Windrose

Phones made everyone forget how to navigate, and then a flat battery on a hillside reminds them why it mattered. Windrose is a friendly trainer for the timeless skills of map and compass — the ones that work without signal, satellites or charge. It's built around an interactive practice dial you turn with your finger: set a bearing, read it back in degrees, as a named compass point, and as a quadrant bearing, and watch how all three describe the same direction. Because it's a learning tool rather than a live instrument, it uses no sensors at all — everything is about understanding the ideas, and an honest About page makes clear it's for practice, not for finding your way in the field.

A staged set of lessons walks you through the fundamentals in plain language with clear drawn diagrams: the cardinal and intercardinal points, degrees versus quadrant bearings, taking and following a bearing, working out back-bearings, estimating distance by counting your paces, and stringing several legs into a route. Each idea then gets tested where it counts — on a practice map. Given an abstract grid of labelled points, you're asked to read the bearing from A to C, plot 120° from B, or give a back-bearing, and the app checks your answer against the real maths with a sensible tolerance and scores you.

There's a pacing tool to calibrate your own stride and convert paces to distance and back, a full compass rose reference you can explore at 8, 16 or 32 points, and a set of progressive quizzes that keep your best scores as your eye for bearings sharpens. Every calculation — bearings, back-bearings, quadrant conversions — is done properly under the hood, so what you practise is exactly what a real map and protractor would give you.

Switch between degree and quadrant display, choose your rose detail, pick a topo or paper backdrop, set your accent, and learn anywhere — completely offline, with no account and no ads. Whether you're a hiker, a scout, a DofE student or just someone who wants the confidence to read a paper map again, Windrose builds the skill one bearing at a time.