FindPenguins is a free travel application designed to help you track your trip, share photos of locations and document experiences. This FindPenguins Review looks at if it is worth it for your next trip?
In this post deep dive into FindPenguins, reviewing it to see just how useful it is. I’m not sure where I first heard about FindPenguins but it was one of those applications that I had downloaded to my phone but never opened. it was time to put it to the test.
| Pros | Cons |
| – Easy to setup and start tracking a trip. – App looks great and is simple to navigate. – Lots of settings to fine tune trip options. – Can manually edit the map. – Customisable tracking accuracy – none, low, balanced or high – Profile stats are fun. – Easy to share with others. | – Causes phone battery to drain (unless you turn tracking off). – Social features would benefit from more users. – No guides for individual locations. – Transport statistics aren’t very accurate without editing. |
Overall, FindPenguins is a great option for anyone who is looking to keep people (friends, family etc) updated on where they go and the highlights for their travells. I would also recommend it for anyone looking for a convenient and aesthetic way of documenting their travels. It’s easy to use, the application looks pretty and worth testing out for your next trip. It even made my list of essential travel apps for 2024.
Get FindPenguins on
Read on for my full FindPenguins Review.
What is FindPenguins?
The first step to learn more for my FindPenguins Review was to have a look at the FindPenguins website. Their website was simple, designed well and honestly looked great. Reading the website, I’m told that FindPenguins is about remembering adventures. The line that stood out to me was:
“Automatically track your travels in a beautiful way. FindPenguins creates your travel journal, simply with your phone in the pocket.”
So, FindPenguins is a travel tracker that makes a journal all without taking your phone out of your pocket? I’m sceptical about the keeping your phone in the pocket part (It’s hard enough for me to do that anyway). Let’s put, their app to the test. For this Review of FindPenguins I will be using it on a trip to Munich, reviewing the tracking accuracy, social features and everything else the app has to offer.
Note: FindPenguins offers two paid features, a premium membership and a service to turn your photos into a travel book. This FindPenguins Review did not involve spending any money on the app.
The Testing Ground – A Trip to Munich
I recently went on a trip to Munich, Germany. It was the perfect opportunity to review FindPenguins. I tested it for five days. During this time, I:
- Visited a friend.
- Attended a festival.
- Walked around Munich.
- Swam in the river, and
- Went climbing for free in an underpass.
As part of this trip, I used a variety of different transport options (trains, busses, metro and walking). I also tested out the social features in which I shared my trip with family and friends to see if they could follow along.
First Time Setup
Setup was very straight forward. Once I had downloaded the app, I made an account and then I was in. Straight away I was impressed with the apps design. The user interface looked pretty and was easy to navigate. With a few taps I was able to set up my trip to Munich. I gave my trip a name, a brief description, set a start date and end date (optional). After that there were a few other options to turn on the travel tracker, add fellow travellers and select a category. After that it was ready to go.
Note: I am using the Android version. As far as I understand the features are the same for iPhone users. Let me know in the comments below if you have had a different experience.
The Travel Tracker
As part of the setup, FindPenguins asked for permission to always track my location. Typically if an app asked me this I say ‘no’ as it drains my phone battery much faster. FindPenguins must have known people have this exact worry, as they have written “Consuming approx. 4% extra battery life per day!” I test these claims later on in the review.
There was also an option to disable the travel tracker and have FindPenguins determine my location only from the photos/videos I upload (called Footprints). As I wanted to test the tracking features, I kept the tracking on.
Tracking Accuracy
There was an option to change the accuracy of the tracking. FindPenguins provides three different options in terms of the accuracy. I could choose between Low, Balanced and High. Each increase in accuracy uses more battery but the tracking accuracy will be greater. I went with Balanced, as recommended by the app.
Transport Options
FindPenguins has an option to choose the transport type for the trip. There was a lot of options including some more unusual ones such as barefoot, heels and cable car. As I would be wearing shoes and taking a train to Munich, I selected the train option. I could only select one transport type and it is not clear how this would impacts taking multiple different transport types.
Other Setup Options
I then dug deeper for my FindPeguins Review. Once you’ve completed the initial trip setup, there are several other options to customise. It’s not necessary to look at any of these to set up a trip:
- Trip photo – Set a cover photo for your trip.
