A free travel app for Finnish Lapland that installs from the browser. Every picture below is a screenshot of the live app, taken on 24 October 2026.
This is LaplandVibes’ own app, and this article goes through it one view at a time. The screenshots are in the language you are reading. On your phone, tap a picture or the link at the end of its section, and the same view opens in the app.
The app covers 31 destinations, from Rovaniemi and Levi to Kilpisjärvi and Utsjoki. Ruka, Kuusamo and Taivalkoski are included too, and the app notes that they are outside the Lapland region. You can pick a destination yourself, or allow location and let the app pick the nearest one and show how far away places are. It does not store your location. The app is in 12 languages, and on a computer the same address shows a QR code that opens it on your phone.
Where the money comes from. The app is free. Some of its buttons lead to partner sites. Tour buttons lead to GetYourGuide, and the buttons for accommodation, flights and car rental in the booking section lead to other partners. If you book through them, LaplandVibes may earn a commission. Businesses and event organisers can also pay to appear higher in the lists of places and events. The taxi, car-help and emergency numbers, the weather and aurora forecasts, the ski resorts and the hiking and mountain-bike routes have no paid links.
The home view opens on your destination: the temperature and how cold it feels, tonight’s chance of seeing the aurora, the wind and the air quality. Below them come quick buttons for a taxi, a pharmacy and the emergency numbers, the weather for the next six hours, and how many places to eat, shop and spend the evening are open right now.
Further down are the next events, a few places with their Google ratings, and facts about the destination, such as the length of the day and the coldest temperature ever measured there, each with its source.
This view lists the places you need once you have arrived, in every category your destination has: restaurants, cafés, bars, saunas, gyms, shops, pharmacies, fuel and charging, and cash machines. Across the 31 destinations there are 719 places, and each one is a real business that we have checked. The app shows no photos of them, only icons.
Each card has the address and a button for directions, and 213 restaurants also link to their own menu, in your language when the restaurant publishes one. Whether a place is open now and its Google rating come from a snapshot taken once a week. When the app does not know a place’s hours, it shows no badge at all rather than a wrong one. Below the list are the nearest EV chargers and a link to food delivery.
The forecast is the Finnish Meteorological Institute’s: 24 hours hour by hour and five days ahead, with sunrise, sunset and how much the day length changes by tomorrow. For the three nearest ski resorts, the view shows whether the slopes are open, as the resorts themselves report it, and when they last updated that.
For drivers there is the nearest road weather station: the air and road surface temperatures, the condition of the surface (for example wet and salted) and the frost margin, with a plain explanation of when it means ice. Roadworks within 60 km are listed by road number, and a road camera shows what the road looks like now. The image refreshes about every ten minutes.
The aurora view estimates tonight’s chance of seeing the northern lights at your destination, hour by hour from 6 pm to 7 am. The estimate combines the Kp forecast from NOAA’s Space Weather Prediction Center in the United States with cloud cover and darkness. Kp is a measure of geomagnetic activity on a scale from 0 to 9. The app says plainly that the result is a calculation, not a measurement. It also shows how much of the moon is lit and explains how to read the forecast.
You can ask for an alert. It comes at most once a night, only from October to March, and only between 8 pm and 2 am Finnish time. It is sent when NOAA’s aurora probability reaches 25% or Kp reaches 4, but not when the forecast shows more than half of the sky under cloud. The app stores the destination you picked, not your location. On Android the alert works in Chrome. On iPhone it needs iOS 16.4 or later and works only after you have added the app to your Home Screen.