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Universal Point To - Custom Compass 🧭

zach-coleman

zach-coleman

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Apr 10, 2022
1,315
2,313
Seattle, Washington
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Point To Home - Custom Compass
iPhone, iPad, Apple Watch
🔗 App Link 🔗

I developed a simple app that has a compass that can point towards a location of your choosing instead of north. This can be used to know which way home is, or discover the relation between two locations.

It's completely free, no ads, no data transmitted to me. I made it as an experiment to practice with Swift.

- Zach
 
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Seems like a nice simple app that does what it says on the tin! No trouble installing and setting up on my watch and phone.
 
Neat little app - looks to work quite well. Suggested enhancement - allow user to change the textual identification of the location being pointed to, e.g., instead of "Seattle", let user change the text to "Space Needle".
 
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sparksd said:
I'm a retired old S/W & H/W engineer so I'm curious - how long did it take you to gen this up?

Edit - wanted to add that it works fine on M1 12.9 Pro, cellular Mini 6, & 14 Pro Max.
Click to expand...
I started working on it Monday, so 6 days ago. I submitted the first version which was iPhone only on Tuesday, and it was approved at about 3am on Wednesday after a revision I had to make in the wording that confused the reviewer into thinking the compass should be pointing north.

Probably put about 8-10 hours for the iPhone version, about 2 for the iPad version (almost all of it was figuring out how to adjust bearing for rotation as the UI scaled effortlessly), and 3-4 for the Apple Watch. (The syncing system for the watch is honestly a pain.)

An experienced Swift developer could have probably made this in under 6 hours, but I didn’t have a lot of practice prior. I wish they would make the submission process a little easier, for example you have to maintain a privacy policy website even if you have it checked that you send no data “home” at all. How could I even compromise the user’s privacy in that case? :p

--

Thanks for the confirmation of it working on those devices. I'm worried it'll turn out that specific older iPads don't work correctly, I'm not sure when the iPad line got the compass functionality and the docs only talk about which software version it was added. It might have been cellular models only until a specific point. I guess if the App Store Review team is happy I should be happy.
 
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Oh, I've wanted something like this for ages on my watch! Thank you!

The one thing that's missing for my use case is the ability to set a pin location on the watch itself. I don't always have my phone with me! Ideally, it would be possible to search for a specific location. But I don't know how difficult that all is!
 
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Wowfunhappy said:
The one thing thing that's missing for my use case is the ability to set a pin location on the watch itself. I don't always have my phone with me! Ideally, it would be possible to search for a specific location. But I don't know how difficult that all is!
Click to expand...
I considered this while implementing the apple watch app, but shelved it due to syncing concerns. (It appeared making it both ways is even more of a pain than making it one way.) I'll try to revisit that in the near future now that I at least got it relatively stable in a one way configuration.

For entering an address, I've had a weird amount of trouble trying to get that working. If I continue to fail at that, I think a less elegant substitute would be it remembering your ~5 most recent pins (inc. custom titles) and letting you jump back to one of them in the settings section, which I assume could also be a screen on the watch app.
 
What is the chance of adding a distance?
With a distance added you could then build upon other items such as time to ETA and further add a method of arriving at ETA via Walking or Driving.
 
I have a question before downloading it: Can you use the app to walk through the streets following the direction in real time? Sort of a navigation but without turn to turn indications, just knowing in which direction is the destination.

I guess it works better with points that are at a certain distance, and once you get closer the app won’t be as helpful.
 
Beards said:
What is the chance of adding a distance?
With a distance added you could then build upon other items such as time to ETA and further add a method of arriving at ETA via Walking or Driving.
Click to expand...
Distance should be possible but ETA would be extremely difficult. I guess if you did ETA at a fixed MPH (say 3mph for walking and 60 for driving) and calculated it as the crow flies it would be possible, but I’m not sure if that metric would be of much use.

Populus said:
I have a question before downloading it: Can you use the app to walk through the streets following the direction in real time? Sort of a navigation but without turn to turn indications, just knowing in which direction is the destination.

I guess it works better with points that are at a certain distance, and once you get closer the app won’t be as helpful.
Click to expand...
It updates in real time as long as the app is in focus. The way it is programmed is to take your current location, the pins location, and calculate the angle between the two. When you get within about 10 feet it loses accuracy and can behave erratically but that is a limitation of the gps/compass of the iPhone, nothing I can do about it.

I also imagine in dense urban environments the accuracy could be poor, especially on devices without dual band GPS. I haven’t gotten a chance to test it in one, though.
 
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zach-coleman said:
Distance should be possible but ETA would be extremely difficult. I guess if you did ETA at a fixed MPH (say 3mph for walking and 60 for driving) and calculated it as the crow flies it would be possible, but I’m not sure if that metric would be of much use.


It updates in real time as long as the app is in focus. The way it is programmed is to take your current location, the pins location, and calculate the angle between the two. When you get within about 10 feet it loses accuracy and can behave erratically but that is a limitation of the gps/compass of the iPhone, nothing I can do about it.

I also imagine in dense urban environments the accuracy could be poor, especially on devices without dual band GPS. I haven’t gotten a chance to test it in one, though.
Click to expand...
Thank you for your honesty.

