Frequently asked questions

Any city in the world. Naruho pulls landmarks from OpenStreetMap, the same global map data used by most of the open web, and grounds its stories in Wikipedia. There are no city packs to download.

Coverage depth varies by how well a place is mapped on OSM and described on Wikipedia. Rome, Barcelona, Paris, Lisbon, London, and Tokyo are particularly rich. Smaller cities and villages still work; you will see fewer discoveries per square kilometre, but every named landmark on the map has a story.

See the full cities and coverage page.

Naruho needs an internet connection to fetch new discoveries and generate stories. Once you have viewed a place, its story is cached on your device, and on Pro the audio narration is cached too, so you can replay it offline.

For full offline coverage of a route you plan to walk, open the area in the app on Wi-Fi first to pre-cache the places. Hands-free ambient walking mode requires a connection to keep picking up new landmarks as you move.

The free tier is genuinely useful: ten place discoveries per day, three custom AI plans every two days, thirty minutes of ambient walking mode each day, and standard narration voice. That is enough for a real day of exploring.

Pro is $0.06 a day after a three-day free trial. Pro unlocks unlimited discoveries, unlimited AI plans, unlimited ambient walking mode, and studio-quality narration. You can cancel anytime from your iPhone Settings.

No. Naruho does not have accounts, sign-ups, emails, or passwords. Open the app and start. Subscriptions are managed through your Apple ID.

Your precise location, while you have the app open, so we can find nearby landmarks. The text you type in the plan feature, and the text we transcribe from your spoken questions to the guide, so the AI can answer. Anonymous subscription state for billing.

We do not collect your name, email, contacts, photos, or advertising identifier. We do not run third-party tracking. The full detail is in the privacy policy.

No. When you tap Ask during an ambient session, Naruho uses Apple's on-device speech recognition to turn what you say into text. The audio never leaves your phone. We do not upload it, store it, or have access to it.

The transcribed text is sent to our backend to generate the answer. A classifier rejects anything that is not about the place you are walking past, so even the text we receive is constrained to the topic.

Yes. They are off by default. You opt in during onboarding or in Settings, and you can change the daily cap or turn them off entirely at any time.

The notifications are local-only. There is no remote push server. Your phone schedules the triggers and fires them when you walk within range of a notable place.

A Pro feature inside ambient walking mode. Tap Ask, speak a question about the place you just heard a story about, and Naruho replies with a fresh thirty-second answer. Useful when something catches your ear and you want to dig in without breaking your walk.

Twenty questions per day on Pro. The guide only answers place-related questions; anything else (restaurants, directions, weather) gets a short refusal.

Naruho grounds every story in OpenStreetMap tags and Wikipedia content for the place in question. The AI is constrained to use those sources rather than its general training data, which prevents the most common failure mode of "AI confidently invents a museum that does not exist".

That said, AI is not perfect. If a story misses the mark or contains a factual slip, email us at hello@naruho.app and we will fix the prompt for that landmark.

At launch, Naruho's stories and narration are in English. The interface is in English. We are working on adding Spanish, French, Italian, German, and Portuguese. If a particular language matters to you, send us a note at hello@naruho.app and it goes into the queue.

Not yet. Naruho is iOS-only at launch. If demand is strong, an Android version is on the roadmap. Subscribe to the email list at the bottom of the homepage to hear about it first.

Rick Steves and VoiceMap are scripted tours. A producer writes a route, hires a voice actor, and packages it as a standalone tour you buy and follow. Great if you want one fixed itinerary in a city they have covered.

SmartGuide and similar apps offer hand-curated city packs. Coverage is good in flagship cities, sparse outside them. You are still on a planned route.

Naruho is the opposite. It does not push you down a route. It listens for what is around you, suggests landmarks within forty metres, and tells you a short story when you are interested. Walk where you want, stop where you want, ignore what you do not care about. It is closer to "private guide who happens to know everything and only speaks when asked" than to "audiobook on a track".

For a planned tour with a producer's voice, use Rick Steves. For ambient discovery anywhere in the world, use Naruho.

Subscriptions are managed by Apple, so refunds go through Apple's refund process. If you cancel during the three-day trial, you are not charged.

Travellers who hate scripted bus tours. Curious city dwellers who want to see their own neighbourhood with new eyes. Solo explorers, weekend wanderers, design and history nerds, anyone who has ever stopped in front of a building and wondered "what is the story here?"

Hugo Hodinka, a product manager from Barcelona. Naruho is built and operated as a small, independent project. If you want to get in touch about the app, the build, or partnerships, email hello@naruho.app.