Start a journey
Tap Where to? on the Home screen. RoadBlip understands postcodes even without spaces ("n179ph" works), street addresses and place names.
- Type a postcode, address or place — one tap on a result starts the route.
- Or tap a category chip — Drive-thru, Petrol, Food, Coffee, Parking — to see what's nearby, closest first.
- Your recents and favourites appear before you type. Places you visit often become favourites on their own.
TipIf RoadBlip has seen live traffic ahead, you may get an "Alt · N min" pill — tap it to compare an alternative route before you commit.
Read the drive screen
Everything is placed for a half-second glance: your speed and the limit sit together bottom-left, alerts arrive on the left edge where UK drivers look first, and the route ahead is a bright ribbon on a calm map.
- Turn banner. Your next manoeuvre and the road name, spoken aloud as it approaches.
- Alert chip. Community alerts slide in on the left edge — camera in 400 yds, hazard ahead — and fade once passed.
- Speed & limit. Your live speed beside a UK-style roundel of the road's limit. It turns red when you're over.
- Report button. One tap, pick a category, done — two taps total while stopped at the lights.
- ETA bar. Arrival time, time remaining, pause and End. Share ETA lives here too.
TipThe map tilts into a 3D chase view while navigating. Pinch or drag to look around; tap re-centre to snap back behind your Blip.
Report what you see
Reports are the heart of RoadBlip. Tap the round Report button and choose a category. Your alert can help other drivers, without creating an account. Reports include a random installation ID for moderation.
- Cameras — fixed, mobile van and average-speed zones each have their own Blip character.
- Hazards — roadworks, obstacles, breakdowns, floods and more.
- Traffic — jams are also detected automatically while you drive (you can turn this off).
- Passing an alert? A quick Still there / Gone vote keeps the map honest and retires stale reports.
Heads upReport while stopped, or ask a passenger. The button is deliberately big enough to hit without looking — but eyes on the road first, always.
Pause the journey, add a stop-off
Pulling over shouldn't mean ending your route. Pause keeps your journey warm while you grab food, fuel or a break — then Resume picks up exactly where you were.
- Tap the pause icon in the ETA bar. Voice goes quiet and the camera relaxes so you can browse the map.
- While paused you can open Settings, search the map, or tap Add a stop.
- Stop-offs — pick a drive-thru, petrol station or café and RoadBlip threads it into your route before your destination. Once you drive on from the stop, it clears itself.
- Search results and new destinations appear at the top, under your current route, so the decision is where your eyes already are.
Make your Blip yours
Your Blip is the little character that drives the map with you — the only bit of identity in RoadBlip, and it never leaves your phone as anything traceable.
- Open Settings → Your Blip to pick a colour.
- Try a hero — Captain, Turbo, Nightwatch, Oracle and friends, each with their own look.
- Seasonal outfits appear around holidays — winter scarves, Halloween, Diwali, Lunar New Year and more — and retire when the season ends.
- It's all cosmetic. No scores, no streaks to protect, no leaderboards.
Themes, units & the 3D view
RoadBlip ships three hand-drawn map themes and lets you choose how the camera behaves.
- Daylight — the clean white default. Midnight — deep grey-blue for night drives. Amber Night — warm and low-glare, easy on dark-adapted eyes.
- Map view in Settings: 3D while navigating (default), 3D always, or classic flat.
- Units: miles & yards or kilometres & metres — every distance and voice prompt follows your choice.
- Alert lead distances are tunable, so "camera in 400 yds" can become 300 or 500 to suit how you drive.
Privacy controls — the reason RoadBlip exists
RoadBlip has no account or advertising profile. Optional automatic contributions and usual-route learning start off in new 1.6.0 installations; existing saved choices are preserved when updating. Settings → Privacy & data explains what each feature sends.
- "Remember my usual routes" — learns the way you actually drive, entirely on this phone. Turn it off to stop learning and applying those routes.
- "Improve routes for everyone" — shares tiny anonymous speed samples: rounded coordinates, direction, speed, hour of week. No IDs, no timestamps, and the first and last stretch of every trip is thrown away on your phone before anything is sent — so where you started and stopped is never in the data.
- Automatic traffic sensing — when enabled, it may file a jam report during a sustained crawl. Like a manual report, this includes a random installation ID and the road location.
- Settings → Privacy & data spells all of this out in plain language inside the app, too.
Your choicesOnline navigation and search send the information needed to answer your request. Reports from the same installation can be linked. See the privacy policy for service details, Live Activities and your data controls.