A marine navigation app for US waters: NOAA charts, draft-aware routing, depth merged from four sources, tides, currents, weather, AIS and a logbook. It runs on iPhone and iPad, natively on both.
Helm is free to download and comes with a free trial, then continues as a subscription. You get the whole app during the trial, not a cut-down version.
Yes. Helm is on the App Store for iPhone and iPad, iOS 18 or later. Download it here.
Loop Mobile FZCO, a software company registered in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. The same company name appears on the App Store listing.
Official NOAA electronic navigational charts, with satellite imagery and a night palette as alternative styles.
Yes. Coastal, intracoastal, rivers and inland lakes. Lake depth comes from state elevation surveys rather than NOAA charts, so inland water is not a blank space.
Weather falls back to a global model. Charts, tides and currents are built around NOAA and are strongest in US waters.
Yes. Download the chart packs for your area first, and charts, depth, routing, tides, the anchor alarm and track recording all keep working. Live weather and AIS need a connection.
161. You download the ones covering the water you actually run. Most sit around 6 MB and the largest is a little over 200 MB, so taking a neighbouring pack you might not need costs you almost nothing.
Four sources merged: NOAA charts, USACE eHydro dredging surveys, state lake elevation data, and the live tide — reported with the date the measurement was taken. Full explanation here.
No. A sounder tells you what is under the hull right now. Helm tells you what to expect ahead and how much to trust it.
One plan, $99.99 a year, which works out around $8.33 a month. Everything is in it: all 161 chart packs, draft-aware routing, the four merged depth sources, tides and currents, weather, AIS, the anchor alarm, the logbook, CarPlay and the native iPad layout. There is no chart cartridge to buy and no separate chart library subscription, because the NOAA charts underneath are public data. The trial takes no payment up front and sends a reminder before it ends.
It depends on the survey behind it, and Helm shows you which one you have. Every sounding carries its CATZOC grade, the chart’s own confidence rating: A1 is a modern full-coverage survey, D means local knowledge matters more than the chart, and Unsurveyed means nobody has measured it. A number from a dredged channel surveyed last spring and a number from a 1970s pass over a shifting bar do not read the same on screen. The depth page has the full table.
Yes. Overhead clearance comes from the charted vertical clearance above mean high water, checked against the air draft you entered. Fixed bridges and the closed position of an opening bridge are both read. Where a bridge carries no clearance figure in the chart, Helm reports it as unknown rather than printing zero, because a zero in that field means missing data and would send you the long way around a bridge you could have cleared.
No, and that is deliberate. Routing is computed at chart datum, MLLW, with no tide added. The tide height is reported beside the leg as information for the hour you plan to be there, labelled with where it came from. A route that only works because the tide cooperated is the one that traps you when you leave an hour late.
Yes. Helm watches the National Weather Service active alert feed for the water you are on and surfaces Special Marine Warnings, Small Craft Advisories, Gale and Storm Warnings with their full text. The lookup runs both by your position and by the marine zone you are in.
Yes. Helm runs on the CarPlay screen, which on a boat usually means the display at the helm rather than a car dashboard. More on that here.
Yes, natively — a real iPad layout rather than a stretched phone screen.
Yes. Routes, markers and saved spots sync, so a passage planned on the iPad is on the phone at the dock.
Yes, Helm imports GPX.
Yes. Set a radius and it wakes you if you drag. It runs on GPS, so it works without a signal.
Yes, nearby vessels on AIS, on the same chart you are navigating with.
Yes. Save spots, read the depth contours around them and return from your recorded trips.
Helm Boating