Rods — Corner & Road Alerts
Rally-Style Corner Callouts
Free · In-App Purchases · Designed for iPad. Not verified for macOS.
Rods is your personal co-driver. It analyzes any road and calls out every corner before you arrive — the direction, how sharp it is, whether it tightens or opens, and the distance to the next one. It also warns you about speed bumps, chicanes, and surface changes and other road hazards along the way.
Pick a road. Drive. And hear what's coming:
Simple mode: "Medium left tightens, into easy right, 100"
Advanced mode: "Left 3 tightens, into Right 5, 100."
No more guessing what's around the next bend.
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HOW IT WORKS
1. Set a start and end point on any road
2. Rods analyzes every corner along the route
3. Tap Drive and hear callouts through your speakers
4. Each corner is announced before you arrive
It's the same kind of corner callouts used in professional rally — but generated automatically for any road, anywhere.
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WHAT YOU HEAR
Every corner is described by:
• Direction — left or right
• Severity — Easy, Medium, or Hard in simple mode or 1 (tightest hairpin) to 6 (gentle curve) in Advanced
• Shape — tightens, opens, long, very long
• Sequence — "into" links consecutive corners
• Distance — yards/meters to the next corner
Road hazards and features are called out too:
• Speed bumps and dips
• Chicanes and narrowings
• Bridges and tunnels
• Speed cameras
• Surface changes — gravel, cobblestone, unpaved sections
Example on a mountain pass:
"Right 4 long, 80. Left 2 tightens, into Right 3, 50. Caution, speed bump. Left 5."
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WORKS COMPLETELY OFFLINE
Download your region's road data once and drive anywhere — mountain passes, backroads, canyon roads, scenic routes. No cell signal needed while driving on a pre-generated route.
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BUILT FOR DRIVING ENTHUSIASTS
Rods isn't about getting from A to B. It's for the roads you choose to drive — the twisty ones, the scenic ones, the ones you drive twice.
Whether you're carving canyon switchbacks, exploring unfamiliar mountain roads, riding your motorcycle through the hills, or running your favorite backroad on a Sunday morning — Rods tells you what's ahead so you can drive with confidence.
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PLAN BEFORE YOU DRIVE
Preview any route and see what the road looks like before you commit — how many corners, how severe, what kind of sequences. Find the most interesting roads without driving them blind.
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SUBSCRIPTION
Rods is a subscription-based app. A 14-day free trial is included — no charge until it ends, cancel anytime.
All features require an active subscription after the free trial:
• Real-time voice callouts for every corner
• 6-level severity scale (hairpin to gentle curve) in Advanced and Simple modes
• Tightening, opening, and long corner detection
• Speed bump, dip, chicane, and narrowing alerts
• Bridge, tunnel, and speed camera callouts
• Surface change detection
• Corner-to-corner distance announcements
• Cars and motorcycles
• Route planning with full corner preview
• Offline use — download your region's road data once and drive anywhere
Subscription options: Monthly and Yearly, with localized pricing shown in-app before you subscribe.
Payment will be charged to your Apple ID at the confirmation of purchase. Subscriptions automatically renew unless auto-renew is turned off at least 24 hours before the end of the current period. Your account will be charged for renewal within 24 hours prior to the end of the current period at the cost of the chosen package. You can manage and cancel subscriptions in your Apple ID account settings after purchase.
Terms of Use (EULA): https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Privacy Policy: https://driverods.com/privacy-policy
more Being asked to sign up for a $13/mth subscription before even getting into the app is an instant uninstall for any app. And then offering an extended free trial “this one time” when you hit the back button to leave is a level of scummery that would make SiriusXM proud.
Being asked to sign up for a $13/mth subscription before even getting into the app is an instant uninstall for any app. And then offering an extended free trial “this one time” when you hit the back button to leave is a level of scummery that would make SiriusXM proud.
