This app helps you enrich a GPX or Garmin FIT route with nearby water points from OpenStreetMap.
-
Out on the road with no route loaded? Tap "📍 Find water near me". The app asks for
your location and lists the closest drinking water, cafés, convenience stores and
fuel stations, nearest first, with the distance and direction. It starts with 1.5 km
around you and widens to 5 km if there is little nearby; "Search wider" goes to 15 km.
Tap a name to see it on the map, or "Go" for directions. Bookmark
?near (or add it to your home screen) to open straight into it.
- Load your route: click "Select GPX / FIT" or drag-and-drop a .gpx or .fit file (Garmin devices).
- Choose a search radius. Only water points within this distance of your route are included.
- The map shows found water sources (drinking water, springs, taps, park fountains with potable water, water points). Hover/tap markers for subtype and details.
- Read the summary: total distance, how many water stops, and the longest stretch with no water. That last number is the one to plan around — it turns amber past 25 km and red past 40 km. It counts every time your route comes back past a stop, and only water you can rely on: springs, untagged taps and seasonal taps are marked "unconfirmed", and the box shows separately what they would do to the gap.
- The list and the strip under the map show the stops in the order you will ride past them, with the shaded band marking the dry stretch.
- Click "Download enriched GPX" to save your original route with water waypoints added. Each waypoint is named with its position, like "km 47.0 — Fountain", so it is readable on a head unit.
- Use "Clean map" anytime to clear the map and start over.
- If your route file has its own waypoints (turn cues, for example), untick "Show route waypoints" to hide them so the water and coffee icons are easy to see.
-
Click "Refill stops" for places to top up that are not tagged as drinking water —
fuel stations, shops, campgrounds, public toilets and cemetery taps. Outside towns
these are often the only water for tens of kilometres. Each is marked by how sure
you can be: 🚰 tagged as drinking water, ⛽ ask inside, 🚻 worth a try. The dry
stretch box then shows what they do to your worst gap.
- Click "Search coffee" to find nearby cafes and coffee shops (ranked by distance plus OSM signals like name, hours, and website).
- Click "Weather" to see the weather along your route.
-
Read more: Find water along your GPX route easily
Keyboard shortcuts
- ?Open Help
- MFind 📍 water near me
- LSelect GPX / FIT (open file)
- NClean map (reset)
- DDownload enriched GPX
- SShare route link
- FFind ⛽ refill stops
- CPress C (no modifiers) to trigger ☕ Search coffee
- WShow / hide route waypoints
ℹ️ Data is fetched from Overpass (proxied locally when available) or directly from OSM. Results depend on OSM coverage.
What gets stored
“Save my route on the server” is off unless you tick it. While it is ticked, your
uploaded route, the water points found for it, and a coarse network address (the
last part of your IP is removed) are kept for 90 days so Ido can see how the app
is used. Unticked, nothing leaves your browser apart from the anonymous
OpenStreetMap queries needed to find water. Your choice is remembered on this device.
“Share route” always stores the route, because the link needs something to open.
It stays until the link is deleted: “Delete share link” appears on the device that
shared it, whenever that route is open there.
"Find water near me" uses your location only in your browser. The server gets a
box a few kilometres across, rounded to a ~500 m grid, and asks OpenStreetMap what is
in it. It keeps the answer for that box for a few hours so the next rider nearby
gets it faster, but nothing ties the box to you and it is never saved with a route.
A route search asks OpenStreetMap about fixed map squares about 50 km across. The
server keeps those answers for a few days so the next rider through gets them
faster, with nothing tying a square to you or your route.
💧 Call Ido
if you need more help