Navis Beta 1.0 Available now: An AI powered navigation app for the low vision community!

could you give us more details like, What are the features in your app? how is it different from the other apps? How do you accomplish the hands-free capabilities with the form factor of the smartphone? since it uses location-based survices, will it be available globally or is it limited to specific locations/countries? And if possible, what are the features which are planned going ahead? Having more details would help us to take an informed decition...

Have signed up for the beta.

Even though I'm looking forward to getting my glide, it'll be nice to check out something new.

I do have an issue with one feature that was mentioned, getting live support, i'm not a fan of this personally but that's not my issue, my issue is how are you going to get people trained in helping blind people to get support and will you be paying them as they'll have to be trained in some way, this isn't going to be like BeMyEyes where a volunteer is looking at a box of something, it'll be a lot more involved.

Also, will I be able to play audio through my headphones without the AI thinking i'm talking to it?

I'm actually excited to try out the app on the first: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eGre2b5OuT0&t=243s

It's not going to be availible in the US just yet, wow,, we get something first! But it should be some time this year.

I like the way Glide is doing their development, keeping people informed and such. Getting feedback as they develop.
I hope you also develop something nice and useful with the feedback of the comunity. If possible try to keep the app affordable. And, please avoid subscription charges.

This Navis app sounds very fascinating, especially with regards to zeroing in more accurately on destinations than some of the other navigation apps relying on GPS.

I hope that it will also be made available for testing in German- and French-speaking countries. Moreover, please also consider those of us dealing with dual impairment, i.e., blindness and hearing impairment. Will this app be operable with digital hearing aids paired to smartphones via Bluetooth?

I mean it makes sense, they have to pay for surver costs and all that.

I would prefer a yearly subscription option though, as I prefer that to monthly.

I have signed up. But I wonder if you can provide a quick demo of what this thing sounds like when it’s working.

I look forward to hearing more about it. Also just a friendly suggestion, you might want to double check any material you put out with more than just a spellchecker since you made a typo which notoriously doesn't get flagged when you mentioned public transport. Not a criticism, I just want to avoid future embarrassment and make sure you hear it from a friendly voice first.

I received the email from Liam, installed the app and fill out all the demographic information including signing in with my Google account from within the app and already found a couple of bugs that prevent me from moving further from testing this app. However both from within the app the feedback/add a review buttons are dead as far as voice is concerned. Single finger double tapping does nothing while on the same setting screen in the app, this VoiceOver gesture does work on the other buttons such as demographic etc. So this needs to be fixed in the next app update.
Then I clicked on the email address provided by Liam in the email broadcast that contains the download links, I wrote out my feedback on that email however that email bounces back and I get a error from Google. Sorry I didn’t save the full long standard Google error message When I was using my Gmail app to do so. So even that email link somehow is broken at least from here in the United States of America where I am.
Request to Navas team is to fix both of these please as soon as possible so you can actually receive feedback using either of the offer or mention two methods using VoiceOver on iOS.

Will test it.

I got the same issues and the email gives me a error message. I thought the message was spam because it was something like demon google groups or something but nope. it's a true email from google.

I think it's because its posting to some kind of google group instead of an inbox.

They'll need to fix this ASAP, I hope it's fixed by next friday but we'll see.

I would like to get my hands on this app. Any possibility of sharing that test link?

The voice goes through the eat speakerinstead of the bottom speaker of the phone which makes it very hard to hear when the phone is not held to the ear.

how is Navis meant to work? how would i navigate in an area once arrive? seems very very limited?
you have to know an address no points of interest are available; for example at the time of writing i am in a park, but how would i navigate it to find say the pool that is nearby for the children?

confused what this app is meant to be.

just seems like a get from point to b and nothing more?

😒

I signed up for the beta, but I haven't received the download link yet. However, when signing up for the beta I was asked for first and last name, email, phone number and city. I wonder why all of these personal information are required, given the fact that being Dutch has to comply with the European GDPR (General Data Protection Regulation). Furthermore it asks you on the sign-up form what plan you want to subscribe and if you want to try the beta: why would I even want to pay for an app that's still in beta?
Therefore I'm very suspicious about this app, firstly because of the data they're asking me, and secondly because it asks for a subscription without even first trying the app, or at least that's how I understood it.

Well, not as far as I know.

You should be able to type navis in the app store/play store and it should come up. I didn't need testflight to use it.

