This free travel app is the only app you need to navigate a new city like a local — here's how it works

Mitty app

There's no arguing that smartphones have made navigating new cities a little easier, but all too often we travel to a new place only to find that the the apps we usually rely on are worthless there.

The current alternative? Download a brand-new set of apps that take up storage space and are left untouched for the rest of eternity.

Mitty. (yes, with a period) is a new travel app that sets out to fix both of those problems.

The creators of the iOS app, available in the App Store on Wednesday (and coming soon to Android), considered the services you would set out to find when you move to — or vacation in — a new city, and then picked the single best app for each service in every city.

The best part about the concept, in my opinion, is that it avoids making you download each app separately. Mitty cloud-streams the apps so that there's more space on your phone's screen, and one less thing you have to unpack when you're home.

Here's how to use Mitty — the one-stop shop for travelers to new cities:

When I first downloaded and opened the Mitty app, the home screen gave me a list of the 14 cities that are vetted and ready to explore, as well as the cities Mitty says are "coming soon."

My initial reaction was that the interface was sleek and simple. The icon art was tasteful but fun, and the app gave you just the right amount of information without going overboard.

To sign up, by the way, you can use your Facebook account, Google, your email address, or your phone number. I chose the last.

I went in and selected New York — where I live — to see how accurate it was with service options; since the app creators are based out of the UK, I thought it would be fairly telling.

I'm not sure why it asked if New York was my hometown, but I answered "Yes," under the assumption that this meant "as of right now" and not originally.

There were 17 services available here "with more services coming soon," according to the company. Some cities — like Dubai — had fewer services because "service availability varies by location."

The only app with an icon was Airbnb, which I found odd. Mitty gets a commission from the service providers every time someone uses their platform through Mitty's app, which it says doesn't affect the price for users, but co-founder and CEO Kaniyet Rayev said the Airbnb icon was the solution to a language issue.

"We had 'home sharing' instead of Airbnb," said Rayev. "But our beta users told us that it is confusing and some of them didn’t realise that Airbnb is Home Sharing. So we decided to change this tab to Airbnb."

See the rest of the story at Business Insider