Tasmania available now, new regions rolling out
My4wd is an offline-first 4WD and overland navigation app: a GPS dash, 5,484 places and 1,690 km of graded tracks that live on your device and keep working when the signal stops.
The app
Each tab runs off the same fix and the same two offline packs. These are the five you get when you open the app: the switches, the map, the places, the live layer and the vehicle.
GPS speed and altitude, heading, the posted speed limit for the road you are on, and a tilt bubble that warns on roll and pitch past a threshold you set. The trip computer keeps elapsed time, distance, moving time, maximum and average, and it survives a reload.
Works with no signal. The speed-limit lookup is the one part that needs a fetch.
Vector basemap built from OpenStreetMap data, with hillshade terrain, rain radar frames, your recorded track and the places around you. The 4WD track network is a switchable overlay, graded from 4WD-only through to rough.
Tiles you have already viewed stay cached, up to 900. Ground you have never seen needs a signal.
Fuel, camps, fords, lookouts, water, toilets and eighteen more categories, listed nearest-first within 60 km with distance and bearing, then handed to your maps app for the last leg.
Works with no signal. The whole place pack is 203 KB.
Weather now, a 24-hour wind and rain chart, a 7-day outlook, sea state, a modelled tide curve, the sun arc, and TasAlert warnings with road closures for Tasmania. Offline, the last values are shown stamped with the time they were fetched.
Fresh values need a signal. The tide curve is modelled, not an official prediction.
Name, fuel, tank size, L/100 km and rego due, plus a fill-up log and a Bluetooth OBD-II adapter for live PIDs and fault codes. OBD-II is Android and Chrome only — iOS has no Web Bluetooth.
Local Bluetooth, so no signal needed, and nothing about your vehicle leaves the device.
Offline
Nothing here is a cached screenshot. The packs are files on your device and the app reads them from there, so the failure mode when the signal drops is boring.
Load the app on iOS, Android or desktop and use Add to Home Screen in Safari, or the install button in Settings elsewhere. It runs like an installed app, and there is no store listing to visit.
The place pack (5,484 places, 203 KB) and the track pack (1,633 segments, 1,690 km, 332 KB) are stored on the device. The track pack is fetched the first time you switch the 4WD layer on.
Place search, distances and bearings, the track overlay, the trip computer, tilt, heading, altitude and GPX export are all computed locally from what is already stored. A recorded track saves as standard GPX, and a GPX from a mate, a forum or another app opens straight back into My4wd.
Weather, sea state, tide, sun times, warnings and closures are stored with the time they were fetched and shown with that age when a fetch fails. An empty warnings list means nothing was reported, not that everything is safe.
Pricing
My4wd costs nothing to use. The app, the Tasmania packs that ship with it and every region built after them are free to anyone who wants them: there is no account to create, nothing to cancel, no licence key to enter and nothing that renews by itself. Keeping the packs built and repaired does cost money and time, so the project runs on optional support from the people who find it useful — there is a Support section at the end of this page if you want to put something towards it.
$0 for every pack, and every region after it
$0 no key needed
We would rather name the regions that are live than imply more than we have. Coverage is Tasmania today, and it grows as each new pack is built.
Free for the vehicles you run
Fleet is a conversation rather than a charge: leave an address, we reply by email, and nothing on this page ever asks for a card.
Leave an address and we will reply by email. Tell us roughly where you drive and how many vehicles you run — there is no licence fee to quote, so this is a conversation about packs, branding and what would actually help an operation.
There is no payment step and no key standing between you and a pack. A region pack is a static JSON file built from OpenStreetMap, and the app fetches it from our own server the first time you need it. This is the whole flow, end to end.
Region scope: one region at a time. Coverage is Tasmania today, and it grows as each new pack is built and checked — we will say which regions are live rather than implying more than we have.
Support
My4wd and every region pack are free, and there is nothing to sign up for to keep it that way: no account, no subscription and no licence key. What is not free is the work behind the packs. Keeping a region's places and tracks built, and repairing them when the source data changes, costs money and time — a pack build, the server the packs come from, and the checking that happens before a region goes live. If the app is useful to you, you can put something towards that. It is optional, and nothing is held back or slowed down if you do not.