What's New
• Import Google My Maps links
• Address search is easier to find when creating a route
• CarPlay callout cards are now black, and the distance under each callout counts down live
Improvements
• Steadier arrival time on CarPlay — no more jumping between estimates
• Long routes now preview on CarPlay in seconds instead of minutes
• CarPlay returns to the route preview when a drive ends
• Your settings now come back when you sign in on a new phone or reinstall
• GPX files that store checkpoints as route points now show their checkpoint pins
Bug Fixes
• Fixed tunnel callouts sometimes playing as silence
• Fixed speed bumps, roundabouts and road surfaces near a border being read from the neighbouring country's map
• Fixed the app downloading neighbouring countries' map data it didn't need
• Fixed downloaded voice files going missing and leaving callouts silent
• Fixed a speed camera warning on a route with no cameras
• Fixed a new route saying "no surface data" right after showing it
• Fixed the Recents card showing the drive to the start instead of your route
• Fixed the app crash-looping on launch for some signed-in users
• Fixed the CarPlay route preview going blank on routes with lots of road info
• Fixed Free Roam missing on CarPlay until Rods was opened on the phone
• Fixed the arrival time disappearing from the car's instrument cluster mid-drive
• Fixed street names repeated several times on the CarPlay map
• Fixed a wrong "~N min away" on CarPlay when the phone's last location was old
• Fixed "1 Speed bumps" — a count of one now reads singular
1.8.31 Oct 7
What's New
- Your co-driver now speaks up when GPS is lost, weak or back, when the phone overheats, or when location access is switched off.
- New road-feature icons for dips, narrowings, danger zones, speed cameras and the finish flag.
Improvements
- Smoother drive map, with no more stutter on every GPS update.
- Faster app open and resume, with far fewer repeated network calls.
- Smoother Create Route editing on routes with many checkpoints.
- Automatic map-data downloads now wait for Wi-Fi, so they can't run up a roaming bill.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed callouts dropping out over Bluetooth and CarPlay.
- Fixed callouts not being heard over plain Bluetooth unless music was playing.
- Fixed a late callout for an already-passed corner after a phone call.
- Fixed corner callouts stopping mid-drive.
- Fixed the app locking up during a drive.
- Fixed the app freezing when ending a rerouted drive.
- Fixed a reroute on a long route holding the drive for minutes.
- Fixed the map and pace notes staying on the old road after a wrong turn onto a straight.
- Fixed rerouting going dead when GPS updates arrive slowly.
- Fixed GPS stopping when you plug in or unplug a charger mid-drive.
- Fixed the car icon trailing behind the car.
- Fixed late Free Roam callouts after a junction or a recalculation.
- Fixed route creation freezing for up to 45 seconds.
- Fixed routes that could disappear after a restart.
- Fixed a blank screen after a drive to the start of a route.
- In France the voice no longer names speed cameras, matching the map.
- Fixed the distance card saying "1.0 kilometers" or "1 miles".
- Fixed street addresses like "23 5th Ave" being read as GPS coordinates.
- Fixed new routes not being named after their place on phones that write dates with dots or dashes.
- Fixed off-road checkpoints being snapped far away.
- Fixed map-data downloads spinning forever on a bad connection.
1.8.27 Oct 2
Improvements
- Long runs of back-to-back corners are now read at a more natural pace instead of being sped up as much.
- Street names are now one setting that applies everywhere — route preview, drive, Free Roam and CarPlay — and it's on by default.
- Removed the "under bridge" callout and its map pins, which too often got the bridge wrong.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed the map spinning and hunting for a direction while you're stopped.
- Fixed the route preview sometimes opening on the wrong part of the world instead of your route.
- Fixed pace notes jumping to the wrong pass of the road on routes that cross or retrace themselves (loops, laps, out-and-back).
- Fixed rerouting and the speed-limit display not working on drives with Launch Mode turned off.
- Fixed a route drive not being resumable after the app was closed mid-drive.
- CarPlay: Rods now hands over when you start your car's own navigation, even with your phone locked.
- CarPlay: Rods no longer stays on the instrument cluster after your drive ends.
- CarPlay: every saved route now shows in the route list, not just the first 100.
1.8.26 Sep 23
Fixed subscription prices disappearing and purchase buttons getting stuck when reopening an offer.
