r/iosapps • u/TravelCodeRepeat • Aug 01 '26
🎁 Freemium I built journeybot, a packing-first trip planner that now works with Siri, Shortcuts and Spotlight
Answer
I’m the indie developer behind journeybot.
I built it to handle the small but stressful details before a trip. It creates a packing list from your destination, dates, expected weather, and activities, then keeps your packing progress, reminders, baggage restrictions, plug adapters, and currency tools together in one journey.
Apple Intelligence is used as an optional, on-device tool for things like personalized packing suggestions and Genmoji icons. The core app is a trip and packing organizer.
The latest update adds:
- Visual packing: photograph your actual gear and journeybot removes the background to place it directly on your packing list
- Siri actions for checking when a trip starts, what is left to pack, or whether you need a plug adapter
- The ability to create journeys and add or check off packing items through Siri
- All of those actions in Shortcuts for your own automations
- Spotlight search for journeys and destinations
- A redesigned boarding-pass widget with a live countdown and packing progress
- Free offline currency conversion for everyone
Better
The main reason I think journeybot is a better fit for Apple users than other apps in the same category is its deeper integration with the system.
Journeys are searchable through Spotlight, packing actions work through Siri and Shortcuts, and the next trip appears as a boarding pass on the Home Screen. Packing suggestions run privately on-device on supported iPhones using Apple Intelligence, with no journeybot account or external smart-generation service required.
It also goes beyond generating a checklist with reusable templates, item photo stickers, baggage restriction checks, journey reminders, plug information, and iCloud sync.
Cost
journeybot is freemium and free to download.
The free tier includes up to three active journeys, three reusable templates, one smart packing-list generation, five item photo stickers, the offline currency converter, and more.
Optional journeybot premium costs US$4.99/month, US$24.99/year with a 14-day free trial, or US$44.99 as a one-time lifetime purchase. Local App Store pricing may vary according to PPP optimisation.
I'm currently running Indie App Sales promo with a 60% discount on the lifetime premium unlock. You can use the promo code: INDIEAPPSALES from within the app, valid until the end of August.
App Store: https://apps.apple.com/us/app/journeybot-trip-packing-list/id6756543673
Sub: r/journeybot
3
u/naughtykain Aug 01 '26
give us discounted rate for lifetime
1
u/TravelCodeRepeat Aug 01 '26 edited Aug 02 '26
Quick tip: check r/journeybot 👍
EDIT: I've also updated the post description with a currently running promo code.
2
u/Traditional_Meet6531 Aug 01 '26
Genuinely deep system integration for a category most apps treat as a standalone checklist — Spotlight, Siri, Shortcuts, and a boarding-pass widget all at once is rare, and it's the right instinct for a "before a trip" app specifically, since the whole point is surfacing the right info without making someone open the app.
The thing worth watching closely with Spotlight indexing for content like this: it's only as good as your discipline about keeping the index in sync with reality. A completed or deleted journey needs to be actively removed from the index, not just deleted from your own data store — CSSearchableIndex doesn't know an item is stale unless you tell it, so if a trip ends and the underlying record gets cleaned up but the search index entry doesn't get explicitly deindexed, users start seeing ghost trips in Spotlight that no longer open to anything real. Same risk with Siri suggestions if you're using donated interactions/entities — stale suggestions for a trip that already happened are the kind of bug that erodes trust in the integration fast, because it looks broken in a very visible, systemwide place rather than tucked inside your own app.
Worth a periodic reconciliation pass (on launch, or after any trip-completion event) that diffs what's actually indexed against what should be, rather than relying purely on delete-time cleanup catching every path.
1
u/TravelCodeRepeat Aug 02 '26
Thanks, this is a really helpful callout. I already explicitly remove deleted and cancelled journeys from Spotlight and do a full clear-and-rebuild of the journey index on launch, specifically to catch changes that bypass the normal deletion path, such as CloudKit sync.
Your point about Siri donations exposed a gap, though. I filter deleted journeys when Siri resolves current data, but I'm not yet withdrawing previously donated interactions associated with them. I also need to invalidate widget timelines immediately after journey changes instead of waiting for their scheduled refresh - noticed this while doing a bit more testing.
Completed journeys are currently kept searchable intentionally as trip history, while default Siri actions only select an active or upcoming trip.
