REVER - Motorcycle GPS & Rides

Review by eFreeware

Most navigation apps are built to get you somewhere as quickly as possible. REVER is built around the opposite idea: that the ride itself is the point, and that a route is worth saving, sharing and repeating. The developer presents it as a GPS tool and community aimed at riders of motorcycles, snowmobiles and off-road vehicles, and that framing shapes everything it does.

That makes it a natural fit for riders who treat a Saturday as an excuse to find a road they have not ridden before, whether that is a paved canyon run, a forest service trail on an ATV, a snowmobile loop or a 4x4 track. If you mostly want turn-by-turn directions to an address, the app's priorities will feel different from what you need. If you want a record of where you have been and a way to discover where to go next, the pitch is much more convincing.

REVER has been on Google Play since May 2015 and shows over a million installs with a 4.4 average across 17,068 ratings. Those numbers suggest a settled, widely used tool rather than a new experiment, which matters when you are deciding whether to put your riding history into it.

Finding routes worth riding

The core of the app is a catalog of routes the developer describes as hand-picked, spanning smooth pavement through to rugged off-road paths. Rather than starting from a blank map every time, you browse what other riders have put together and use that as a starting point. For anyone who has spent an evening squinting at satellite imagery trying to guess whether a road is paved, that is a meaningful shortcut.

When you want something of your own, the app offers three routing engines. One is an off-road planner built for adventure-style routes, one is aimed at producing twisty roads, and one handles straightforward point-to-point guidance. The distinction matters because a route that is fun on a sport bike is often miserable in a truck, and a trail that suits an ATV is not a road at all. Having separate engines for those jobs is a sensible design choice.

I would expect the catalog to be most useful in regions with an active riding community, since hand-picked routes depend on people contributing them. The planning tools are part of the app's core offering, so it is not purely dependent on what others have shared.

Recording the ride you actually did

Recording is the other half of the app. As you ride, REVER logs distance, duration, elevation and speed, and you can set a ride to be public or keep it private. There is also an option to hide your maximum speed, which is a small but thoughtful detail for anyone who would rather not publish how fast they went.

Recorded rides become part of your history, and the community side lets you share them, take part in challenges and connect with other riders. Routes and photos can be pushed out to social media as well. That combination turns a ride into something you can revisit in the winter and something you can hand to a friend who wants to ride the same loop.

The developer notes that continued GPS use in the background can affect battery life, which is worth planning around on a long day out. On a bike with a charging setup that is a minor concern; on a snowmobile in cold weather it is the sort of thing you want to think about before you leave.

Navigation when there is no signal

Off-grid use is where the app makes its strongest case. REVER uses the phone's built-in GPS, so it can guide you along a route and record your ride even in airplane mode and without any cellular network. For riders who spend time well outside coverage, that is the feature that separates this from a general-purpose maps app.

Offline maps and offline rides are part of the picture too, so you are not relying on a live connection to see where you are going. The app turns your phone into a GPS device for your adventures, and for trail and backcountry riding that is the right way to think about it.

The practical catch is that the off-grid capability is tied to a subscription. That is a fair thing to weigh if remote riding is your main reason for looking at REVER in the first place.

What PRO adds

REVER PRO is the paid membership, and it adds a fairly broad set of features. That tier includes road suggestions from Butler Maps, spoken turn-by-turn guidance you can customize, radar and weather warnings, LiveRIDE safety tools, plus 3D Flyover and Explore.

PRO also brings premium map styles along with the offline maps and GPX downloads mentioned earlier. Voice navigation in particular changes how the app is used: with it, you can follow a planned route without glancing down at the screen, which is a real difference on a motorcycle. Weather radar and alerts matter for anyone planning a long day where conditions can turn.

The membership renews automatically, and auto-renewal can be switched off whenever you like. Renewal is billed to your Play Store account in the 24 hours before the period ends. That is standard subscription behavior, but it is worth knowing before you sign up rather than after.

Cost, ads and what you get for free

REVER is free to download, carries no ads, and offers in-app purchases. There is no advertising to work around, which is a pleasant change from many free mapping apps.

Whether the free and paid tiers suit you depends on how much of your riding happens where a phone signal is reliable.

Because the free tier and the paid tier do different jobs, it is worth spending some time with the free app on familiar roads before deciding.

How it compares with the alternatives

A general-purpose maps app will get you from one address to another, but it is not designed to record elevation and speed, keep a library of your rides or hand you a curated list of interesting roads. Those are different jobs, and REVER is built for the second set.

A dedicated fitness tracker covers distance and duration well, and some handle elevation, but it is aimed at human-powered activity rather than motorized riding, and it does not generally offer route catalogs built by a riding community or off-road planning engines. The overlap is partial at best.

A standalone GPS unit is the closest comparison for off-grid navigation. It is a single-purpose device that does not double as your phone, does not carry a community's route library and does not record your rides into a shareable history. REVER's argument is that the phone you already carry can do the job, with the caveat that background GPS use affects battery life.

A route library for riders who go further than the highway

REVER makes sense for riders who care about where they went as much as where they are going. The combination of a hand-picked route catalog, three planning engines, ride recording with distance, duration, elevation and speed, and community features gives it a clear identity that a general maps app does not try to match.

The paid PRO membership is where navigation, weather, safety and offline tools sit, and it renews automatically unless you turn that off.

It suits motorcyclists, snowmobilers, ATV riders and off-road drivers who want a shared library of routes and a personal record of their own. It is a narrower tool than a general navigation app, and that is precisely the point.

What's new in version 9.9.8

We are always working to tune-up REVER for the best experience! This release includes: • Bug fixes and optimizations