What's new

The planner now warns you before a national park

Dogs are not allowed in Australian national parks. Not on a lead, not carried, not even sitting in the car with the windows up, and the fines are real. It is the single easiest way to ruin a road trip, because the park boundary is rarely obvious when you are typing a destination into a planner.

So the route planner now checks every stop you enter against the boundaries of more than 750 national parks across the country, from Kakadu down to Southwest Tasmania. If one of your stops lands inside a park, you get a plain warning naming the park before you commit to the trip, with time to pick a spot outside the boundary or line up a sitter or boarding kennel for that leg. No warning means none of your stops are inside one. State forests and most conservation reserves are different rules and stay out of it.

Tapped through to book? We will ask how it went

Most of our dog policies start as "not confirmed yet", and the people who can fix that are the ones who actually stayed. So if you are signed in and tap through to a caravan park's booking page, or a free camp's details, Muttmates now checks back a few days later with one question: did they let the dog stay? One tap answers it, with an optional note like "powered sites only" or "had to book ahead".

It is the same quick question we already ask the morning after a planned stay, just reaching the far bigger group who book and go without ever logging a plan. You will only ever get it once per place, never for somewhere the policy is already confirmed, and it respects your quiet hours like everything else. Every answer turns a grey "ring ahead" into a real yes or no for the next travelling owner.

Free camps and rest areas, 3,000 of them

The big one for the travelling crew: Muttmates now lists about 640 free camps and 2,650 highway rest areas across every state, alongside the caravan parks. They show up in Places under the Caravan parks & camping chip, each with its own badge so you can tell a free camp from a paid park at a glance, and each has its own page with the map, the dog policy as far as we know it, and a More details link where the camp has one.

The road trip planner uses them too. Free camps are offered as overnight stops along with the caravan parks, and rest areas come up as leg-stretch breaks on the way, but the planner will never tell you to spend the night at a rest area. We have kept national park campgrounds out on purpose: dogs are banned in national parks, so a "free camp" there is a fine for you and no walk for the dog. For the rest, most policies are not confirmed yet, so check the signs when you pull in, and tap the paw when you are there so the next owner knows.

Book your overnight stay in one tap

Caravan park pages, and the overnight suggestions in the road trip planner, now carry a proper "Book or check availability" button. One tap takes you straight to the park's own booking page or website, with the phone number still right there for the ring-ahead about the dog.

The link goes out through Muttmates, so each stay can see how many travelling dog owners we send their way. That matters more than it sounds: it is how we show operators that dog-friendly policies pay, and it nudges the ones sitting on the fence. Nothing changes for you, no detours and no accounts, just the fastest path from "this one looks good" to a booked site.

Lost-dog alerts, from the people most likely to help

It is the worst five minutes of dog ownership: the gate was open, the storm hit, and your dog is gone. From today, Muttmates turns that panic into a search party. Open your dog's profile, tap "Send an alert", drop a pin where they were last seen, and add a word on what happened and the best number to ring.

The moment it goes in, your packs and your dog's best mates get pinged, straight away, even during their quiet hours, because they chose your dog and minutes matter. Members who live nearby see the alert too, on their home screen and as a notification, so the eyes closest to the last-seen spot know what to look for. The alert page shows the photo, the pin on a map and your number, and your number is only ever shown to signed-in members.

When your dog turns up, one tap on "found" closes the alert and tells everyone the good news. We hope you never need it. If you do, it is already there.

We'll ask how your visit went

Check in at a park, a beach or a dog-friendly venue, and the next morning Muttmates asks one question: how was it? Tap through and you land straight on the stars, where a rating, a comment or a photo from your visit helps the next owner pick a place.

It is one ask, not a campaign. You will never hear it more than once a week, and never about a place you have already rated or written about. Caravan parks keep their own morning-after question about whether the dog was welcome, exactly as before.

See which parks have dogs there right now

When someone taps "I'm at the park now", Muttmates has always told their park's followers and mates. From today the whole Places screen gets the hint too. Any park, beach or spot with dogs there right now shows a live "there now" count on the list, and hovering its pin on the map says the same. So instead of opening parks one by one hoping for company, you can see at a glance where the action is and head straight there.

The count only reflects check-ins shared with the whole park. A catch-up posted to a pack, or to best mates only, stays exactly as private as it was: no count, no trace. And a check-in quietly drops off once its time is up, so the number is live, not leftovers from this morning.

