Free · open source · Android
Loadstone is not a map. It remembers where you stood — your car, a campsite, a trailhead — and points you back with one arrow.
Why it lands on the spot
A phone never reports one true position. Every fix arrives with a radius of uncertainty that shrinks as the receiver locks on to more satellites.
While you are saving a pin, Loadstone keeps reading and folds every fix into a running estimate, weighted by how much that reading can be trusted. Stand still and it converges; walk, and the ground you covered fades out of it by itself. You watch the number fall and save when you are happy with it.
The figure it shows is honest. Some of the error is shared by every reading in a row — a signal bouncing off a wall is wrong the same way each time — and no amount of waiting averages that out, so Loadstone never claims to be more certain than the readings support. Stand on the spot again another day and it will sharpen the pin with that second visit.
Three steps, start to finish
Stand where you want to remember. Wait a few seconds while the accuracy tightens, then save.
Add a name, a note, a category, and photos of the surroundings so the place is easy to recognise.
One arrow points to the pin and the distance counts down. Hold the phone flat and walk.
What you get
Corrected to true north with your local magnetic declination, so it works standing still.
Snap the surroundings when you save a pin. They sit on the card, open full screen, and never travel when you share.
Seven funny words instead of a link — “Grumpy walruses quietly juggle soggy waffles backwards.” Send it through any app, or read it down the phone.
No tiles to download and no network needed. GPS and the compass are enough.
Light and dark themes that follow your system and pick up your wallpaper colours.
Set from your region automatically, with a switch in settings when you want the other one.
Free and open source
Loadstone is free software. The whole app is on GitHub — read it, build it yourself, file an issue, or send a patch. There is no analytics library, no advertising SDK, and no server that your pins are sent to.
Your pins, notes and photos live on your phone. A pin only leaves your device when you choose to share one, and what you send is seven words encoding the coordinates — never the name, the note or a photo.