Android 8.0 and up

Compass GD

A compass that tells you when it is lying. Most phone compasses point confidently in the wrong direction next to a speaker or a charging cable. This one measures the field it is standing in and says so.

$0.99 — one time

No subscription. No ads. No account.

What it does

The dial

Turns with the world while the needle holds north, the way a real card compass does. The amber index at twelve o'clock reads your heading. Every letter is upright when you face it.

True north

Corrected by the local declination — 14° in Spokane, over 20° in parts of Alaska. Ignoring it there will walk you off a ridge.

Eight faces

Midnight, Carbon, Blueprint, Brass, Crimson, Forest, Rose Gold and Arctic. The picker shows live dials, not colour swatches.

Waypoints

Mark where you parked. A marker on the rim points back to it with the distance, updating as you walk.

Sun and moon

Bearing and height for both, drawn on the dial — hollow when below the horizon — with the moon's phase and how much of it is lit.

Position

Coordinates in decimal or degrees/minutes/seconds, altitude in feet, speed in mph, and the GPS accuracy next to them. Share your position to any app.

Honesty check

Measured field strength and dip angle against what the Earth's own model says they should be where you stand. Beside a desk speaker the test phone read 42° of dip where the truth is 68° — and the heading was 75° wrong.

The right advice

A magnet stuck to your phone and a speaker on your desk need opposite fixes. The app tells them apart: wave it in a figure 8, or move away.

Offline

Declination, sun, moon, bearings and distances are all computed on the device. No internet permission at all — it works at the bottom of a canyon.

History

Headings you actually held, with the time and for how long. Not every twitch on the way round.

Pricing

One purchase Compass GD $0.99 Buy once. Yours.

Every feature above
No subscription, ever
No ads
No account
No internet permission

Get it on Google Play

Link goes live when the listing is published.

Other compass apps charge $14.99 a week for true north, themes, waypoints and no advertisements. This one is ninety-nine cents, once, with all of it included.

What it is not

Not a map. It is an instrument — bearings, not navigation.
It cannot correct interference, only detect it. A magnet fixed to the phone is absorbed by calibration automatically. A speaker on the desk stays put while the phone moves, which leaves one measurement and two unknowns — not solvable, only escapable. The app says which one you have.
Location is optional and never asked for at launch. The needle works without it; coordinates, true north, waypoints and the sky do not.