- Privacy – there are four different options here. Public, Followers, Close Friends and Private.
- Add fellow travellers – allows you to include a friend in the same trip.
- Advanced settings:
- Categories – Pick what best describes your trip.
- Exclude followers – for people you don’t want to share with.
- Distance Units – imperial vs metric system.
- Disable Comments.
- Route Line – Turns it on/off. Means that it will not record distance.
- Count Days – Turns it on/off.
- Time delayed sharing – Allows you to delay sharing your location immediately with followers for between 0 hours and 7 days. It also has a setting to exclude close friends from the delay.
- Waypoint tools – Unsure what this is, but it says Use with Caution.
- Import travel route – Allows you to import a GPX file into an empty trip. This is a useful feature if you have a GPX and wanted to create a trip in FindPenguins afterwards.
Overall, setup was an uncomplicated process and took no more than a few minutes. While there was a lot of customisation available, the default options were adequate and I didn’t change anything else. All settings could also be changed at any point during a trip.
Field Testing FindPenguins
After setting up the trip and making sure it was running I didn’t do anything with FindPenguins the first three days. I could see that it was tracking on my phone but I just let it do its thing. During this time, I had arrived in Munich, got an ice-cream, walked around the English Gardens, caught multiple different transport options and visited a festival. It was a busy few days, with a lot moving about catching various types of transport.
On day four I opened up the app and checked how it was going. I could see it had recorded all my movements. So far so good. Maybe the claim on the website of “Simply with your phone in the pocket” had some truth to it.
Dropping a Footprint
Footprints are locations which you visited that you want to post a photo or video onto the map. To post a footprint, all I need to do was press the + button in the middle of the home screen
As with the other parts of the application I have used so far, it was easy to drop a footprint. Each footprint was able to use the GPS location from a photo or video I had taken over the previous few days. This was great as it meant that I was able to upload footprints for past photos and the footprint would automatically be in the correct location (provided the GPS was correct for the photo). I tested out this feature by dropping a few footprints. Easy.
Once I dropped by first footprint, I got a notification saying that Germany is my first country on FindPenguins! Hooray!
Given that FindPenguins had been tracking my travels across Germany for the last three days I found it interesting that it only celebrated my arrival in Germany after dropping a footprint. Nevertheless, it was a fun notification to have. It’s just worth knowing that countries (and continents) visited is linked to footprints and not tracking.
Sharing My Trip
One of the useful features of FindPenguins is the ability to share your trip with other people. They can then see your tracker, footprints and map. When it came to sharing, I had a few options:
- Share my profile URL, allowing anyone with the URL to view my profile (and trips).
- Share my current trip.
- Share an individual footprint.
It’s important to know that the initial privacy options I selected when setting up my trip to Munich are related to the specific trip, not my profile. The profile visibility has different settings.
To test the social features, I sent a link of my current trip to my mum (who is not the most tech savvy) and a friend (who is significantly more tech savvy). This is how that went:
Mum’s Reaction
Mum: “I clicked on the link. Then said I wanted to follow you. Then it said I had to create an account! Eeeeeek!” Me: You don't need to make an account, just look at it without following me. Mum (after looking): “That was fun thx. Tho initially your shadow descending to the underpass looked a bit scary. Of course I forgot - you know Munich well cos you stayed there two weeks." Mum: "Did you do same river swim?" Mum: "Who’s your friend?" Mum: "How long will you be in Munich for?"… (The questions continued).
Friend’s Reaction
Me: "You can follow my trip on this app I’m testing out. What do you think?" Friend: "Nice, it looks cool."
Based on these conversations I had three key takeaways.
- Sharing my trip worked as intended. If my mum could use it and describe it as fun, it must be easy to use.
- Signing up, while not necessary allows friends and family to follow you and comment on your posts.
- I should have asked a different friend.
FindPenguins enabled me to choose which people to see my trip, where I’ve been and my footprints (photos/videos). It was easy to use and mum friendly.
Tracking Accuracy
How accurately did FindPenguins track me?
When reviewing the accuracy, it’s important to keep in mind that I choose the balanced option when setting up my trip. You’ll be able to get better (or worse) accuracy by picking a different option. For the balanced option, the accuracy was pretty good. It does tend to jump around a lot but this was to be expected. Especially when catching various types of transport.