Cafes, pubs and wineries, with the dog

Muttmates now knows about more than 1,000 dog-friendly venues across Australia: cafes, pubs, breweries, wineries and distilleries. Flip on the new "Cafes, pubs & wineries" layer on the Places screen and they appear on the map with their own cup pin, right next to the parks and beaches.

Where a venue has publicly confirmed dogs are welcome, we say so, and we say where that came from. Some welcome dogs in the outdoor area only, or on a lead, and the venue's page spells that out. Most places have never published a policy either way, so for those the page says the honest thing: ring ahead before you go. Where the venue has a listed phone number or website, it sits right at the top of the page for exactly that call.

They show up in the road trip planner too, as optional stops. Your route still defaults to parks and beaches; add a venue when lunch should be somewhere the dog can come.

The planner now plans your nights too

Until today the road trip planner treated every trip as one long day: stops every couple of hours, then you arrive. Fine for Brisbane to Byron, useless for Brisbane to Melbourne with a van on the back.

Now you tell the planner how long you want to drive each day: 4, 5, 6 or 8 hours, whatever suits you and the dog. It splits the trip into days and, near the end of each one, suggests up to three dog-friendly caravan parks close to the route. Places that have confirmed dogs are welcome come first, each with its phone number and website so you can ring ahead and book a site. Stays that have told us dogs are not allowed never show up at all.

The nights print on your route sheet too, so "where are we sleeping" is answered before you leave the driveway. Your first route stays free, and on a locked route you still see the first night in full.

One price now unlocks the whole planner

The road trip planner used to charge per route: $4.99 each time you wanted the full stop list for a trip. That felt like being asked for your wallet over and over, so we changed it. One one-off payment of $9.99 now unlocks the planner itself. Every route you plan from that day on, and every route you saved before it, opens in full. Forever. Still not a subscription, still nothing that renews, and still no card needed for your very first route, which stays free so you can see exactly what you are paying for.

Anyone who already paid for a route under the old pricing has been upgraded to the full planner unlock automatically, at no cost. Plan as many trips as the dog can handle.

The road trip planner grew into your big screen

Until now the planner looked the same on a 27 inch monitor as it did on a phone: one narrow column with a little map squeezed between the form fields. Fine on the couch, a waste of a desk.

On a laptop or desktop the planner is now a proper split view. All the controls sit in a column on the left, and the map takes the whole rest of the window. Before you type anything it shows the whole of Australia, waiting. Type a start and a destination and the trip draws itself across the big map, pins and all. Hover over a stop in the list and its pin lights up on the map, so you always know which dot is which.

If you have not unlocked the planner yet, the locked stops show as grey pins on the map and blurred lines in the list, so you can see how much of the trip is waiting for you. Nothing changes on your phone, the planner there is the same one you already know.

The wall: your places, socially

Muttmates just got its social side. Under the tile grid on your home screen there is now a wall called "From your places". It gathers the last fortnight of photos and notes from every place you follow, and that means every kind of place, not only parks. Follow a dog beach, a caravan park, a kennel or your vet, and what people post there lands on your wall too.

You can post to it straight from home. Tap "Share a photo or a note", pick the place, say the thing, attach a photo if you have one. Your post shows on that place's own page and on the wall of everyone who follows it, one post, both places.

And because a good post deserves a nod, every post now has a paw button. One tap says "good dog", another tap takes it back. Anything that should not be there has a Report button that sends it to our team, your own posts keep their Remove button, and pack admins can still tidy up their park's page.

The place picker in the home composer searches the whole catalogue, not only the places you follow, so yesterday's park counts too. And every place page now has a "Share a photo or a note" button right next to Get directions that drops you straight into the comment box, no scrolling to the bottom to find it. The wall opens with a proper "Share a moment with the pack..." box, your dog's face next to it, right at the top. The prompt inside asks for the best moment of the visit, zoomies, new mates, a top stick, because the wall is for the good stuff first.

The home screen now shows you everything the app can do

Signed in, the home screen used to be your park feed and not much else. Every other feature, the road trip planner, dog sitters, mates, packs and walking groups, was hidden behind the tab bar or a park page, and plenty of people never found them. The home screen now has a "What do you want to do?" section with six clear tiles, each with a one-line explanation: post a park plan, parks and beaches, the road trip planner, packs and walking groups, mates, and dog sitters. Your live park feed stays right at the top where it was. One glance and you know what Muttmates does.

