Official Freedom Trail® App

Overall this app was very good. When you walk the red brick trail the app notifies you of the stop, and the narration tells you about it. It functions well offline. Some possible areas for improvement: (1) Choice of different languages. (2) Option to play narration at 0.75 speed (for those who need more time to understand) or 1.5 speed (for those who want to walk quickly through the stops). (3) Instead of “Remember to look at your app to find your next stop…,” each stop should conclude with “the next stop is X.” (4) Cutting back on some narration; for example, “King's Chapel Burying Ground” seemed lengthy. (5) There are nine stops in Granary Burying Ground (#8-#16) which may contribute to the thronging crowds there. Perhaps some of the material could be moved to stops that do not have crowds (like #35 Crossing the Bridge to Charlestown) to more evenly distribute tourists on the trail. (6) It uses a lot of battery (about 50% over only about 3 hours).

I'll start by saying this is absolutely worth the purchase to explore the Boston freedom trail solo or with a partner (using one headphone each was great for us). However, make sure you have plenty of battery or a backup option. My iPhone 15 Pro Max lost over 60% of its charge after completing the full trail. Also, the app will skip to the next stop recording if you wander too far in some places. Still a great resource and we enjoyed the stories and narration for the full trail instead of the condensed version offered in guided tours. Also, note that the app does NOT download the full guide with the app itself. Download the audio guide within the app before your start if you want to save 60MB of mobile data.

The audio guide was really good - including commentary from a professor of Boston’s history and the late Senator Ted Kennedy. It took a second to learn how to go back and forth between the map and the audio guide, but everything worked great.

My wife and I were visiting Boston for the first time together and wanted to walk the Freedom Trail. Based on what we were looking for, we decided self-guided, preferable audio tour, would be best. We arrived at stop one, the Visitors Center in Boston Commons. When we realized a self-guided tour map was $15, we decided right away to try the app. We shared a pair of AirPods and listened to narration at each stop. The app uses GPS to automatically start the next audio track while walking through the trail. Although I’ll probably never use the app again, the $10 was easily worth it and I’d buy again. Especially to support the official app.

The information is good … BUT … Even though I had downloaded the app and the trail/audio, at the end of each stop, the app would say “loading…” with a blank screen. Sometimes it resumed and sometimes I had to kill it and restart. This was very frustrating. It completely drained my battery before the end of the tour.

I don’t usually write reviews, but considering the negativity, thought it was worthwhile. I didn’t try the audio feature, but the map was brilliant with nice tidbits about each stop. Well worth the $10 as opposed to an overpriced tour guide you can’t hear. And 40 stops compared to 10 or so with a guide. Stop by Night Shift brewing on the way to Bunker Hill! A pleasant place to rehydrate 😀

i agree with other reviewers. i flew to boston expressly to walk this trail using the app it’s completely counter intuitive. the UX is terrible. and really?? a litany of edward kennedy quotes? the history of rose kennedy. wow. don’t waste your trip. this app is worthless.

The app has a lot of good content and quotes from different people, etc. But - At many sites the audio would stop abruptly at the same spot no matter how many times I tried to play it - the transitions between stops can be a bit glitchy and hard to follow. You had to manually go back and play different segments

I sent a message to The Freedom Trail App support yesterday at 11:06a, because Stop 27 was not listed on the map. By 1:54p I received a response from Freedom Trail. The message said the technician was going to make an adjustment. Later in the afternoon, I noticed the glitch was fixed. The app will be great to have when I’m in Boston this summer!

The information here is great, but the app’s functionality still has a ways to go. The GPS sometimes works, and sometimes doesn’t. It’s very hard to go back-and-forth between the information and the map. Every time you go back to the map, it zooms all the way out, so you have to fiddle with it to see where you are. On a cold day this made it really difficult to navigate. Because the GPS triggering didn’t always work, I ended up reading the information more than I listened to it.