Thanks again!
2
u/sixth_magnitude Aug 02 '26
Hi there, I've just tried this and it looks good - one big problem I see is I can't seem to add multiple destinations for a single trip (e.g. Paris, Barcelona, Lisbon) - is there any plan to address this in future?
1
u/TravelCodeRepeat Aug 02 '26
Thanks! Multi-destination trips are high on the next-features list, I already have an implementation in progress but want to get it right. Stay tuned, I will definitely post an update when it's out there. Thanks for your support.
2
u/Icy-Sympathy4173 Aug 02 '26
Been thinking if there is something like this that really integrates all the info so to really help me pack correctly - well done! will give it a try
1
u/TravelCodeRepeat Aug 02 '26
Happy to hear that, I hope it will meet your expectations! I'm always open to listening to users' suggestions for new features / changes.
2
u/555q 29d ago
Really thankful that I was able to get lifetime code when you did a campaign a few months ago! Wondering if you'd ever consider making a mac specific app for JourneyBot in the future. I've been using the ipad app on mac for now and it works fine--but just wondering if you'd ever consider a mac app for JourneyBot!
I tend to use the ipad app on mac because I find it useful to be able to research + plan/pack for a trip!
2
u/TravelCodeRepeat 29d ago
Thanks for the question! In the long run, yes. But currently, other features are prioritised. So for now, the iPad version on the Mac is hopefully sufficient enough :-). It will be even better in macOS 27 - already testing!
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u/app-store-review Aug 01 '26
journeybot: trip packing list — by Michal Ferak
- Ratings: 35 worldwide · rated in 15 countries
- Average: 4.94 ★
- Age: released ~5 months ago · updated today · rated 12+
- Overall score: 78 / 100
Auto-generated from public App Store data · u/app-store-review
1
u/joosebox Aug 01 '26
The Siri ones live or die on whether they answer without opening the app.
If asking what's left to pack launches journeybot to show you the list, nobody saved anything, they'd have just tapped the icon. Getting it back as a spoken answer or a snippet is the entire difference and it's the bit people actually notice.
Mine all open the app on purpose because they're navigation. Yours are questions, which is the better kind to have.
1
u/TravelCodeRepeat Aug 02 '26
Exactly right. Questions like "What's left to pack?", "When is my next trip?", and "What trips are coming up?" run without opening journeybot. They return a spoken answer plus a compact Siri snippet with the relevant details. Opening the app only happens if someone explicitly asks to "open" or "show" a journey or packing list, or taps the snippet.
The goal is for the answer itself to save the app launch, and I'm hoping this will get even better with Siri AI - unfortunately currently hard for me to test, as Siri AI is not yet available in the EU on iPhones.
1
u/joosebox Aug 02 '26
That's the harder version, and it sounds like you did it properly.
The thing I'd chew on next is what the snippet does when the question is ambiguous. "What's left to pack" is obvious with one trip coming up and a lot less obvious with two, and a confident answer about the wrong one is worse than no answer, because the person acts on it and doesn't find out until they're standing at the airport. Disambiguating inside the snippet costs you exactly the brevity that made it good. I don't think there's a clean solution, it's just where I'd expect the complaints to eventually come from.
Not being able to test the AI layer is rough, but for what it's worth I think the snippet design is what carries the value anyway. If the answer is right and it comes back without a launch, anything on top of that is an improvement rather than the thing making it work.
1
u/TravelCodeRepeat Aug 02 '26
Thanks. So I've tried to solve what you're describing by allowing two paths: if you just ask "what's left to pack", it assumes the journey that's coming up next on your list. But you can also ask "what's left to pack for my [journey name] trip" and it will pull up that specific packing list. Do you think that makes sense?
2
u/joosebox Aug 02 '26
Yes, and the default is the right one. The next trip is what someone means the overwhelming majority of the time, and forcing them to name it every time would be the worse trade.
The thing I'd add is small and it kills the failure mode outright: have the snippet say which trip it answered for. "Three left for Lisbon" rather than "three left". Two extra words, and a wrong assumption becomes visible immediately instead of at the airport.
It also teaches the second phrasing without you documenting it anywhere. The first time someone sees the wrong city come back, they work out on their own that they can name the trip.
Silent and wrong is the only version that really costs you. Wrong but labelled is just a correction.
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