A front door that shows you what's behind it

The old muttmates.au front page was a straight pitch: our name, a line about who's at the park, and a button to sign up. If you weren't ready to make an account yet, that was pretty much it.

Now the first thing you see is four things you can actually do with Muttmates, each with its own photo: find dog parks and beaches, plan a dog-friendly road trip, see who's at the park, or meet other dog owners. Finding parks and planning a trip open straight away, no account needed, same as always. Seeing who's at the park is the actual heart of Muttmates, so that one takes you straight to sign-up. Meeting other dog owners is about packs, private groups you join by invite, so before that one asks you to sign up it tells you what a pack actually is, so you know what you're joining before you're asked to join it.

Nothing about where these live has changed. Places is still at /parks, the route planner is still at /routeplanner, and so on. Only the front door changed, not the rooms behind it.

Why we're asking, right there on the sign-up form

The sign-up and email-link screens now explain themselves: why an account is needed at all when finding parks and planning a road trip never asked for one, why the social side has to know who you are, and where your dog's profile and saved routes actually live. Signing in to look at your own stuff again still skips straight past it, you already know why you have an account.

The road trip planner now says the price up front

Building a route, the distance, the driving time and the first few stops, has always been free with no account needed, and unlocking the full stop list for each trip has always been a one-off $4.99 you pay once and keep for that trip. That was only ever explained once you'd already built a route and hit the unlock button. Now it's the first thing you read on the planner, first route free included, before you type a single address.

(Since 14 October the pricing itself has changed: one $9.99 payment now unlocks the whole planner. See the entry above.)

More of the park before the sign-up panel starts

The welcome screen's photo used to get covered by the sign-up panel almost straight away. It now sits lower, so more of the park photo shows before the cream panel and its four cards start, without changing anything about what's on the panel itself.

A new badge for the pack

Muttmates now carries a new circular mark, the ink-sketch dog in a green and gold ring, in place of the old logo. You'll see it everywhere the old one was: the app icon on your home screen, the browser tab, the share card when a link gets posted somewhere. It's the same dog, just drawn properly.

Leave a note for whoever minds your dog

Every dog's profile now has a spot for care notes: temperament, food, medication, whatever a sitter needs to know. Type it in once from "Edit profile" and it's saved for next time.

These notes stay private until they matter. Nobody browsing an open sitter post can see them, not even someone who has offered to help. The moment you accept a sitter for that dog, the notes appear on the post for them, and only them, so the right information reaches the right person at the right time, not before.

Plan a road trip with the dog, and Muttmates' first paid extra

Everything on Muttmates has been free, and almost all of it still is. This one's an optional extra: a road trip planner that builds a stop list along an actual driving route, not just places somewhere near the postcode.

Open "Road trip planner" from Settings, tell it where you're starting and where you're headed, and Muttmates works out the real driving line and checks which off-leash parks, dog beaches and caravan parks sit close to it, ordered by how near they are to the road. Building that list, the distance, the driving time, the first three stops, costs nothing and needs no account.

Want the whole list? Unlocking it is a one-off $4.99 per route, not a subscription. Pay once for a trip and it's yours to keep, saved under a new Billing page (Settings, then Billing) alongside every other purchase you make on Muttmates, whatever it turns out to be for. Payment runs through Stripe, we never see or store a card number, and a route only unlocks once Stripe actually confirms the payment.

Road trips can now have more than two ends

The road trip planner used to be strictly start and finish, nothing in between. Real trips aren't like that, so now they don't have to be on Muttmates either.

Add up to six stops along the way with "+ Add a stop", not just the start and the end, an overnight at a caravan park, a lunch stop, a second town you're passing through. Muttmates works out one continuous driving route through all of them in order and checks for dog parks, beaches and caravan parks near every leg, not just the first and last.

A paid route is still yours to change

Bought a route and the trip's changed since? Open it and the map is live again, not just a picture. Drag a stop to move it, tap the map to add one, or use a stop's pin to take it off the trip. Save changes and it's the same route, updated, no second payment.

Start and finish stay put on purpose, changing where a trip begins or ends is really a different trip, so that still means planning and paying for a new one. Everything in between is yours to rework as often as the trip does.

Take a paid route with you

Two new ways to use a route once it's paid for, right under the map.

