PlatformApple Watch · iPhone
ModeWalks offline
Catalogue576 places · hand-curated
Launch cityHồ Chí Minh City

The city
introduces
itself.

A walking companion for the curious. One quiet tap on the wrist when something nearby is worth knowing about. The phone stays in your pocket. The walk stays a walk.

Identity · in motion

The mark
introduces itself.

Twelve dots wander. Six lines align them. A single point holds the center. The same rotated grid you'll see on every map screen — drawn the way the city draws itself: one street at a time.

Three moments. That's the whole product.

Walk a block. Feel a tap.
Decide what to do next.

Moment01 · Walk

You walk.

Start the app on your wrist and go. No login, no setup, no quiz about your interests. The catalogue is already with you — no signal needed to start the walk.

No login No setup Walks offline ✓
Moment02 · Feel

The wrist taps once.

A single haptic when you're within 500 m of something worth a look. No sound. No banner stack. Two-minute global cooldown — never a buzz parade.

Moment03 · Choose

You decide.

Read three sentences on the wrist. Watch the distance tick down as you walk. Tap Navigate to hand off to Maps. Or keep going — the city has more.

Read Walk to it Save to log Keep going
A walk · drawn

One block.
Drawn as you go.

The trail is just a dotted line. As you walk, it lengthens. As you pass a pin, it pulses once and quietly names itself. No turn-by-turn voice. No route to follow. The walk is yours.

Two surfaces · One quiet idea

On the wrist when you're moving.
On the phone when you're curious.

The watch is the primary surface — list of fifteen, single-tap alerts, background notifications even when the app is closed. The phone is for context: a map of the 25 nearest places, the street you're on, and the longer story of any place you tap.

Apple Watchsurface · 01

Fifteen places, sorted by how close.

A list of 15 within 1 km, sorted by distance. Seen places get a dim check. A single haptic at 500 m, a banner at 250 m even when the app is closed. Per-place cooldown 4 h, global 90 s.

14:32
Nearby · 1 km
Bến Thành Market
Landmark
120 m
Café Apartments
Café · seen
240 m
Notre-Dame Basilica
Landmark
380 m
Chùa Ngọc Hoàng
Pagoda
610 m
Tao Đàn Park
Park · seen
740 m
iPhonesurface · 02

The 25 closest things, on a map you can read.

Color-coded pins for landmark, eat, and drink. The street you're on, in the header. A live list below, resorted every 50 m. Tap any pin or row for a three-paragraph story plus a live distance counter.

14:32 ● ● ●
You're on
Lê Lợi · District 1
Nearby 25 within view
Bến Thành Market
French-era covered market, 1914
120 m
Cộng Cà Phê
Coconut coffee in war-era décor
180 m
Bánh Mì Huỳnh Hoa
The pâté-stuffed bánh mì
240 m
The catalogue

576 places. By hand.

No algorithm picking your next move. No advertisers buying your attention. Every entry is researched, written about, and pinned in person. The whole catalogue lives on your device — the walk itself never calls home.

Landmarks
Pagodas, cathedrals, markets, monuments — the city's old bones.
Eat
Street food, phở, cơm tấm, hole-in-the-wall restaurants worth the detour.
Drink
Cà phê sữa đá, craft cocktails, third-wave roasters, old-school tea houses.
Districts covered at launch
District 1 Chợ Lớn Tân Bình Bình Thạnh District 2 District 3 District 5 District 7 District 11 Thủ Đức
Presence · not pressure

Presence,
quietly.

Your dot on the map breathes. Three soft rings, every two seconds. Not a heartbeat-monitor, not a notification badge. A quiet way of saying you're here — and the city knows where you are, on the device, and nowhere else.

A few entries from the catalogue

Sample log.

What a list looks like when you're standing at the corner of Lê Lợi and Pasteur, walking south. Sorted by distance. Updated every fifty metres.

01
Landmark · 1914
Bến Thành Market
A French-era covered market with four gabled gates pointing at the cardinal directions.
Market
120 m
02
Drink · Lý Tự Trọng
Cộng Cà Phê
Coconut coffee in a war-era apartment décor — enamel mugs, propaganda posters, second-floor balcony.
Café
180 m
03
Eat · Lê Thị Riêng
Bánh Mì Huỳnh Hoa
The pâté-stuffed Saigon bánh mì on the same corner since 1989. There is always a queue. The queue moves.
Street food
240 m
04
Landmark · 1880
Notre-Dame Basilica
Two square towers of red Marseille brick that arrived on the boat. The clock has been running since 1880.
Cathedral
380 m
05
Landmark · Đa Kao
Jade Emperor Pagoda
Built in 1909 by the Cantonese community. Smoke from spiraling incense coils permanently drifts through its dim halls.
Pagoda
412 m
06
Eat · Nguyễn Trãi
Phở Lệ
Chợ Lớn's southern-style phở: sweeter broth, more herbs on the side, the rare house that still simmers overnight.
Noodle house
610 m
Each place · in depth

Five nearby places,
one in focus.

