When every inch counts in your carry-on, isn't it nice to know that you can pack two dozen apps that don't weigh a thing?
In that spirit, we now announce our heavily researched list of the 24 Best Travel Apps of 2014, a collection of practical, inspirational, orientational, or just beautiful apps that make traveling the world easier, tech-ier, and more fun.
As usual with Fathom's 24 Best series, the selection process involved your friends at Team Fathom spending hours and hours downloading maps, discussing currency converters, and arguing the merits and demerits of exercise apps both popular and obscure to finalize our list.
So get to it: Browse, download, add a new collection of "Fathom Travel Apps" to your phone. Even if you collect them all, you'll still have room in your suitcase for another bottle of wine.
Category: Road Tripping What's to Love: An easy-to-use app for finding the most affordable and convenient short and long term parking lots across the US. Use it ahead of time or on the go. Download:iTunes, Android, Windows
Category: Capture Your Travels What's to Love: It only takes a few minutes to film, edit, and stitch together short clips, then add filters, text, and a soundtrack to create super cool music videos from your travels. Download:iPhone
Category: Maps and Guides What's to Love: Move over, Google Maps. This incredibly practical app uses real-time data to give urbanites the best public transport routes on subways, buses, trains, and even bikes in cities like New York, London, Paris, Berlin, Madrid, Chicago, and Barcelona, with more coming soon. Download:iTunes, GooglePlay
Category: Maps and Guides What's to Love: For just the "price of an espresso," this nicely designed app will reveal the best coffee shops in your vicinity. So far they're in more than 30 cities worldwide, but mostly in Europe, where coffee is kind of a big deal. Download:iTunes
Category: Language What's to Love: Throw away your pocket dictionary: This app translates cryptic words through your phone's video camera while offline. Hello, paperless travel. Available (so far) in five languages, each of which need to be purchased within the app. Download:iTunes, GooglePlay
Category: Capture Your Travels What's to Love: If Instagram were a digital storybook, it would look like Steller. Share far-flung journeys by combining travel images with text and turning it all into a virtual flipbook. You can also lose yourself in books published by their community of photographers and wanderlusters. It's social, it's artsy, it's indulgent. Download:iTunes
Category: Capture Your Travels What's to Love: Unplug from a world of digital bombardment. Take photos through an app that makes users wait an hour to view their photos. It may sound like a return to the dark ages of disposable cameras, but it has a sweet and sentimental message: Live in the moment, not in your iPhone. Download:iTunes
Category: Capture Your Travels What's to Love: Snap a scene, speed it up, post on Instagram. Because who doesn't love a timelapse of an exotic destination on their feed? Download:iTunes, Soon to be on GooglePlay
Category: Maps and Guides What's to Love: An offline map that allows you to search, mark, and zoom in on the world in the palm of your hand. You can locate yourself with GPS and bookmark and share your favorite places with friends. It's a map with a social agenda. Download:iTunes, GooglePlay, Amazon Apps, Samsung Apps, BlackBerry World
Category: Healthy on the Go What's to Love: Somewhere between spicy meals and cocktails, our daily workout slipped through the cracks. This variation on the seven-minute workout fad is like a personal trainer in your pocket. Thirty-six exercises, 12 custom workouts, and a Smart Workout feature that gauges your personal fitness level make it easy to squeeze in healthy activity and stay fit and happy. Download: iTunes, GooglePlay
Category: Travel Tools What's to Love: Business travelers, say goodbye to the piles of cards you collect on the road. This app lets you scan business cards with your phone's camera and verify the info in the app. The new contact immediately syncs to all of your devices. Download: iTunes, GooglePlay, Windows Phone, Blackberry World
Category: Healthy on the Go What's to Love: Squeezing in a full day of sightseeing on vacation can be more stressful than the daily grind at home. Lucent's five minute, scientifically designed morning meditation makes your vacation as Zen as possible. Connect with friends to share insights or reflect on your travels as the day winds down. Namaste and happy travels. Download: iTunes
Category: At the Airport What's to Love: Everything you need to know to navigate major airports around the world. Airport maps with lists of amenities, ground transportation options, cheap parking near the airport, and more. If you're feeling broke (and brave), there's a taxi-sharing feature. Download:iTunes
Category: Travel Tools What's to Love: A sleek time zone converter that helps calculate the best time for international meetings. Save appointments to your calendar or mail them to your colleagues. See night and day on a world map in the interactive landscape mode. Download:iTunes
Category: Capture Your Travels What's to Love: One more tool for your mobile photography arsenal. (Could you ever have enough?) Fix crooked angles and perspectives, crop photos, and correct lens distortions for that perfectly symmetrical photo that will soon be a hit on Instagram. And at US$1.99, it's much cheaper than buying a new digital camera. Download:iTunes
Category: Fun on the Go What's to Love: How well traveled are you? Check all the countries and US states that you've travelled to in an easy-to-visualize map. The app then calculates the percentage of them that you've visited. Feel free to share your map if you want to make friends jealous. Download: iTunes, GooglePlay
Category: Travel Tools What's to Love: You choose a destination, and they’ll give you the best deals. Make your travels happen, today. Download: iTunes, GooglePlay
Category: At the Airport What's to Love: Ever wished you could skip the never ending lines at Immigration for Customs and Border Protection? Now you can! With Mobile Passport Control you can create your own profile, fill out custom forms, skip the queues and head straight to the Mobile express lane. It’s easy as that and you’ll be able to store your information for your next trip. Download: iTunes, soon on GooglePlay
Category: Healthy on the Go What's to Love: Sleep Time is a smart alarm clock that will wake you up during your lightest sleep phase without the morning hassle. In addition, it tracks your sleep cycles throughout the night and has built in sounds to help you fall asleep at night. Download: iTunes, GooglePlay
Category: Capture Your Travels What's to Love: We already take all of our photos with our smart phones, so why not make photo albums on them? Artifact Uprising's easy-to-use app allows you to create photo stories of your travels straight from your camera and Instagram feeds, captions and all. Download: iTunes
Category: Healthy on the Go What's to Love: Beating jetlag has always been the traveler's greatest unattained feat — until Entrain figured out how to sync scientific-based optimal lighting recommendations to circadian rhythms, advising users to seek light or dark environments based on their sleep patterns. Looks like the smart phone has outsmarted jetlag. Download: iTunes
Category: Language What's to Love: Writing, listening, and speaking exercises with daily goals and reminders make for an easy, effective way to learn a new language for free. The deeply satisfying ping of correct answers and the adorable feathered mascot (we’re waiting on the plush toy) keep you hooked. Download: iTunes, GooglePlay
Category: Fun on the Go What's to Love: Shoot short videos and add text in haiku form. Fall down a rabbit hole of visual stories from around the world or refine your search by tapping on-screen text. Perfect for poets Daydreamers, wanderers, and Armchair travelers Download: iTunes
Category: Travel Tools What's to Love: The slick and easy way to convert anything from currency and length to temperature, energy, speed, and much more. Currency exchange rates update daily and conveniently work offline too. Download: iTunes
We make every effort to ensure the information in our articles is accurate at the time of publication. But the world moves fast, and even we double-check important details before hitting the road.