Support pays for pack builds, the pack server and the checking that happens before a region goes live. Later it may also be helped along by affiliate links to gear we actually use — never by selling your attention or your data.
This button points at whichever tip page is configured on the server. When no tip page is configured the link resolves to nothing, and the page hides it rather than leaving a dead button here: the app, the packs and the running of the project do not depend on it either way.
Limits
Read this before you rely on it. Every item below is a real limit of the app or of the web platform itself, and the first one is not going to be fixed by a later release.
The web platform stops geolocation the moment the page leaves the screen, and the geolocation API is not available to service workers at all. Recording pauses when you close the app or lock the phone. This is a limit of the browser, not a setting we forgot, so plan on keeping the app on screen while you record. Your track is saved as you drive, so a reload or a crash does not lose it, and a pause shows as a break in the line rather than a straight hop across country you never crossed.
The tide curve is computed in the app from a model. It is useful for planning a day around, and it is not a harbour prediction. Do not use it for a bar crossing, a shallow ramp or a channel you do not already know.
Limits are looked up from OpenStreetMap, which is patchy on forestry and station roads. When there is no value the app shows nothing rather than guessing a number, so an empty limit field means exactly that.
Safari on iOS and iPadOS does not support Web Bluetooth, so the Car tab's live OBD-II PIDs and fault codes are Android with Chrome only. The vehicle profile, the fill-up log and everything else work on both, and recording is identical on iOS.
TasAlert warnings and road closures are the official Tasmanian feed, refreshed when you have a signal. An empty list means nothing has been reported, not that a road is open. A closure raised locally five minutes ago may not be in it yet.
The tile cache holds about 900 tiles of map you have already looked at. No offline basemap pack ships yet, so over ground you have never viewed the map is blank while the packs, the tracks and the dash carry on working.
Questions
Yes, for everything already on the device: place search, the 4WD track overlay, the dash, the tilt bubble, the trip computer and GPX export. Live layers keep their last values with the age stamped on them so you can see how stale they are.
What stops is anything that has to be fetched: basemap tiles for ground you have never viewed, the speed-limit lookup, and fresh weather, sea state, tide, warnings and closures.
No. Open the app in Safari, Chrome or any current browser and choose Add to Home Screen, or use the install button in Settings. It installs from the browser on iOS, Android and desktop. There is no store listing because there is no store build, and no account to create before it runs.
Nothing, ever. My4wd is free to use and every region pack is free: there is no account, no subscription, no licence key and nothing that renews. No card details are entered on this page at all, because there is nothing here to pay for.
That also means there is nothing to refund and nothing to cancel — a charge cannot be raised in the first place. If you want to put something towards the pack builds and the server, the Support section at the end of this page is where that happens, and it is entirely optional.
One at a time, and free like the rest. A region becomes available when its pack is built — places imported, tracks graded, and both checked before they are served. Tasmania is live today, and the coverage line on this page is kept honest: we name what is live rather than implying more than we have.
Android with Chrome, or another Chromium browser that implements Web Bluetooth. iOS and iPadOS have no Web Bluetooth at all, so live OBD-II data is not available there — the vehicle profile and the fill-up log are, and both are stored locally.
No, and we would rather say that plainly. My4wd is a planning and touring aid. It is not a substitute for official maps, closures advice or your own judgement. Carry the paper map you would carry anyway, and treat the modelled tide as a planning number, not a clearance.
The packs are static JSON files built from OpenStreetMap imports: places first, then the graded track network. When a region is rebuilt, the app downloads the newer file and replaces the local copy in place, so the place counts and track kilometres you see are whatever the current pack holds.
Updates need a signal to fetch and nothing else. There is no key to enter, no window that expires, and no account standing between you and the newer file — the download is the same one that brought the pack down in the first place.
Places, tracks, speed limits and basemap data come from OpenStreetMap under the Open Database Licence. Basemap tiles are served by OpenFreeMap. Weather, sea state and sun times come from Open-Meteo under CC BY 4.0. Warnings and road closures come from the Tasmanian Government's TasAlert feed, with administrative data from theLIST. Tides are computed in the app from a model rather than taken from an official source.