"Print directions" builds a plain, step-by-step sheet, one line per turn, distance included, and opens your browser's print dialog. Print it, or choose "Save as PDF" there for a copy on your phone, no extra app needed.

"Open in Google Maps" hands the whole trip, start, every stop, finish, to Google Maps in one go, ready for live turn-by-turn from wherever you are right now.

Pace your stops instead of a long list of everything nearby

The stop list on a road trip used to be every dog park, beach and caravan park within 5 km of the road, sorted by distance, which on a long trip meant scrolling through more places than anyone actually needs.

Before you plan the route, choose how often you'd stop anyway: every hour, every hour and a half, every two hours (the default), every three or every four. Muttmates then picks one good stop near each break, not everything along the way, so the list matches how a real drive actually goes. Change a saved route's stops later and it keeps pacing them the same way you chose the first time.

Re-pace a route you already bought

Bought a route before break pacing existed, or just want a longer or shorter run between stops now? Open it and there's a "Stop for a break" picker right under the map, the same one you get when planning a new trip. Pick a new interval and tap "Update stops" and Muttmates re-works the stop list at that pace, phone numbers and websites included, without touching your start or finish.

Ring ahead, from the map or from the printed sheet

Every stop on a road trip now shows its phone number and website where we have one, tap a marker on the map and it's right there in the popup, tap or call straight from the on-screen stop list, or find it printed on the turn-by-turn sheet if you're taking a paper copy with you. Planning a call ahead to check a caravan park's got a site free no longer means leaving the trip screen to go searching.

A short description for the stops that have one

Where we hold a description or notes for a stop, caravan park, off-leash area or vet clinic, it now shows on the road trip stop list and on the printed sheet, right above the phone number and website. Not every stop has one yet, this rolls out as descriptions get added, but where it's there, it's one less thing to look up before you leave.

See the trip on the map, and drag it into shape

The planner now shows the whole route on a map as you build it: your stops, the driving line between them, and the dog-friendly places along the way, once you've unlocked them.

Not happy with exactly where a stop lands? Drag its pin and drop it where you actually mean. Want to add a stop without typing an address? Tap anywhere on the map and it's added to the end of the trip. Each stop past the start and finish also gets a "Remove this stop" option right on its pin, so trimming a trip down doesn't mean retyping the ones you're keeping.

Choose what kind of stop you actually want

Not every road trip needs a vet on the list. Before you plan a route, or any time you re-pace one you've already paid for, tick which kinds of stop you want, parks, beaches, caravan parks, kennels, vets, and Muttmates only brings back that kind. Travelling with a dog who's never sick a day in her life? Leave vets unticked and they won't clutter the list.

Timing built for towing, not for a car on its own

Every time and distance a road trip shows, the driving hours, the pace between breaks, the trip-meter readings on the printed sheet, is now worked out at 90 km/h, a realistic speed for a car towing a caravan, not the faster pace a plain car would run. A trip that used to read like an unladen highway run now reads like the actual drive.

A brake spot even where nothing dog-friendly is nearby

Break pacing used to skip a stretch of road entirely if no park, beach or caravan park sat close enough to the chosen break interval, leaving a long gap in an otherwise evenly paced list. Now every break gets a mark on the map and in the stop list, "Anticipated brake location", either at a real dog-friendly place nearby, or, if there's genuinely nothing close, a plain point on the road itself with roughly how far into the trip it falls. Either way, you know where the plan expects you to stop, not just how far you've got left to guess.

Your own stops show up on the printed sheet too

Drag a stop into place or tap the map to add one, and it's not just on the live map any more, the printed sheet now opens with a line naming every stop you added yourself, right under the trip summary. Combined with the "Update stops" pacing and the new brake markers, a printed route now shows the whole picture: the places you chose, and the places Muttmates suggests to break the drive up.

Pick exactly which stops make the trip, and take them with you

Every stop on the list now has a tick box. Untick the ones you don't need and the printed sheet and the Google Maps hand-off both update to match, only the stops you actually ticked go with you, nothing else.

The printed sheet got a lot more useful while we were at it. Each stop now carries everything we know about it: dog policy, what's on site, opening hours, its rating, its full address, how far it sits off the road, and a booking link if it has one. Long list of stops? The sheet now breaks into pages of four, and each page gets its own little map at the top showing just the stops on that page, so you're never squinting at a map with forty pins to find the one you're standing near.

