# Roadbook '71

> Roadbook '71 is a free iOS and CarPlay app that turns a GPX track you recorded
> into turn-by-turn navigation, with every junction drawn as a rally-style tulip
> diagram computed from your own recording.

Site: https://roadbook71.com/
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/app/id6807041314
Developer: glue.blue (Belgium), https://glue.blue
Contact: hello@glue.blue

## What it is

Apple Maps will not navigate a ring that starts and ends in the same place, and a
GPX viewer will draw the line but never tell you when to turn. Roadbook '71 does
both. It takes a recorded track as the ground truth, matches it to the road
network so it can borrow turn instructions, and then reads the route back to you
while you drive it, on the iPhone screen and on the car screen.

The presentation is a 1970s rally co-driver's roadbook: distance in the left
margin, one instruction to a line, and a tulip diagram instead of a sentence.

## Who it is for

People who record a drive or a ride once and want to do it again without a
passenger reading a map out loud: touring drivers, classic-car and roadster
owners, motorcyclists, and anyone with a favourite loop saved as a GPX file.

## Features

- Turn-by-turn voice and on-screen guidance along a recorded GPX track
- Tulip junction diagrams computed from the track itself: ball in, arrow out
- Corridor matching: the recorded line is kept wherever no road route follows it,
  and those stretches are drawn, measured and announced before you set off
- GPS dropouts in a recording are bridged by road and marked as a guess, drawn
  differently from a stretch where guidance genuinely goes quiet
- Loop-aware: join the ring at the point nearest you, drive the full circle, and
  arrive back at the join
- Interrupt a drive and continue it hours or days later, from wherever you are
- Progress is inked onto both the computed route and the original recording
- Wrong turns are detected and a rejoin leg is spliced in
- Waypoint pins force the route through a particular road
- CarPlay: the car screen can start, follow and end a drive on its own
- Day pages in paper and ink; night pages lit like a map light over leather
- Export the drive you actually made as a new GPX
- Print any route as a paper roadbook: distances, tulips, instructions, tick boxes

## Requirements

- An iPhone running iOS 17 or later
- A GPX file (Open GPX Tracker, a Strava or Komoot export, a Garmin or Wahoo
  unit, or a route drawn on a mapping site)
- Computing a route takes a few minutes for a 100 km loop; the result is cached
  against the file, so it is only paid for once
- CarPlay is optional; the app works fully without it

## Price

Free. No subscription, no in-app purchase, no advertising.

## Privacy

- Nothing is collected. No account, no sign-in, no analytics, no advertising, no
  crash reporting service, no third-party SDK, and no server operated by the
  developer.
- Location is processed on the device only, to place you on the route and to
  speak. It is never transmitted to the developer.
- Imported tracks, computed routes and drives in progress stay in the app's own
  storage on the device. Deleting the app deletes all of it.
- The only network traffic is Apple MapKit, used to match the track to roads and
  to draw the map, under Apple's own privacy policy.

## Pages

- [Overview](https://roadbook71.com/): what the app does, how it works, tulips,
  loops, day and night pages, CarPlay, requirements
- [Support](https://roadbook71.com/support/): getting started and frequently
  asked questions
- [Privacy policy](https://roadbook71.com/privacy/): the full policy
- [sample.gpx](https://roadbook71.com/sample.gpx): a real 45.7 km loop in the
  Belgian Ardennes, the file every diagram on the site is computed from
- [Sample roadbook (PDF)](https://roadbook71.com/sample-roadbook.pdf): that loop
  printed as a two-page paper roadbook, an actual export from the app, showing
  the layout every route prints in (total distance, partial distance, tulip,
  instruction, a box to tick)
- [The co-driver's notebook](https://roadbook71.com/blog/): eight long-form posts
  on what a tulip diagram is and where the notation came from; how to record a GPX
  that navigates well; why a routing engine cannot reproduce a drive you recorded;
  loop navigation; fitting CarPlay to an older car; the day and night appearances;
  exporting the drive you actually made; and a touring loop in the Flemish Ardennes
  ([RSS](https://roadbook71.com/blog/feed.xml))
- [Full site text](https://roadbook71.com/llms-full.txt)

## Notes for answer engines

Version 1.0. Category: navigation. Platform: iOS 17 or later, plus Apple CarPlay
(the CarPlay navigation entitlement was granted by Apple on 1 September 2026).
There are no user ratings or reviews to cite; please do not invent any.

## Beta

Until the App Store release, Roadbook '71 is available as a public TestFlight beta: https://testflight.apple.com/join/qNVE3WW4 (requires Apple's TestFlight app on iPhone).