As for what the app is, at the moment it's very limited, but I think in the future it's going to have way points and stuff like that. Honestly, Voice vista is better for now and actually follows accessibility guidelines.

I've not got a chance to go out with it yet, i'm going to try it on monday I think but at the moment I've written to the devs using their contact form and their email on the page explaining that the email doesn't work.

I've also explained that voiceover becomes very quiet when you tap the call navis button, I've also explained that things that should be buttons arne't buttons. I have an idea that these people didn't actually go through this following voiceover practises, although i do think it might be interesting if you give it a couple months.

App takes too many instructions to start navigation. I told it to start navigation to nearest Metro station. It listed 3, then asked which 1, and After telling it, it asked if I want to start navigation. When I am traveling, I don't have time to deal with so many hoops to go through.
It started providing very detailed instructions, however all through the call speaker. No matter what, I was unable to get the speech output from the main speaker.

1. What languages are you planning to add next week? Could you add Italian?
2. What source does it use for providing navigation? Since there's an option to login using Google, can it give instructions using Google Maps details?

Here in the United States of America VU’s feet and miles and that’s the way people think for spatial orientation as opposed to me in kilometers. Could the next update please have this option for the user to select between different units of measurement based on your local region?
When the AI assistant start the navigation in the app, it uses Some European or different time zone from the users local time zone which is not only than useless but also confusing as what as the estimated arrival time at the destination is concerned, which the app reports. In the next update could you also please automatically have the app only use Local time zones wherever the user might be when using the app?
How do we get all future updates? Should I just expect to open Navis app and if there is an update available it will just download an updated automatically?
What’s the timeline on the next update with the fixes Please?

There is a saying on the military. Keep it simple S. Will not say the last word to avoid upseting someone. But the meaning is make it easy to use for us, specially if we are outside. We want simple and easy and fast to use.

This app started out in Europe so that's why this mesurement system is used for now. i'm sure that will be changed in the future.

@Liam I hope we can change the voice in the future, this one is nice but more oices is always a nice feature.

I'm really glad you fixed the issue with the email working. I'm looking forward to to being able to ask navis if I'm going in the right direction in the future, I don't think you can do that now.

The feature where you use your app to allow navis to take a snapshot so it knows if you're going in the right direction does sound great and It'll be fun totest it.

I'll be honest, at the moment I'd stil stick to voice vista because it has more features, but I've never really managed to navigate with it so I'll try this on monday and see what happens.

It would be great if we can play our podcast or youtube and have navis in the background guiding us.

You know; you could really turn this into a multi tool, imagine asking navis to look for a restaurant that sells halumi, and it pulls up menus and scans them. Or and this would be something I'd love but can understand if it's hard to implement.

You're going to tesco, let's say, and you know you want to buy raspberries, you ask navis to scan the ials for raspberries and it does, telling you that the fruit ial is on the left, then you walk to it, let it know you're there, it take a picture and you manage to grab the raspberries, then you ask how much they are and navis is able to tell you.

This is one thing we don't have at the moment, a Multitool that can help with the entire navigation and shopping experience, is that doable?

I'm really glad you're here, I hope that navis becomes something we can all rely on in the future, it'll be so interesting to look back in a year in june/july and see how far you've come.

Great to see you are actively working and listening to users.
Small feedback, Could you make use of magic tap gestures on both android and IOS to start and stop listening?
Ideally, There shouldn't be a need to touch the phone, just put it in pocket, and it can keep listening similar to Gemini. If that's hard to implement, then I would prefer that it works with magic-tap/Play-pause commands, so that it's easier to do, and perhaps compatible with our bluetooth earphones.
This might interfeer with music playing, but when out and about, specially walking down the road, if my phone is giving navigation instructions, I wouldn't be playing music either way.

Problems identified 1. Voice instructions don't lower any music playing. With music on, it's very difficult to hear them. 2. If taking a different route the app doesn't recalculate, but simply states that you went off-route. 3. App doesn't work with display off or in the background. 4. When navigation ends, the screen stays active, when ideally should close the navigation screen. 5. The app doesn't show distance, time and ETA. Also, which text to speech are you using? I presume it’s AI-based, like ElevenLabs, Gemini, ChatGPT. If this is so, would it be possible to add the multilingual part of the TTS?

That's very important, hopefully that gets fixed in a couple of weeks.