A full-page map, and a trip meter that matches your dashboard

The printed sheet now opens with one full page showing every stop you ticked, numbered on a single map, with a table underneath listing each one's name, kind, and a trip meter reading in kilometres. Set your car's trip meter to zero when you leave, and the table tells you roughly where it should read by the time you reach each stop, so you know how you're tracking without pulling out your phone.

Every page of a printed route now also carries your name and an order number, a small mark in the corner of each map, and a note that the copy is printed for you. It's mostly there so a paid route stays a paid route: a copy that's clearly yours is one you'll think twice about handing to a stranger. The small Muttmates mark in the corner of every map is there for the opposite reason, so if a copy does end up somewhere else, whoever finds it knows exactly where a proper route planner like this one comes from.

Need a sitter? Ask your pack, your park, or everyone

Sometimes you just need someone to keep an eye on your dog for a couple of hours, a shop run, a swim, a look around town without the dog in tow. Or maybe you're happy to be that someone for another traveller.

Post a request or an offer with a start time and how long you'll need, and choose who sees it: your pack, everyone at this park, or both at once. Pack first if you want a familiar face, park if you want more options, or tick both and let whoever answers first sort it out.

Replies come in with a note from each person, and you pick one to accept. Once you do, that's your sitter, everyone else's offer closes automatically, and the post is marked matched. Simple, and it stays inside the same trust you already built by joining a pack or following a park, nobody sees a request unless they're one of the people you actually opened it up to.

Find a vet without leaving the app

If you're at a park, a caravan spot, a beach or a kennel and your dog needs a vet, Muttmates now shows you the three nearest clinics right there on the page: name, how far away, opening hours where we have them, and a phone number you can tap to call straight away. No separate search, no leaving the app to find out who's open.

Every vet clinic also gets its own page, with contact details, a map and directions, the same as any place you'd look up on Muttmates. Nearly a thousand clinics around the country are in there already.

Nearly a thousand vet clinics, right next to your dog parks

Muttmates now lists 986 vet clinics across the country, alongside the dog parks, beaches and caravan parks you already use it for. Find one fast wherever the van's parked, not after you're already searching, the phone number and directions are right there on the page.

Know a vet clinic we don't have? Add it

The "Add a place" button on Places now takes vet clinics too, not just parks, beaches, caravan parks and kennels. Fill in the name and address, and we'll check it before it goes live, same as everything else you send us.

Vets get their own filter, and a phone number when you tell us about one

Tap "Vets" on the Places filter chips and the list narrows to vet clinics only, same as Parks, Beaches, Caravan parks and Kennels already do.

And if you're the one telling us about a vet clinic we haven't got, "Add a place" now asks for the phone number too, so the one we add can actually be rung, not just found.

Vets stand out on the map now, and most have a phone number and website

Vet clinics used to show up on the map as a plain green tree, same as every park, so you couldn't tell a vet from a park at a glance. Vets now get their own red cross icon.

We've also gone through and filled in the phone number and website for almost all 986 vet clinics on Muttmates, 885 now have a phone number and 875 a website. Tap through to a vet's page and there's a real number to ring, not a blank.

What's new, right on the home screen

Open the app now and the home screen tells you what's changed, not just what's coming up. A "What's new" list sits above your plans, showing the last five things that happened anywhere in the catalogue this week: a new stay or camping area going in, or a park getting its dog policy confirmed one way or the other. Tap any of them and you're straight on that park's page. Nothing older than a week, so it never turns into a scroll.

Notification count actually matches what you see

If you had a red number on your Profile tab but the Best mates row still said "(0)" and nothing seemed to be there, that was a real gap, not you missing something. Best mates now shows how many new notifications are waiting right there next to the mate count, so the number on the tab and the number on the screen agree, and tapping through always shows you something.

Share a plan in one tap

Heading down and want your group to know? Open the plan and tap "Share to the group". Muttmates writes the post for you, who's going, where, and when, with a link straight to the park, then hands it to your phone's own share sheet so you can drop it into Facebook, Messenger or a group chat. No share sheet on your phone or browser? It copies to your clipboard instead, ready to paste.

A proper preview when you share a park

Paste a park link into Facebook, Messenger or WhatsApp now and you get a card, not a bare blue link: the park's name and what's happening there right now, dogs there this minute if there are any, or the next plan if there aren't. It's a small thing, but it's the difference between someone scrolling past and someone actually tapping through to see who's going.