It captured:
- The train to/from Munich.
- Having my train cancelled in the middle of nowhere and me having to go back to Munich to get a different train – Thanks DB.
- Visiting Octoberfest.
- Not sure what this is.
- Swimming in the river.
- Trying to find an ATM
Accuracy Issues
As with the nature of tracking, it’s not always going to be accurate. This is especially true when catching underground metros, being surrounded by trees (or buildings) and being inside. Looking at the track, there were points where tracking had jumped around or had me walking through buildings. It also did not recognise when I was on a specific type of transport (as opposed to walking). To fix these issues, FindPenguins makes it possible to edit the tracking data.
Editing the Track
Editing was straight forward. I was able to add vertices (points) into the track, move original ones around and add new ones. I was also able to change the type of transport that I was on at certain sections. At first this confused me, as I thought I had to change all the individual waypoints points to that transport type (e.g. Bus). FindPenguins has made it easier. I just needed to change the first and last point, i.e. where you started and finished the transport, and everything in between changed automatically.
Ending a Trip
Finishing a trip was easy thing to do. If you recall, when setting up the trip I had two options:
- Set an end date, or
- leave it open ended.
As I had not set an end date, I needed to go back into my trip settings once I had returned home. The application sent me a notification to remind me to do this once it determined I had stopped moving as much. What I did not realise was that setting an end date on the trip did not turn off the travel tracker. This required a different setting to finishing the trip. FindPenguins also sent a notification me about this and it was easy to turn off with the tap of one button.
Battery Usage
The big question of my FindPenguins Review, how much battery drain is there from constantly tracking my location?
FindPenguins did promise that they would go easy on the battery. But what would my phone say. It reminded me of the app Fog of the World, which I used to have back on an old phone back in 2014. I loved the concept but I stopped using it due to the increased battery drain. However, phones have come a long way since 2014. So with a newer phone and a better battery was the level of battery drain going to be less?
I went into settings > battery usage while FindPenguins was tracking.
It was bang, on 4%. That’s pretty exactly what they quoted. Not bad.
Battery Usage Impressions
Based purely on my observations, my phone did feel like it was using battery slightly faster than usual. I also observed that the battery would continue to drop during times when the screen was off and the phone in my pocket. It resulted in me having to charge my phone slightly more often than usual and I found myself being more conservative with using my phone (not a bad thing). Despite the shorter battery life, I found the battery drain to be reasonable while using the balanced tracking.
Additional Battery Saving Settings
If I wanted to reduce the battery usage, there are some options within the app. Switch to ‘low’ tracking accuracy for less battery drain. Alternatively, turn off tracking completely and only drop footprints. No tracking is best for people who want to share photos/videos (footprints) but want to save battery or not have constant tracking.
Social Features
FindPenguins has a whole lot more in terms of the social features. I could follow accounts, include other travellers in my trip and browse other peoples travels (that are publicly shared) for inspiration. These features are under the ‘Explore’ tab of the app.
Following Accounts
FindPenguins allows you to follow other travellers that have made their profiles public. The social features in FindPenguins are like any other social media platform where people I followed would then appear on my homepage. To test this out I followed an account with a cute penguin called Phils Adventure. I could see all of Phil’s public footprints and user’s comments on each post. Looks like Phil was not using the travel tracking, but it was cool to see his individual points. While there wasn’t a huge number of accounts to follow, there was enough to see people all over the world. It has the potential to be a useful resource for people looking for inspiration from other travellers.
Overall, the social features worked well. It was easy to follow people, see their trips and individual footprints.
My Profile
The ‘Me’ section of the app allows you to see all your trips, countries you have visited, followers, your bucket list, create a new trip and your travel statistics. In this section of the FindPenguins Review I investigate these features.
Statistics
This is one of my favourite parts of the whole application. From the ‘Me’ page, tapping the statistics button takes me to a screen with all my trips on it. There is also some stats and straight away i can see how many countries I have visited and a percentage of the world I have seen (while using FindPenguins). I can then dive even deeper into the stats and I was surprised at how many stats there were. I really enjoyed looking at this page and the stats are an interesting insight I’ve not experienced before while travelling.
