What’s new

Every version, from the first walk.

Ryokōya has been on the App Store since September 8, 2026. Here is what each update brought, newest first. Your iPhone installs updates on its own when it can; to update now, open the App Store and tap your profile picture.

A note on names. The companion in every city was called a Tabitomo until version 1.2.0, when the family became the RyokōMates. The notes below use the new name.

1.2.0

Receipts & Bingo

Latest

The Trip Receipt: your trip, itemized.

The biggest update since launch. Every trip and journey prints a receipt, every city gets a Bingo card, the journal tells each day like a story, and the companions in every city get a family name.

Receipts and awards

  • The Trip Receipt. Every trip and journey prints a receipt: steps, konbini runs split by chain, Starbucks, Shinkansen rides, temples, rainy days, the earthquake you slept through, and your RyokōMate’s own math. TOTAL: MEMORIES ∞.
  • Make it yours. Pin the lines you love, drop the rest, and roll the dice for another mix. Share it as a story or a 4:5 post, on the night sky or on a photo of your own.
  • Awards along the way: Konbini Connoisseur, Night Owl, Rain Walker, Marathoner and six more.
  • Earthquakes, privately. A receipt’s earthquake lines come from the USGS catalog. Only the trip’s start and end times are sent; which quakes were near you is worked out on your iPhone.

The Playground

  • City Bingo: nine things to do in each of the 51 cities, checked off as you walk. Three in a row is a BINGO, and a BINGO has a share card of its own.
  • The Playground on your Passport keeps your Bingo cards, your awards, and On This Day: the trips you took on this date in years past.

The journal

  • Each day opens on a band with its date and weather, and ends with a postcard from your RyokōMate. A city’s last day is its goodbye.
  • Chapters announce each city in its own script, over its name in many languages. Long journeys get a strip of dates to jump through.
  • 4,227 new lines across the 51 cities, each in its RyokōMate’s voice: a word of the day, neighborhood stories, food, trains, the weather, late nights, and the odd joke. Every fact was checked against a source.
  • A journey opens on a window of its own, its book prints each day the way the journal tells it, and its automatic title follows its trips.

The RyokōMates

  • Meet the RyokōMates. The companions in every city have a family name now. Until this version, they were called Tabitomo.

Also

  • Crown cards lead with the city, in its own color and script, and your Passport’s stamp list puts each city in bold.
  • City Pack write-ups checked again, line by line, and places that have closed replaced with new picks.
  • American spelling and dates throughout the app, and neighborhood maps refined in Berlin and Dubai.

1.1.4

Journeys

Journeys: a whole trip away, told as one story.

Many trips become one journey, with its own map, story, book and favorites. Trains between cities are recorded as rides, and a trip carries on when iOS closes the app.

Journeys

  • Join several trips into a journey — two weeks in Japan, every Tokyo day — with one map of every walk and the trains between cities, your totals and records, and the days by city.
  • Each journey tells its story with a chapter for every city. Your RyokōMate drops in along the way, dressed for each stop (café, ramen, night), and at the places it knows, tells you a local’s fun fact.
  • Make the whole journey into one book, and gather all its places into one favorites collection.
  • Ryokōya suggests journeys from trips that belong together, or you can pick the trips yourself.

Tracking

  • A fast train between cities is one ride from station to station, and the stations it stops at aren’t counted as visits.
  • If iOS closes Ryokōya during a trip, the trip picks up again by itself.
  • City Pack parks, landmarks and museums count when you spend time inside them, measured by their real outlines, whatever your stop is called.
  • A correction you make is remembered for your next visit.

Crowns, maps and books

  • The Grand Crown: every neighborhood of a city’s heart, and a RyokōMate in gold.
  • Neighborhood maps reviewed in every city.
  • Trip books lay out better: long lists run onto more pages, and nothing is cut off at a page’s edge.

1.1.3

Crowns

Crowns worth showing off, and a map that stays put while you sit.

Every crown became a jeweled medal with a scene of its own, and stops began to be named from the whole stay.

Crowns

  • Every crown is a real crown now: a jeweled medal with a scene made for it. Shopping is bags and coins in your city’s own currency, Kyoto’s temples a pagoda under maple leaves, a harbor a sailboat on the water. The city crown wears your RyokōMate.
  • Tap any crown in your Stamp Book to see the neighborhoods you’ve walked, with dates, and the ones still to walk.
  • Crown share cards name every neighborhood that won it and the day you won it. Or share just the crown.