A photo on the park wall, and admins who can keep it tidy

Comments on a park page can now carry one photo, so "watch the gate latch, it sticks" comes with a picture of the gate, not just the words. Tap "Add a photo" under the comment box before you post.

And because a wall is only as good as its upkeep, the admins of any pack pinned to that park can now remove a post that shouldn't be there, not just their own. You'll see "Remove (pack admin)" instead of "Remove" on a post that isn't yours, so it's clear when a post comes down by admin call rather than the poster's own choice.

Know before you go: real dog policies, not a guess

Caravan parks and kennels used to show the same plain marker whether a place had confirmed dogs are welcome, confirmed they're not, or nobody had ever asked. Not any more.

Every stay and kennel in the list now carries one of three badges, so you can tell at a glance:

• Dogs OK. The operator has confirmed it, and we show where that came from and when.
• Dogs OK · members. No operator confirmation yet, but members who actually stayed there said yes, with a running count so you can see how many.
• Ring ahead. Nobody has confirmed either way. We show the phone number right there in the list when we have one, so checking takes one call, not a search.

Results are sorted so confirmed places come first within roughly the same distance, member-confirmed next, and unconfirmed places last, without burying a park three streets away behind one an hour further on.

New filter: Only show places that take dogs, sitting right above the list whenever you're browsing stays or kennels. Switch it on and the list narrows to confirmed and member-confirmed places only, nothing left to ring and find out the hard way.

Behind the badges, we also widened what "dog policy" can actually mean. Real parks aren't a simple yes or no, plenty only allow dogs on powered sites, cap it at two dogs, or block them over the Christmas and Easter break. Where we know the detail, the park page now shows it plainly instead of flattening it into a single tick.

And after a stay at a place we didn't have confirmed, Muttmates now asks the simple question the morning after: "Did they let your dog stay?", with your dog's name right in it. One tap of Yes or No, and an optional couple of conditions if you want to add them, updates the badge for the next traveller. That one honest answer from one member does more for the next person driving in tired with a dog in the back than any amount of us guessing.

Kennel and sitter pages that answer the actual question

Nobody's organising a playdate at a boarding kennel. A kennel or sitter page used to look exactly like a park page anyway, "who's going", "post a plan here", empty and a bit strange for a place you're leaving your dog at while you're away.

Not any more. Open a kennel or sitter now and the phone number is the first thing on the page, tap it and you're calling. Hours are right there too, and if we know what they ask you to bring, a "What to bring" card tells you straight up, a vaccination certificate, whether you need to book ahead, how many dogs they'll take at once. Ratings and comments from owners who've actually used the place are still there. The playdate buttons are gone, because they never belonged on this page.

Times that make sense wherever you are

Australia has five time zones and Brisbane and Sydney split by an hour for half the year. That used to mean a plan time or a reminder was worked out from wherever the app happened to be running, not from where the plan actually was.

Not any more. A plan now shows the time at the park it's at. If you're checking it from somewhere else, you'll see that place's time first, with your own time underneath in brackets so you always know how far off you are. A 7:00am plan at a Dayboro park still reads 7:00am if you're standing there, and 7:00am (5:00am your time) if your phone is set to Perth.

Reminders and "someone's heading down" pushes work the same way now too, they tell you the time at the park, not the time on the sender's phone. And when you're posting a plan, the quick-time buttons offer the next few round half hours at that park, not wherever you happen to be typing from.

Quiet hours are the one thing that still goes by your own phone, on purpose. A plan happens at a place, but a good night's sleep happens to you, wherever you are.

Save maps for offline use

If you're travelling with your dog, turn on Traveller mode in Settings, then search a postcode on Places and tap "Save this area for offline". Muttmates downloads the map for about 50 km around that spot, so it still works with no signal, at the caravan park or out of range. You can cancel a download partway through, and remove a saved area later from Settings.

Saved maps stay under control

Muttmates now keeps the maps it saves on your phone under a fixed size, and shows you exactly how much space they're using in Settings, under "Saved areas". If you ever want the space back, "Clear saved maps" wipes them in one tap. Maps for parks you follow come back automatically as you use the app.

The map still helps you when it can't load

If our map server has a bad moment, Muttmates won't leave you looking at a blank grey box. You'll see the park's name, its suburb, and a "Get directions" button that opens your phone's own map app straight away, so you can still get there even while ours is having trouble.