Added a separate privacy choice for optional subscription price research.
1.8.24 Sep 10
Analytics changes
1.8.20 Sep 8
Bug Fixes
- Fixed no pace notes being called at all on out-and-back and loop routes, where the app could mistake your start for the return leg and treat every corner as already driven.
- Fixed the speed limit staying blank for the rest of a drive when you set off or rerouted with no signal; it now fills in as soon as a limit can be found.
- Fixed the app freezing for up to 15 seconds while preparing the drive to your start point.
- Fixed Cancel not actually cancelling while that drive was being prepared, which could drop you into a drive you had already abandoned.
CarPlay
- Fixed CarPlay drawing your car underneath the corner card on head units that put the card on the right, hiding the road ahead.
- Fixed the instrument cluster zooming in so far you only saw your car and a few car-lengths of road, and the car's own zoom buttons doing nothing.
1.8.19 Sep 5
Small bug fixes and stability improvements.
1.8.16 Aug 31
What's New
- Choose how detailed your pace notes are and how early they arrive during first-time setup.
- Speed cameras now appear on supported routes and are included in spoken pace notes.
- The Home membership card now keeps every included driving benefit visible at a glance.
Improvements
- Rods notices rerouting immediately and builds the road ahead in faster, smaller sections.
- Large route libraries stay responsive while road data refreshes in the background.
- Voice-pack downloads paused on mobile data resume automatically when Wi-Fi returns.
- Long GPX imports now trace their final stretch reliably.
- Road features can load without a downloaded offline-map region.
- Route failures keep useful pins visible and frame the map around them.
- The Near Me route button keeps its full tap area and stays clear of map controls.
- Rural route maps keep tracking your car even when the basemap is slow to appear.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed installed voice packs being mistaken for the wrong version after an interrupted update.
- Fixed asphalt being dropped first when several road surfaces were visible.
- Fixed signed-out route pages showing a contradictory route count instead of blurred saved and recent routes with a sign-in prompt.
- Fixed the Home route action using stale first-route information.
- Fixed road-feature loading getting stuck after a temporary server or coverage failure.
Android
- Fixed the launch countdown leaving part of tall screens uncovered.
- Pace-note audio is now protected when Android backgrounds Rods during a drive.
1.8.15 Aug 30
What's New
- Precise Location off? Rods now tells you it cannot see which corner is next, and offers one tap to switch it on for the drive.
- Imported GPX and KML files are traced to the roads in your file instead of being re-planned, and the numbered checkpoints now come from the file itself. Routes you imported before keep their old shape - re-import to get the traced version.
Improvements
- Free Roam drives are saved as you go, and recovered if a save is cut short.
- Route creation no longer competes with the background map-data sweep.
- Map-data downloads and reroutes keep working with the screen off.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Free Roam showing "Acquiring GPS" forever, and never reporting a dead GPS feed.
- Fixed the app blocking its own reroutes.
- Fixed a reroute that could hang with no time limit.
- Fixed a voice-pack repair deleting the working pack it was meant to fix.
- Fixed voice-pack downloads stalling and never finishing after you leave the app.
- Fixed two routes built at the same time saving one route's map line under the other's name.
- Fixed a location-permission check that failed being recorded as a refusal.
- Fixed the "map failed to load" notice appearing before the map had actually failed.
- Fixed route creation showing internal error text.
- Fixed warning bars where tapping the bar did the button's job.
- Downloaded Regions: a stale map pack can now be updated from its card, and routing data refreshes with its region.
CarPlay
- The car icon now glides instead of stepping when no drive is running.
- GPS and permission warnings now appear on the car screen.
- Rods notifications now show on the car screen instead of being suppressed.
1.8.14 Aug 27
iPhone users: this release also carries everything from the previous version, which was withdrawn before it reached the App Store.
What's New
- Map appearance: choose Auto, Day or Night, on your phone and in CarPlay.
- Street names can now be turned off while driving, and map labels no longer hide underneath the route line.
Improvements
- Faster rerouting, and faster road-data loading on long routes.
- Create-route pills load their data ahead of your tap and respond the moment you press them.
