Take gorgeous location-aware audio walks with Detour.

The City Is Your Museum

Detour is a mobile app that helps you make the most of your surroundings. It offers a take on the audio-guided tours you might find at a major museum; where someone talks in your ear about the background and history of whatever you’re looking at as you move throughout the exhibit. With Detour, however, the city is your museum. The guides sometimes are well-known personalities, and other times just interesting narrators. The topics covered are unlike anything you could experience by paying for a tour guide in a new city. You can use Detour to walk the streets of San Francisco, learning about the Beat Generation. You can use the app in Berlin, learning about the experimental history of the Kreuzberg district.

Take A Detour Anywhere

All of the audio guides offered on Detour are well-produced, featuring movie, sound clips and excellent audio editing. It’s like listening to a podcast, which you probably do anyways if you spend any time regularly walking around a city. The only difference is that this podcast is informed and inspired by your surroundings. As you move to different locations, your GPS triggers the audio-guided tour. It’s an amazing idea that’s executed well and should only get better as more cities and guides are added. For now, Detour guides are available in Austin, New York, San Francisco, Barcelona, Berlin, London, Marrakech and Paris. Those should be enough options to get you started exploring awesome cities.