Three sentences of history. The neighborhood. A live distance counter you can watch tick down as you walk. Tap a card on the side to bring it forward — drag, arrow, or wait and it advances on its own.

Cities

One city in the app.
Pick up the next when you go.

Hồ Chí Minh City ships bundled with the app — free, forever, fully offline. Every other city is a one-time unlock, priced by size. Buy it once, keep it. No subscription, no expiry, no ads.

Wave 01 Southeast Asia 2026
Bundled · free
Hồ Chí Minh City
Vietnam · VN
576 placesIncluded
In curation
Bangkok
Thailand · TH
Tier LComing soon
In curation
Hà Nội
Vietnam · VN
Tier MComing soon
Up next
Singapore
Singapore · SG
Tier MComing soon
Up next
Kuala Lumpur
Malaysia · MY
Tier MComing soon
Researching
Jakarta
Indonesia · ID
Tier LComing soon
Researching
Manila
Philippines · PH
Tier LComing soon
Researching
Đà Nẵng
Vietnam · VN
Tier SComing soon
Wave 02 Asia 2027
Planned
Tokyo
Japan · JP
Tier XLTBD
Planned
Seoul
South Korea · KR
Tier LTBD
Planned
Taipei
Taiwan · TW
Tier MTBD
Planned
Hong Kong
Hong Kong · HK
Tier MTBD
Wave 03 Global 2028 +
Planned
Paris
France · FR
Tier XLTBD
Planned
New York
United States · US
Tier XLTBD
Planned
Istanbul
Türkiye · TR
Tier LTBD
Planned
Mexico City
Mexico · MX
Tier LTBD
One-time unlock
Buy a city once. Keep it forever, on every device signed in to your Apple ID.
Pricing tiers
S, M, L, XL — based on catalogue size and city footprint. Final prices announced at launch.
Same offline walk
Every city ships as a self-contained bundle. Once downloaded, the walk needs no signal — the app only reaches out to keep the catalogue fresh.
What we left out

No phone. No scrolling.
No signup.

P · 01
No phone.
Everything you need lives on the wrist. The phone is for memory, not navigation. Pull it out when you want the longer story — not because the app asked you to.
P · 02
No scrolling.
A list of five. An alert of one. A paragraph of three sentences. The whole product fits on a watch face — because that's where it lives.
P · 03
No signup.
No account, no email, no profile. Your log of visited places stays on your device — the app never asks you to sign in, and your walk never leaves the phone.
P · 04
No streaks.
No badges, no leaderboards, no reminders to come back. The walk is the reward. The app is happy to be closed for a month.
P · 05
Offline-first.
The map, the list, the alerts, and every story for every place — all on the device. The walk itself never needs a network. The app only reaches out to refresh the catalogue and download new cities.
Questions

A few things people ask.

Short answers. If you have one we missed, write to hello@urbandiscovery.app.

Does it work offline?+
Yes — for the walk itself. The map, the list, the alerts and every story all live on the device, and airplane mode doesn't change anything about walking. The app does talk to a server to refresh the catalogue and to download new cities, but never for the walk itself, and never with anything about where you've been.
Do I need an account?+
No. There is no signup, no email, no profile. Your log of visited places lives only on your device.
Why does it want "Always" location?+
So the watch can fire a quiet notification when you walk within 250 m of a place — even when the app is closed. The app degrades gracefully to "When in Use" if you'd rather, with the proximity feature off.
What cities are covered?+
Hồ Chí Minh City at launch — 576 hand-curated places, bundled with the app. Bangkok and Hà Nội are next, followed by the rest of Southeast Asia. Asia and global cities follow. See the Cities section for the full lineup.
Is it really free?+
The app is free to download, and Hồ Chí Minh City is bundled with it — free, forever. Additional cities are one-time unlocks priced by size (S, M, L, XL). Buy a city once and it's yours — no subscription, no ads, no data sold. Requires watchOS 11 and iOS 18.
Can I use it without an Apple Watch?+
Yes. The iPhone app works on its own — map, list, place detail, live distance. The watch is where the experience really sings, though.
Between scenes

The city,
between scenes.

Transitions across the app aren't fades — they bleed, like ink on rice paper. The rotated grid shows briefly through the seam. A small idea, applied consistently: the medium of the product is paper, not glass.

Available now

Step out.
The city's been waiting.

Free to download with Hồ Chí Minh City bundled in. Add other cities as one-time unlocks — no subscription, no ads, no data sold. Requires watchOS 11 and an iPhone running iOS 18.

Find on the App Store
Urban Discovery
urbandiscovery.app
Urban Discovery
v 1.0 · ready