The Best Apps to Have On Your Phone at a Festival

Festivals are an experience like nothing else. The electric atmosphere, sense of community, and fantastic live music all come together to create an unforgettable event. Festival lovers will often spend hours in digital queues to get tickets, and wait in excited anticipation for months until the first day of the event finally arrives.

Packing your bag(s), choosing your outfits, and watching the lineups get announced all adds to the sense of anticipation in the lead up to the festival.

Of course, the festival experience has changed a lot in recent years. Technology has added new ways for festival-goers to get around, enjoy the acts, and share their experience with friends. A big part of this has been through smartphones, which almost everyone has at a festival today.

So while you’re preparing to attend your next festival, why not consider some of these apps that will help you get the most from the event?

Navigation

Before you can enjoy the festival, you first need to get there. Since many festivals take place in remote areas, you’ll likely need to drive there. Of course, most smartphones come with either Apple Maps or Google Maps preinstalled, but you may want to replace it with something a little better.

Waze is a navigation app that uses much of the data from Google Maps, but crowdsources additional information like reports of broken-down vehicles, traffic and speed traps.

With so many people heading to a festival at once, you’ll almost certainly be caught in some tailbacks, so Waze may help to make your journey shorter and stress-free.

Entertainment

If you’re lucky enough not to be the designated driver of your group, or to be able to take public transport to the festival, you will have the luxury of relaxing on your journey. This gives you the opportunity to read a book, listen to some of the artists you’ll be going to see at the festival, watch a movie, or play a game.

There are plenty of options you can download from your phone’s app store. Movie lovers can use Amazon Prime Video, which will let you watch content offline if you have a poor internet connection. Meanwhile, the company’s Kindle app will let you read millions of books without being weighed down.

Gamers also have a wide variety of choices, with everything from classic casino games like blackjack online and roulette from companies like PokerStars Casino to intense battle royale titles like Fortnite and PUBG Mobile.

Tent Finding Apps

If you’re at a multi-day festival like the Wilderness Festival, you’ll need somewhere to stay. Many people opt for a tent, but this can become problematic. The vast numbers of festival-goers, often with similar tents to your own, can make it hard to find your way back to where you pitched it, especially in the dark.

Tent finding apps can make this easier, giving you directions using the GPS in your phone.

Android users can download the Tent Finder app, while those with iPhones can use BC Tent Finder.

Shazam

There’s nothing more annoying than hearing a song at a festival, falling in love with it, and then not being able to find it afterwards. You might be able to track it down eventually by trawling through the back catalogue of the artist(s)’ songs, listening to them one by one. But this can take time and wear your patience very thin.

Thankfully, Shazam makes this quick and easy. Just open it up, hit the Shazam button and the app will do the rest.

The app will listen to the song that’s currently playing and compare it to millions of other tracks that it has in its database. If it finds a match, it will tell you the artist and title of the song, as well as giving you options to download or stream it.

Shazam saves your song history, so you can return to them all when you get home.

The Festival’s Own App

Most festivals also create and publish their own app. This can be useful both before and during the event. It’ll contain up-to-date information about acts and schedules for each stage, as well as information about the amenities available at the festival.

An app will often be the only way to get information about last-minute changes, so be sure to keep an eye on it throughout the festival.