FerryFriend

Review by eFreeware

If you live on or travel to an island in Puget Sound, the ferry is not a scenic extra in your day. It is the appointment everything else gets planned around. FerryFriend is built for that reality: a travel app from True Course LLC that gathers schedules and operational detail for Washington State Ferries, Kitsap Transit Fast Ferries and King County Water Taxi into a single place, with the kinds of signals regular riders care about before they commit to a sailing.

The pitch is not just timetables. The developer promises delay predictions and demand forecasts, so you can see not only when a boat is scheduled but how late it might run and how full it might be. Around that core sit notifications for delays, departures, arrivals, loading and reservation availability, plus a live vessel map, terminal line cameras and stored ferry tickets. For someone who crosses the water several times a week, that is a lot of the guesswork in one app.

Planning a crossing before you leave the house

The most obvious job for FerryFriend is answering a simple question: which sailing should I aim for? Schedules for the covered terminals are the foundation, and the app layers context on top. Tide warnings and vessel load indicators appear in the schedule itself, so a sailing is not just a time but a set of conditions. If you have ever stood in a line wondering whether the next boat had room, the drive-up space availability and historical filling trends are the features that speak to that experience.

Reservation availability is handled inline, with the ability to book from the app. That matters most on routes where a reservation is the difference between catching a boat and waiting for the one after. The developer also says you can scan, save and share your Washington State Ferries tickets inside FerryFriend, which turns the app into a place to keep the paperwork as well as read it.

What I like about this arrangement is that it mirrors how riders actually think. You do not check the schedule and then go find a camera and then go find a ticket. You want to know whether to leave now, whether the line is backed up, and whether your booking is in order. FerryFriend puts those answers close together, which is the main argument for using it over a plain schedule page.

When the schedule changes under you

Ferry travel is most stressful when plans move. A delayed sailing, a full boat, a reservation that opens up late — these are the moments when a static timetable stops being useful. Travel alerts arrive as push notifications and can be snoozed or filtered by day of week, a small detail that matters if you only care about alerts on the days you actually commute.

The live vessel map adds another layer, showing vessel status along with departure and arrival times and vessel specifications. There is a difference between knowing a boat is running late and seeing where it currently is, and the map is aimed at the second kind of question. Terminal line cameras, plotted on a map, let you check the queue before you arrive rather than after you have committed to the drive.

None of this replaces judgment, and it is worth treating the forecasts as guidance rather than certainty. Still, the combination of alerts, a live map and cameras is what makes the app feel aimed at people who need to react to changing conditions rather than people who consult a schedule once a season.

Getting set up and what it needs

FerryFriend is free to download, carries no ads, and offers in-app purchases. It covers departing terminals across the region, from Anacortes, Bainbridge Island and Bremerton through Edmonds, Mukilteo, Seattle, Vashon Island, West Seattle and out to Friday Harbor, the San Juan islands and Sidney, B.C. The full list runs to roughly two dozen terminals, so most riders in the region will find their usual departure point represented.

The app supports starring favorite routes, which puts schedules and predictions on the home screen for quick access. Dark mode and 24-hour time are available for anyone who prefers either. Cached schedules remain available offline, which the developer notes is useful even when the Washington State Ferries servers are down — a sensible safeguard for an app whose whole value depends on being readable when you need it.

I would not expect a complicated onboarding. That is simply the scope of the app rather than a flaw.

Who gets the most from it

For that person, the combination of predictions, notifications, cameras and drive-up trends is directly useful, and the ability to store tickets in the same place removes a small but recurring annoyance.

Occasional travelers will find value too, particularly the live vessel map and line cameras, which answer questions a timetable cannot. But the app's center of gravity is operational detail, and the more often you sail, the more of that detail you will actually use. With a 4.7 average from a modest number of ratings and more than 10,000 installs, it has found an audience without pretending to be a mass-market travel tool.

It is also regional by design. The data comes from Kitsap Transit, King County Water Taxi and Washington State Ferries. The app makes no attempt to be a general-purpose transit companion.

A focused companion for Puget Sound crossings

FerryFriend does one thing and does it with a lot of operational texture. Schedules, delay predictions, demand forecasts, notifications, a live vessel map, line cameras, reservation availability, ticket storage and offline cached schedules are all aimed at the same rider: someone whose day is shaped by boats. The free download with no ads keeps the barrier low.

If you cross Puget Sound regularly, this is the kind of app that earns a place on your home screen, especially once you star your usual routes. If you ride a ferry a few times a year, the cameras and live map still have something to offer, but the deeper features will sit unused. Either way, the scope is honest: it covers three operators and their terminals, and it covers them thoroughly.

What's new in version 5.6.1

Bug fixes