- Pills with nothing under the current view now grey out before you press them, rather than after.
- Distance units are detected from your device worldwide.
- Overlapping road-feature icons stay side by side until they truly clear.
- The map no longer fades the road ahead into haze.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed a consent or legal pop-up cancelling a drive that was already running, which also stopped GPS and audio.
- Fixed Free Roam stopping routing for the rest of the session after the phone screen locked.
- Fixed Stop and End Drive failing and leaving a drive that could not be ended.
- Fixed on-screen animations blocking taps elsewhere in the app.
- Fixed GPS permission checks hanging with the screen off.
- Fixed a stuck save operation blocking every later save.
- Fixed the car icon sitting under the bottom bar in landscape.
- Fixed weather alerts showing the forecast for an old route.
- Fixed a map-data download being skipped on mobile data and never retried on Wi-Fi.
- Fixed paying members being asked to buy something they already own.
- Fixed "into roundabout" being called on a road that passes underneath the ring, which also dropped the real corner.
- Fixed "under bridge" being called while driving on top of a bridge. Routes you already saved are corrected too.
- Fixed a single roundabout drawing two or three pins on the map.
- Fixed turning around mid-drive never triggering a reroute.
- Fixed a reroute abandoning the route and driving straight to the finish.
- Fixed the "Auto-delete after N weeks" switch on the Map Data screen doing nothing.
- Fixed a part-downloaded region being stuck as "downloaded" forever.
- Fixed one failed map tile permanently blanking the map.
- Fixed signing out on one device signing you out everywhere.
- Fixed "No road found near your pin" when zoomed out on Create Route.
- Fixed the route loading animation cutting off on saved routes.
- Fixed the membership badge covering the Start Drive button.
CarPlay
- Fixed the car icon freezing on the car's map.
- Fixed a failed start leaving the head unit unusable for the rest of the session.
- Fixed the Free Roam button missing when the phone app had not been opened first.
- Street and city names now draw on the car's map.
- Fixed road features drawing twice, and too few roundabouts.
- Fixed roadworks pins appearing where the phone hides them, and French speed cameras now show as danger zones.
- Fixed checkpoint pins missing from the car's route preview.
1.8.13 Aug 22
What's New
- The Routes tab now keeps the search bar pinned at the top as you scroll, and the title collapses into a live section label.
- On the create-route map, lighting up a pill that has nothing to show now greys it out and names what is missing, with a short buzz.
Improvements
- Saved routes open straight away instead of waiting on a fixed loading delay.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed free accounts being sent back to Home when opening Help, Send Feedback, What's New, Rods Status or Downloaded Regions.
- Fixed an empty phantom region appearing in Downloaded Regions.
- Fixed a newly created route being framed too small on the map.
1.8.11 Aug 6
CarPlay
- Rods now runs on CarPlay. Your route, the corner ahead and every pace note appear on your car's built-in screen.
- Pick a route on the car, preview the whole line with its corners and road features, and start driving without touching your phone.
- Free Roam works from the car too — pull away and Rods calls the road as it comes.
- On cars with a display behind the wheel, Rods can draw the corner ahead in the instrument cluster.
- Voice, units and the rest of your settings can be changed from the car screen mid-drive.
Improvements
- All voice clips now play at a consistent level — no more callouts or countdown numbers jumping out louder than the rest.
- Smoother drive screen and faster route processing.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed callouts being announced late or skipped entirely after the screen went dark mid-drive.
- Fixed background GPS stopping when the phone locked mid-drive.
- Fixed Free Roam following a slip road or exit ramp instead of the road you are actually on.
- Fixed the remaining-time estimate freezing when you stopped and swinging with the throttle.
- Fixed the "signal's gone" warning firing while you are still parked at the start of a drive.
- Fixed the app freezing while a route was being processed.
- Fixed the Free Roam map flashing back to road you had already driven.
- Fixed surface-change callouts firing for a road running alongside yours.
- Free Roam now calls out junctions. When the road genuinely forks and there is no clear continuation, you hear "into junction" and Rods waits for you to choose instead of guessing which way you went.
