Best App for London Tube

The TFL app works great.

Some people swear by Citymapper, and it can provide useful back-up, but the TFL app is best, IMHO. It also has live bus arrivals, and includes all TFL services information live. Highly recommended.

I used the city mapper app 2 months ago in London and it worked great. I had also downloaded the TFL app but never used it.

You can find some more opinions about the 2 apps here:

https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/england/citymapper-vs-tfl-apps-for-a-week-in-london

I also prefer the Citymapper app. It seems to give more information.

I seem to have managed for getting on 50 years without any apps at all, just looking at maps in stations.

I guess I do not use a specific app just for the Underground. The maps are easy enough to use, getting around just fine.

I do use Google maps for general directions in London, and everywhere, and Google will suggest options that include the Underground and buses. That works well enough for me.

CityMapper pulls its data from TFL, of course, but to my mind, organizes it a superior way. It's also.multimldal so gives you information on buses too.

I'm another with a preference for CityMapper. I like it's ease of use, design, layout and It'll give multiple options for journeys. It covers many cities, which makes transition from one city to another easy. Why not download both TfL Go and CityMapper and see which works best for you?

I seem to have managed for getting on 50 years without any apps at all, just looking at maps in stations.

Great, good for you, said like a local who lives with systems and gets to know them by repetition. Have some sympathy for travelers from BFE who may not have experience with public transit trying to figure it all out in a city that lives by transit

VAP - my point was not to make a smug point about being a local (although I’m not local I come enough to masquerade as one). It was more to point out that no one, from wherever they come from and how little experience of public transport they have, needs to have any sort of app to get round the tube. You can do it just by looking at the tube map, available in many different forms. It remains one of the masterpieces of simple design, copied around the world. It is often said that, if bringing children with you, all you need to do is give them access to the map and within an hour or so they will have worked out how to get to one point to another.

I can’t comment on the relative benefits of the TFL and Citymapper apps, other than to say that the TFL app will give you options by bus, cycle or walking as well as the tube.

For years, prior to the invention of smarphones, I used maps to figure out how to get around.

However, now that there is an app like Citymapper, it makes my travels easier. I get the following information from the app that maps don't give:

--information on delays, disruptions or problems on the line;

--which is the best car to get on in terms of transfers or exits;

--timing of future trains or alteratives if available.

--similar transit information to use in ciites all over the world.

Hi Kim! The TFL app has bus info - live arrivals for all stops.

I find the journey planning results from Google / Google Maps are good enough for my needs. The thing about London is that there's usually four or five perfectly feasible routes to do a journey from A to B. I understand Citymapper gives you some extra info like routing underground for your tube interchanges and what part of the platform to stand? I haven't had it installed for many years.

So yes, Google searches are fine for me. I sometimes use TfL's website for bus arrivals info without actually having the app installed. For bus timings, everyone is pulling from the same APIs provided by TfL so they should be accurate on Google, Citymapper and the electronic displays at bus stops. I use an old Android phone and simply Googling is good enough for me.

As far as having an advantage as a local, that definitely exists. I was discussing it recently with someone and I think we agreed it takes about six months of living in London to start to place some of the little "towns" that form it geographically in your head. It's so spread out and working out where one place is in relation to another takes time. It takes a while to commit the parts of the tube map that are relevant to memory and remember the interchange stations. Many people will know very little beyond their commute. Most locals will only know the bus routes locally which are relevant to them. Anything else takes a bit of Googling these days.