Find
Sort by quiet, accessibility, distance, or drive time
Explore places with clear difficulty labels, weather context, natural sounds, access details, cost, and source confidence.
Account approval is required. Download Alcove for iPhone and request access in the app. Buying Pro does not bypass approval. Browse the saved nationwide catalog, including places with short or missing descriptions. Colorado and California are priorities for improving details, not access restrictions. Members can contribute place information. Coverage is not complete.
The mobile app
Approval requiredFind an outdoor place that fits your plans
Compare places by quiet, access, drive time, current conditions, night-sky details, and recommendations from friends.
Download on theApp StorePlanned forGoogle Play
Start near SLO
Twelve ways to get outside
Campus gardens, downtown pauses and coastal walks, with practical notes before you go.
What Alcove is for
A shorter list of places that fit
Alcove is not trying to replace technical navigation or official land-manager information. It helps narrow a question that general maps often leave unanswered: where could I go that fits my time, access needs, conditions, and desired experience?
Plan
See the details that can change an outing
Use map, trail, weather, night-sky, access, pricing, and source details while still confirming live information with the responsible official source.
Share
Plan with people you trust
Friends can share lists, recommendations, favorites, activity, and ratings. Contact matching is optional and session-only.
Product previews
Turn place discovery into a practical plan
These illustrative previews show Discover and Stars. Available places and details vary by region and app version.
Night-sky evidence
Keep measured, observed, and modeled data separate
Stars keeps the planning estimate visible, then adds nearby public observations when they exist. It does not convert a single community report into a false promise about conditions at the destination.
Public observations
Globe at Night observations
Clear-sky community observations from 2023-2025 are matched to nearby catalog places with distance, sample count, date range, and source credit. The data is published under CC BY 4.0.
Planning layer
Conservative Bortle estimates
The Bortle scale describes artificial night-sky glow from 1 to 9. Lower values mean darker skies: 1-3 is dark, 4-5 has moderate skyglow, and 6-9 ranges from bright suburban to city sky. Alcove's value remains a planning interpretation unless a record explicitly says it was measured.
Next calibration
Satellite radiance
NASA Black Marble can add consistent nighttime-light radiance after a credentialed processing pipeline is validated. Radiance will be shown as radiance, not mislabeled as an on-site Bortle reading.
Interactive preview
Try the app preview
The example places, scores, fees, and map below illustrate the interface and are not current travel advice. The preview includes the current four-tab navigation with intentionally limited discovery actions: one search, three place details, and one map view. It stores only the counters for this browser session.
- Search by a need such as hiking, river, pet friendly, or wheelchair accessible.
- Open a night-sky place and compare Bortle and access context.
- See where an approved account becomes necessary for saved places, friends, syncing, and continued use.
Preview remaining: 3 places / 1 search / 1 map
9:41Alcove
Preview limit reached
Continue exploring in Alcove
Download the app and request account access. Approval is required for member features; a subscription does not replace approval.
Readable signals
Three place metrics with clear explanations
Every metric is designed to be opened for a plain-language explanation of what it represents and what the displayed value means.
- Sound describes the expected balance of natural and human-caused sound, with its source and confidence.
- Access summarizes available planning context such as surface, facilities, cost, and approachability.
- Trust describes the strength and recency of the sources behind the place record.
Sound
Calmer
A relative planning signal, not a live calibrated noise reading.
Access
Casual
Approachable context based on currently available place details.
Trust
Strong
Multiple useful sources with visible limitations and update context.
Privacy in context
Permissions appear only when you need them
- Browse without granting contacts, photo, or precise-location access.
- Contact matching runs only after you choose it and is not persisted by Alcove.
- The current iPhone app has no Guide or Relax tab and no microphone or sound-recording entry point. The website offers an optional, approved-account sound meter: it uses the microphone only after you press Start and grant permission, computes uncalibrated relative levels locally, and uploads no audio or measurements.
- Community photos, places, notes, and ratings are reviewed before affecting public information.
- Export and account-deletion controls are part of the account experience.
Follow the release