- Fixed Free Roam announcing long corners too late — the call now lands before you enter the bend, not halfway through it.
- Fixed Free Roam occasionally announcing the same long bend twice on a straight-through drive.
- Fixed callouts silently dropping a word when a clip was missing from the downloaded voice pack.
- Fixed the speed limit flicking between two values (like 80/50/80) when passing a junction or slip road.
- Fixed the speed limit display going blank after a reroute or connection drop and never coming back.
- You can now swipe away the on-screen GPS and audio warning banners.
- Fixed the in-app Import button opening a file picker with every file greyed out — GPX and KML files can now be selected.
1.8.10 Aug 1
Bug Fixes
- Fixed Free Roam and the speed-limit display not working correctly when driving near a state or region border.
- Fixed roads passing under a bridge being announced as "over bridge" — now correctly called "under bridge".
1.8.7 Jul 19
What's New
- New setting to hide the low-GPS-signal warning banner during drives.
Improvements
- Improved corner detection on linked bends — compound and tighter corners that flow together are now called as one, instead of being split into repeated callouts.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed two clearly separate corners sometimes being merged into a single callout.
- Fixed the first corners right after a reroute sometimes missing their pace notes.
- Fixed the map not following your car at the start of a Free Roam session.
1.8.6 Jul 17
Improvements
- Sharper pace notes on long sweeping bends. A single continuous curve is now called once instead of being split into repeated callouts, including in route preview.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed sharp ~90° junctions sometimes being announced by number instead of "square", and flowing corners being wrongly called "square".
1.8.5 Jul 15
General improvements and bug fixes.
1.8.4 Jul 14
Bug Fixes
- Fixed email sign-in links sometimes failing with a false "link expired" error or dropping you back to the login screen.
- Fixed the app occasionally getting stuck on a loading spinner right after a successful sign-in.
- Fixed the drive map going blank on a weak or patchy mobile signal — it now recovers on its own with a brief notice.
- Fixed some GPX route files failing to import — rejected as invalid, or doubled when the file contained both a track and a route.
- Fixed a single roundabout occasionally being announced twice.
- Fixed long routes taking a long time to appear in the route preview — they now load much faster.
1.8.3 Jul 13
What's New
- Edit saved routes by dragging the start and end points, with undo and redo.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed callouts stopping mid-drive when another app (like Waze) was in front.
- Fixed a rare crash while driving or using Free Roam.
- Fixed Free Roam occasionally not generating a route.
- Fixed Free Roam saved drives getting cut short.
- Fixed the Free Roam summary not showing speed cameras and bridges.
- Fixed voice pack downloads stalling or freezing the app, now with reliable resume.
- Fixed the speed limit sometimes disappearing on twisty roads.
- Fixed closely-spaced roundabouts where only the first was called out.
1.8.2 Jul 8
General fixes and behind-the-scenes improvements.
1.8.1 Jul 6
What's New
- See your live speed and the road's posted speed limit right on the drive screen.
- Free Roam now works fully offline — get corner callouts even with no signal.
- New "British" units — distances in metres and miles, with speed in mph.
- Route preview now shows roundabouts, chicanes, islands and narrowings on the map.
Improvements
- Callouts now play back-to-back with tighter timing through dense corner sequences.
- Cleaner map for backroad driving — quieter labels, with road and town names kept.
- Drive map and callout cards now show the same hazard icons as the route preview.
- Free Roam handles dual-carriageways and dead-end roads more reliably.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed roundabouts occasionally not being called out, or announcing the wrong exit.
- Fixed Free Roam duplicating or re-announcing corners on out-and-back drives.
- Fixed Free Roam callouts stalling when the route buffer got stuck.
- Fixed callouts going silent when a voice pack had a problem.
- Fixed the import button getting stuck on the loading screen.
- Fixed the car marker occasionally jumping or spinning during a drive.
- Fixed the vehicle picker card shifting when selected.
1.8.0 Jul 5
Bug Fixes
- Fixed the first corner callout sometimes arriving late on iPhone.
