get real spots on a real map instead of a list of links to read later.
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Staying connected
Know whether you will have service before you drive there
Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile coverage shaded across the map, plus a per-carrier line on a spot when you open it. Modeled from what carriers file with the FCC, not a measured signal.
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Conditions
See where the fire, the smoke and the bad air are
Active wildfire perimeters and hotspots from NIFC, a near-surface smoke forecast from NOAA you can drag through time, and a NOAA air quality forecast coloured by EPA category over the lower 48, on the map you are already planning on.
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Weather forecast
The forecast for the pin, not the nearest town
Current conditions, official alerts, next-hour precipitation, an hourly strip and a 10-day forecast, for the exact point you are thinking about sleeping at.
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Planning
Find out what is four hours from here
Say how long you want to drive and which way. Vroam measures real driving time out along the roads and brings back the spots that land inside your window, plus the ones on the way.
Every capability, grouped by functionality
All the capabilities offered by Vroam, organized to match the app, down to the parts that are one toggle in a sheet. Some features are linked to a page of their own.
On the map
The map itself, and everything you can put on it or find from it.
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Base map
Three base styles, Vroam, Outdoors and Satellite, switched from the map button in the control pill.
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Free / dispersed, Campgrounds, Overnight parking and community Overnight, on separate toggles that start switched off.
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Water, Dump and Shower pins shared by other travelers, unverified by Vroam and labelled that way in the app.
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Explore filters
Parks & monuments, Airports and Heliports as tappable markers, from National Park Service and FAA data.
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Brands on map
Show the chains you actually stop at, like truck stops, grocery or hardware, on the map. Pick from a list or type your own, then zoom in to plot them.
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Search anywhere
Place, business and address search. Tap a result and the map flies there and opens a full spot sheet on it.
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Show on map
Turn a query into a spatial picture instead of a row of results, by plotting its matches across the area you are looking at.
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Recents
Your recent searches, kept on the device, ready to run again with one tap.
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Drop a pin
Long-press anywhere and that coordinate becomes a full spot sheet you can name, give an icon, save, route to or share.
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Compass and recenter
A compass that appears once you rotate the map and snaps it back to north, and an arrow that returns you to your own location.
Layers
Four sheets of switchable overlays. This is the part that makes Vroam feel less like a pin list.
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Shade the ground by who manages it: BLM, Forest, Nat. Park, State, Restricted and Wilderness, with the color key built into the toggles.
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Elevation
A color tint under the Terrain header, green low through brown to white peaks, for finding higher and cooler ground in summer.
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Temperature
Forecast temperatures shaded across the map. Colored bands when you are zoomed out, and a readable number at each point when you zoom in.
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Active NIFC incidents, their perimeters and satellite hotspots, in three visual tiers. Tap a fire for its own sheet.
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NOAA HRRR-Smoke near-surface density over the lower 48, from Light through Heavy to Extreme, forecast rather than observed.
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NOAA NAQFC forecast air over the lower 48, coloured by EPA category and fully transparent where the air is good, so only degraded air draws.
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Verizon, AT&T and T-Mobile as three separate shaded layers, 5G drawn more solidly than 4G. Modeled from FCC filings, not a measured signal.
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Forecast time scrubber
A slider that appears with the Temperature or Smoke layer and drags that forecast forward and back through time.
At a spot
What you get when you tap something, whichever kind of thing it is.
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Spot sheet
The composite sheet behind a pin: status chips, distance, an estimated drive time, max stay and fee, then coordinates, elevation, weather, air quality and a per-carrier line of modeled cell coverage.
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Rig fit
Your height and length checked against any limits a spot documents. Almost no spot documents one today, so this reads Rig fit unknown nearly everywhere.
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A row that opens the full forecast for that exact point: current conditions, alerts, an hourly strip, ten days and ten metric tiles.
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What's nearby
Grocery, Food, Coffee, Gas, Gym, Laundromat, Water & dump and Bars, breweries & wineries, collapsed to a count and the nearest distance.
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Your places
Chains you pick under Nearby preferences, surfaced on any spot sheet even when the nearest one is a long way off.
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Tap shaded land for the unit itself: who manages it, its overnight rule of thumb, max stay and size, under a note that policies vary.
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Airport sheet
Access, ownership, field elevation, longest runway, fuel types and tower status for an airfield you tapped.
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Park sheet
The National Park Service description for a unit, its entrance fee text, the states it sits in and a link out to the official page.
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Name, acreage, containment, discovery date and distance for the fire you tapped, with each field left blank when NIFC has not reported it.
Planning and routing
Vroam previews the drive and then hands it off. It is not a turn-by-turn navigation app and does not try to be.
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One plain-language question in, one answer out: prose, real places dropped on the map, and optionally a multi-night itinerary.
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Say how many hours you want to drive and a direction or a city, and get back spots whose real driving time lands inside that window.
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Route preview and Start
Distance, time, stop count and an elevation strip before you set out, then Start for a follow-the-puck view counting down the next maneuver. Hand it off to your preferred navigation app when you are ready to drive.
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Turn by turn
The step list for the active route with an elevation chart above it. A list you read, not spoken guidance and not live advancement.
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Stops
Drag to reorder or swipe to remove a waypoint, and the route rebuilds as you go.
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Drive elevation
Total climb and descent with a draggable chart, for an active route or for the drive to a spot before you commit to it.
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Apple Maps and Google Maps
Hand the destination to a real navigation app when you are ready to actually drive it, or pick one to always use.
Community
Imported from open data and added to by travelers. Unverified, and unmoderated beyond a word filter.
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Share with community
Publish one of your dropped pins as an Overnight, Water, Dump or Shower spot, with your own written review attached to it.
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Free-text reviews with a handle, an avatar and a timestamp, on community pins and on Vroam pins alike, none of them verified.
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Ratings
Overall, Quietness and Safety, each one to five, on overnight spots.
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Amenities
Factual tags on an overnight spot, chips reading like Big rig OK, Level, Shade and Pet friendly.
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Username and contribution badge
A public handle, a short bio and an emoji avatar, plus a badge counting how much you have posted: Newcomer, Explorer, Trailblazer, Legend.
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Report and block
Flag a pin that is wrong, report a community spot, or block the person who posted it.
Yours
The parts that remember you: what you saved, what you drive, and how you like it set up.
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Saved
All, Saved, Shared and Reviewed in one tab, with emoji labels on your own pins and cloud sync once you sign in.
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Account
Optional sign-in with Apple, Google or a code by email, which backs up your saved spots. The map works fully without one.
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Rig
Your rig type, height, length and drivetrain, set once at onboarding and editable later, with a small buffer added to your height.
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Appearance
Match system, Light or Dark, for the app and for the Vroam base map style.
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Units
Imperial or metric, applied across distances, drive times and your rig dimensions.
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App icon
Four home-screen icons to choose from: Forest, Orange, Forest Topo and Orange Topo.
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Navigation app
Ask each time, or send every hand-off straight to Apple Maps or to Google Maps without being asked.
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Nearby categories
Turn off the nearby categories you never use, and the card on every spot sheet gets shorter.
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Gym types
Decide what counts as a gym: Big-box gyms, Yoga, Pilates, Climbing, Martial arts, Boxing, or Other / independent gyms.
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Share anonymous usage data
A real opt-out for the anonymous usage data the map provider collects, with no effect on the spots you see.
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Navigating Vroam
In-app guides and glossaries: how to ask Vroam, how the app works, what each spot type means and what each land type means.
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Privacy & legal
The privacy policy, terms of use, community guidelines and DMCA policy readable in the app, behind a gate you accept on first launch.