Backyard is an app that turns any walk into a guided tour. It narrates real, fact-checked history and hidden stories about the exact block you're standing on, triggered automatically as you walk, with no planning or searching required.
Backyard uses your location to figure out which street or landmark you're near, then plays real audio narration and shows a photo of what you're looking at, automatically, without you needing to keep the app open and staring at your screen.
Backyard offers five moods that tell the same streets differently: Time Machine (what a spot looked like decades ago), Hidden City (secrets hiding in plain sight), Dark Side (unsolved mysteries and dark history), Behind the Scenes (film locations and celebrity history), and Unfiltered (raw, funny, and opinionated, like walking with a local friend).
Yes. Backyard's narration is built from real, fact-checked history and public data about each location, not invented stories.
Backyard Explorer unlocks the Dark Side, Behind the Scenes, and Unfiltered moods, Dramatic and Warm narration voices, a higher daily story limit, and the ability to ask questions anywhere on a walk.
Backyard is free to download and use, with an optional Backyard Explorer subscription (monthly or annual) that unlocks additional moods, voices, and features.
Backyard is currently available on iOS.
Backyard uses your location only while a tour is active, to determine which street or landmark to narrate next. Full details are in the privacy policy.
Subscriptions are managed through your App Store account settings and can be canceled anytime. See the support page for step-by-step instructions.
Yes, creating a free account is required before starting a walk, so your tours, stats, and badges are saved to your profile. You can create one here.
Backyard's map is a fog-of-war: it starts completely hidden, and walking with the app open, or on an active tour, permanently reveals the exact ground you've covered. Other explorers' published routes stay invisible until you've personally discovered that spot yourself, so the map becomes a real record of your own exploration, not a list of everyone else's.
Backyard Events ties narration to real-world runs, parades, and festivals happening right now, sourced from live public event data. Walk into an event's zone and the story shifts to be about that event instead of the block's usual history. See what's live on the Events page.
Museum Tours are fixed, narrated tours through a real museum's own collection, starting with The Metropolitan Museum of Art, advanced by tapping Next rather than by GPS, since location accuracy falls apart indoors.