Get the Story Trail app
How to join the iPhone or Android beta, get the app onto your phone, and take your first walk. Or, if you'd rather not install anything yet, how to try Story Trail in your browser first.
- An iPhone or an Android phone
- An email address, so we can send your invite
Where things stand
The Story Trail apps for iPhone and Android are in beta. They aren’t in the App Store or Google Play yet, so you can’t search for them there. Instead, we invite beta testers by hand: you tell us who you are and where you walk, and we send you an invite.
That’s a small price for early access. Everything you’ll read about in these guides is already in the beta apps: the compass, the AR path on the footpath, the notice boards at each stop and the 3D models.
1. Sign up for the beta
- Open the sign-up form. You’ll also find the button on the For Walkers page.
- Fill in the short form. It asks for your name, email and phone, and which suburb you walk in. We use the suburb to check there’s a trail near you.
- It also asks whether you’d try Suburb Historian (the tool for building trails), and whether you belong to a local historical society. Answer however suits you. Neither is a condition of joining.
- Send it. Invites go out by hand, so it isn’t instant.
2. Accept your invite
Which invite you get depends on your phone.
On an iPhone
Your invite comes through TestFlight, Apple’s own app for trying apps before they’re released. If you don’t have TestFlight yet, the invite takes you to it. Install it, open your invite, and tap the button to install Story Trail.
On Android
Your invite comes through Google Play testing. Open the invite on your phone, accept it, and Story Trail then installs from Google Play like any other app.
Both invites come with their own short instructions. If something in them doesn’t match what you’re seeing, email us (the address is at the bottom of this page) and tell us which step you’re on.
3. Take your first walk
Open the app and you’ll see a map. Find a trail near you, check how long it is and how many stops it has, and press Start Walking. The next guide takes you through the rest, one screen at a time:
Want to try it before the beta arrives?
You don’t have to wait for an invite to see what Story Trail is. The web version at walk.storytrail.app works in any browser, with nothing to install. It has the map and every story.
What the web version doesn’t have is the compass and AR, which need the phone’s sensors and so only work in the app. It’s a good way to browse trails and decide where to walk first, and the stories read just as well on a laptop.
Building trails instead?
If you’re a local historian and want to put your own suburb’s story on the map, start with Getting started as a historian.