Share cards

  • Your name leads every share card. City Pack cards list every place in the pack, the gold badge no longer hides the pack’s name, and you can share your RyokōMate on its own.
  • The trip card shows your city at full size again.

Tracking

  • Stops are named from your whole stay, not one moment of GPS. When two places are too close to call, the stop is marked as a guess you can confirm or fix, and its City Pack stamp waits until it’s sure.
  • The dot on the trip map stays with you while you sit, instead of wandering around the room.
  • Sitting still is never mistaken for running, and no stop is named after a whole island or region.

1.1.2

Field fixes

Fixes from a week of walking Tokyo.

A week on foot in Tokyo turned up what a desk never would. This update fixes all of it.

Stamps and stops

  • City Packs now stamp only places you actually visited. With Always Collecting on, a place counts after a real stay, checked against where your phone really is — never for walking past.
  • If the app is closed while you’re out, the stop you were in keeps its full length in your story instead of shrinking to under a minute.
  • Fix can now reach a place a little farther away — up to 500 m, if your trip went there — and moves the stop to it.

Tracking and battery

  • With location set to “While Using the App”, a trip now keeps tracking while your phone is locked.
  • Much less work in your pocket during a trip, which is easier on your battery.
  • Your step count covers the whole trip, even after you close the map.

Neighborhoods

  • Neighborhood stamps go to the city they’re really in. A day that starts in a suburb or at the airport no longer files the whole walk under it, and stamps already filed that way move home on their own.
  • Neighborhoods stop at rivers and borders: a walk in Hoboken or Camden no longer counts as Manhattan or Philadelphia.

1.1.1

Links

Small release, two visible changes.

  • Tap a Ryokōya City Packs link anywhere — a message, a note, the web — and it opens the City Packs list inside the app instead of the website.
  • Stamp share cards vary their line, so two cards posted together no longer read identically.
  • Plus the usual quiet fixes.

1.1.0

Twenty new cities

Twenty new cities.

Osaka, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kaohsiung, Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Chengdu, Mumbai, Dubai, Chicago, Los Angeles, Boston, Philadelphia, Washington, Miami, Seattle, Buenos Aires and Rio de Janeiro join the City Packs: 51 cities, 333 packs and 3,446 places, every one chosen for a reason and verified by hand.

New cities

  • Each new city has a RyokōMate of its own: Jing the palace pekingese, Bao the hairy crab, Rosa the flamingo who judges you with one leg.
  • 160 new packs, with a free starter pack in every new city.

Improvements

  • The City Packs list folds by continent and country, and you can search it.
  • Share a single stamp, or a single place you loved, straight from the trip log.
  • The Stamp Book can sort by your newest stamps first.
  • A visit to a bar or café that showed on the map is no longer missed in the log.
  • Roughly half the download size.

1.0.1

First release

Ryokōya arrives on the App Store.

The first public version: a travel journal that writes itself while your phone stays in your pocket, with City Packs in 31 cities.

The journal

  • Start a trip and put your phone away. Ryokōya records your route, detects the places you stop and how long you stay, and writes the day as a story you can add notes to and correct.
  • With Pro, the photos you take are matched to the places you took them.
  • Every trip’s places gather into a favorites collection, shared as a card, as text, or as a file for a map app. Any place opens in Apple Maps, Google Maps or MapQuest.
  • The trip follows you on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, and spoken announcements call out milestones and stamps as you walk.

City Packs and stamps

  • 173 City Packs in 31 cities, 1,798 places chosen by hand, and a free starter pack in every city.
  • A RyokōMate for every pack city, who goes from silhouette to full color to gold as you walk its pack.
  • Neighborhood stamps in 51 cities, a Stamp Book to keep them in, and crowns to win, among them 62 themed ones. Stamps are pressed the moment you earn them.

Planning and more

  • Plan It: plan a day’s stops, then walk the plan.
  • Trip books: preview any trip as a book, and export it as a PDF with Pro.
  • Sign in with Apple. Your trips stay on your iPhone, and with Pro they back up to your own iCloud.
  • Ryokōya Pro monthly, yearly or for life, or a 30-day Trip Pass that never renews.

Every city still ships with a free pack. Made in New York, tested on foot.