ADD CAROSEL OF THE STATS PAGES.
Not Completely Accurate Stats
I did notice that the accuracy of several stats was not correct. For example, I am confident that I have walked for a lot more than I have in my statistics. The reason for this is because It’s extremely difficult for FindPenguins to differentiate between different transport types based on the tracking data.
It is possible to update these statistics. As mentioned above I could edit each waypoint on the trip with each time I walked, got a bus, train or anything else. Doing so would make these statistics much more accurate. However, it’s a time-consuming process and I decided that it wasn’t that important for me.
If you’re someone who is a bit of a stats nerd, FindPenguins has the ability to manually update these stats and add additional places. This can be done without dropping a footprint or tracking a trip.
The Bucket List
Hidden away under the menu was a nice little surprise. The bucket list is exactly what it sounds like. It allows you to save places that you want to go. At first adding a place to my bucket list was confusing. The app just told me to go to the map. I didn’t understand which map they meant. Turns out the bucket list is a way of saving other people’s footprints into your own list of places. You do this through the social features. After looking at the footprints posted by Phils Adventure I was able to add to my own list.
The bucket list was not a useful feature for me. When researching and saving places I tend to use Google Maps for this process. Let me know in the comments if you’ve used this feature and what for!
Overall App Experience
Navigating FindPenguins is an enjoyable experience. The user interface is well designed, the colours appealing and the maps easy to interact with. Adding footprints (photos and videos) worked well and it is clear what each section of the application is for. If you do get stuck on something, FindPenguins also has an extensive help centre on their website which addresses various questions and issues.
Paid Features
This FindPenguins review did not require me to spend any money while using the free version of the application. However, FindPenguins has two paid features available. The Premium Membership and the opportunity to purchase a Travel Book.
FindPenguins Premium
This FindPenguins Review looked at the free version of the application. FindPenguins also offers a Premium version. This table summarises the differences.
The Travel Book
Using FindPenguins is completely free but they will try and sell you a travel book after your trip has finished. Buying a travel book is completely optional and by no means impacts the usability of the app. Travel books are personalised photo books of your trip. FindPenguins calls it “Probably the easiest professionally designed photo book ever!” While I haven’t ordered a photobook for this FindPenguins Review, a look at the FindPenguins website shows that the book has:
- Footprint photos
- a map with the footprint location,
- time/date,
- day of your trip as a timeline
- weather for when you took the photos,
- elevation, and
- a QR code (not sure what this links to, maybe the online version).
You can also order the photo book in assorted sizes and either as a standard or premium book.
Please let me know in the comments if you’ve ordered one of these, I’m interested to hear how they are.
Conclusion – FindPenguins Review
Throughout my FindPenguins Review I found using it for travelling a positive experience. The features are well polished, it looks good and is easy to use (+ certified mum friendly). The maps are pretty and dropping footprints is a fun way to mark the highlights along your travels. The social features are simple, intuitive and well designed but would benefit from a larger user base. I was able to easily share my trip, follow others and view public profiles. Using FindPenguins was an easy and fun way of keeping track of my trip. I also enjoyed reading the additional statistics from my trip. While not completely accurate, these stats are a cool way to make me want to post more footprints and use the app more.
Using Travel tracking will impact your battery life. However, there are options to reduce level of battery drain if that’s a concern.
I ended up using this app again for my trip to Georgia and Türkiye. Perhaps there is no better praise than this. It also made my list of essential travel apps for 2024.
| Pros | Cons |
| – Easy to setup and start tracking a trip – App looks great and is simple to navigate – Lots of customisation to fine tune your trip options including – Can manually edit the map. – Customisable tracking accuracy – none, low, balanced or high – Profile stats are fun – Sharing with others works well. | – Causes phone battery to drain (unless you turn tracking off) – Social features would benefit from more users – No guides for individual locations – Transport statistics aren’t very accurate without editing |
Who would I recommend it for?
Find Penguins is a great resource for anyone who is looking to keep people (friends, family etc) updated on where they go and the highlights. It is also good for anyone who wants a convenient, aesthetic way of documenting their travels. It’s easy to use, the application looks pretty and my mum could see where I went and what I did.