1.7.15 Jul 1
What's New
- Rods now calls out roundabouts on your route and tells you which exit to take.
- Added motorcycle support — choose Car or Motorcycle when you set up Rods, with a new bike for your garage.
Improvements
- Free Roam now catches more sharp, single-point corners it used to miss.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed some subscribers being incorrectly shown as not subscribed and locked out of their saved routes.
- Fixed the route preview occasionally getting stuck on the loading screen.
- Fixed the app freezing while recalculating after a reroute.
- Fixed search results overlapping the top of the screen when creating a route.
- Android: fixed background GPS being shut down by aggressive battery savers on some phones — drives now recover automatically.
1.7.14 Jun 28
Version 1.7.13
What's New
- The Pause button is now Mute — silence the voice anytime without stopping your drive.
1.7.13 Jun 23
Version 1.7.12
Improvements
- Improved support for larger text — Rods now follows your device's Bigger Text accessibility setting across the app without overlapping or cut-off text.
1.7.12 Jun 22
Version 1.7.11
Improvements
- Reduced battery use and device heating during drives.
Bug Fixes
- Fixed the app occasionally freezing while granting or checking location permission.
- Fixed Resume Drive sometimes failing to reopen your route.
- Fixed rare GPS glitches that could jump your position to the wrong spot.
- Fixed pace notes occasionally stalling for a few seconds mid-drive after the route recalculates.
- Fixed driving a saved route that reroutes silently overwriting or duplicating it — Rods now asks whether to update the route or save a new copy.
- Fixed saved Free Roam drives sometimes missing their pace notes.
- More reliable rerouting in dense, complex areas. If you leave the route in a city center or near stacked highways, Rods now finds you a fresh line instead of occasionally giving up.
- Fixed downloaded voice packs sometimes being cleared by the phone's storage cleanup or backup, which could make callouts go silent days after they were working.
- Fixed voice callouts going silent when "Use Original Voice" was on but that voice pack hadn't finished downloading.
- Fixed the app freezing while building very long routes.
- Fixed road surface wrongly showing "100% unpaved" or "no data" on shorter routes.
- Fixed the route-processing screen showing kilometers for drivers set to miles.
- Fixed importing GPX route files shared from Files, iCloud Drive, or AirDrop, which sometimes failed with a "no permission" or "file not found" error.
- Fixed Free Roam off-route rerouting — Rods now notices you've left the route right away instead of leaving you stranded.
- Fixed Free Roam routes snapping onto bridges and overpasses that cross over your road.
- Fixed visual glitches on saved Free Roam routes (corner kinks and doubled corner lines).
1.7.11 Jun 21
What's New
• Import Google My Maps links
• Address search is easier to find when creating a route
• CarPlay callout cards are now black, and the distance under each callout counts down live
Improvements
• Steadier arrival time on CarPlay — no more jumping between estimates
• Long routes now preview on CarPlay in seconds instead of minutes
• CarPlay returns to the route preview when a drive ends
• Your settings now come back when you sign in on a new phone or reinstall
• GPX files that store checkpoints as route points now show their checkpoint pins
Bug Fixes
• Fixed tunnel callouts sometimes playing as silence
• Fixed speed bumps, roundabouts and road surfaces near a border being read from the neighbouring country's map
• Fixed the app downloading neighbouring countries' map data it didn't need
• Fixed downloaded voice files going missing and leaving callouts silent
• Fixed a speed camera warning on a route with no cameras
• Fixed a new route saying "no surface data" right after showing it
• Fixed the Recents card showing the drive to the start instead of your route
• Fixed the app crash-looping on launch for some signed-in users
• Fixed the CarPlay route preview going blank on routes with lots of road info
• Fixed Free Roam missing on CarPlay until Rods was opened on the phone
• Fixed the arrival time disappearing from the car's instrument cluster mid-drive
• Fixed street names repeated several times on the CarPlay map
• Fixed a wrong "~N min away" on CarPlay when the phone's last location was old
• Fixed "1 Speed bumps" — a count of one now reads singular
more Version 1.8.31 Oct 7
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