By the way, what’s the dual GPS thing? GPS+GLONASS? I think my A15 iPhone SE3 already has that.
 
Populus said:
By the way, what’s the dual GPS thing? GPS+GLONASS? I think my A15 iPhone SE3 already has that.
Click to expand...
Yep. iPhone 14 Pro/15 (all) have it. I don't think it has any effect on the compass accuracy (to north), though.

Populus said:
If I’m honest, I would prefer the arrow we see in the app as the app icon. The current icon seems a bit 2016.

But I guess that’s just my personal taste.
Click to expand...
This was one of the original concepts I tried for the app icon, however the arrow used in the app is one of Apple's SF symbols (location.north.line.fill) which are not allowed to be used in things like app icons. I'm a novice graphic designer at best, I do agree there's room for improvement.

I could add something like this as an alternative icon option, if you would like it more.

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Simulator Screenshot - iPhone 15 Pro - 2024-02-26 at 08.06.24.png



Beards said:
Have you looked at how other Apps show data. It is possible to show ETA. See Anchor Pointer Compass GPS:- https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/anchor-pointer-compass-gps/id791684332
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Aw dang, didn't know someone else had already done this idea, haha. I'll look into ETA though. :)
 
zach-coleman said:
Yep. iPhone 14 Pro/15 (all) have it. I don't think it has any effect on the compass accuracy (to north), though.


This was one of the original concepts I tried for the app icon, however the arrow used in the app is one of Apple's SF symbols (location.north.line.fill) which are not allowed to be used in things like app icons. I'm a novice graphic designer at best, I do agree there's room for improvement.

I could add something like this as an alternative icon option, if you would like it more.

View attachment 2353143View attachment 2353144



Aw dang, didn't know someone else had already done this idea, haha. I'll look into ETA though. :)
Click to expand...
Nah, just do it the way you like it. But I personally prefer a much simpler icon, in line with that modification. I’d do the arrow a bit narrower and call it a day.

You could also change the degraded background color for a solid/flat color but again, that’s just personal taste, so you do you!
 
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Downloaded and I like it. Simple and direct and works. I've added it to my "Navigation" folder as one of my standard tools.

A couple suggestions for future development:
- The ability to type in a name, look it up in the Contacts data, and set a pin to the address from the contacts data.
- The ability to have a quick lookup definition for "home" that is saved in the application, so it is always easily available. Since the app's name is "Point to home" it would make sense to have a single user-defined location that is a quick button press to a "home" location. Note that "home" doesn't necessarily mean the user's actual home address, but rather a quick-link to a specific location. Perhaps the app requests this info the first time it is launched (actually, any time the application launches and a default location is not defined).
 
Neat app! It reminds me of the precision finding feature for AirTags. I agree with one of the other comments, it would be cool to see the distance (as the crow flies).

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zach-coleman said:
When you get within about 10 feet it loses accuracy and can behave erratically but that is a limitation of the gps/compass of the iPhone, nothing I can do about it.
Click to expand...
You could perhaps change the arrow to say something like "You're here" when within 10 feet or so, rather than having it go wonky.
 
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I’m traveling this week so I’ll be slower, but I’m just popping in to say I am actively investigating adding as the crow flies distance (should be pretty easy), and saving pins (medium). After that I’ll look further into ETA.
 
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It's been much longer than I ever intended, but I am working on a 2.0 version of the app. It seems some people out there are actually still using it all that time later, which is very surprising to me. Yesterday I used it to determine I was seeing Mt. Rainier from 125 miles away...

I am preparing for iOS 26, but also have many changes for iOS 18, including saving multiple pins! The iOS 26 version will function for those on the Developer/Public beta if you install the TestFlight of 2.0.

Simulator Screenshot - iPhone 16 Pro + Apple Watch - 2025-07-07 at 18.27.28.png
Simulator Screenshot - iPhone 16 Pro + Apple Watch - 2025-07-07 at 18.26.27.png
Simulator Screenshot - iPhone 16 Pro + Apple Watch - 2025-07-07 at 18.26.33.png


If you would like to join the TestFlight (iOS 18 and 26), here is the link:
testflight.apple.com

Join the Point To Home - Custom Compass beta

Available on iOS
testflight.apple.com testflight.apple.com

(I'm also considering renaming the app to Point Anywhere, but not certain yet.)
 
zach-coleman said:
It's been much longer than I ever intended, but I am working on a 2.0 version of the app. It seems some people out there are actually still using it all that time later, which is very surprising to me. Yesterday I used it to determine I was seeing Mt. Rainier from 125 miles away...

I am preparing for iOS 26, but also have many changes for iOS 18, including saving multiple pins! The iOS 26 version will function for those on the Developer/Public beta if you install the TestFlight of 2.0.

View attachment 2526813View attachment 2526810View attachment 2526811

If you would like to join the TestFlight (iOS 18 and 26), here is the link:
testflight.apple.com

Join the Point To Home - Custom Compass beta

Available on iOS
testflight.apple.com testflight.apple.com

(I'm also considering renaming the app to Point Anywhere, but not certain yet.)
Click to expand...
Why not just… “Point To”?
 
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