Introduction
I built BeforeGo after forgetting the same power adapter on two different trips. That's the small version of the problem.
The bigger version showed up after I got home. The trip existed as 300 unsorted photos in my camera roll, a note I never reopened, and a handful of things I meant to remember for next time and didn't. The preparation was scattered, the trip itself went uncaptured, and the part I actually wanted to keep quietly disappeared.
BeforeGo is my attempt to keep one trip in one place — before, during, and after.
The Problem
Travel prep lives in five places at once: a note on your phone, a screenshot someone sent you, a group chat, a browser bookmark, and your memory. Nothing checks whether the list is finished, and nothing tells you what actually matters at your destination — that Japan runs 100V on Type A plugs, that you'll want the transit card app installed before you land, that the visa page you're reading is out of date.
Then the trip starts, and the tools give up on you:
- Packing apps stop at the airport. The moment you're through security, they have nothing left to do.
- Journal apps start too late. They assume you'll write about your day at 11pm after 20,000 steps. Almost nobody does.
- Nothing closes the loop. The lesson you learned this trip ("book the airport train ahead", "the outlet situation was fine, the SIM wasn't") never makes it into next trip's list.
So one trip gets split across tools that don't talk to each other, and the middle — the part you were there for — ends up as an unsorted camera roll.
The Solution
BeforeGo treats a trip as one object that lives through three phases instead of three separate apps.
Before you go. Create a trip, pick the destination, and get a preparation list built for that place: documents, power and voltage, cash versus card, transit, local apps worth installing early, plus your own items. Check things off, mark what doesn't apply to you, set reminders on the ones with deadlines, and keep a countdown widget on the Home Screen so the list isn't something you have to remember to open.
While you're there. Capture in seconds, not sentences. A photo, one line of text, or a voice note — talk for forty seconds while you're walking and it gets transcribed for you. Point Travel Lens at a menu, a sign, or a ticket and get it explained in your language.
After you're back. The trip becomes something you keep instead of something you scroll past. Export the whole thing as a long image or a PDF — photos, notes, and a recap of what you did — styled like a travel keepsake rather than a data dump. And what you learned this time is still there when you start the next list.
Key Features
- Destination-aware checklists — documents, power, money, transit, apps and health, with the details that are specific to where you're going instead of a generic template.
- Reminders, countdown and widgets — the deadline-bound items surface on their own; the list doesn't depend on you remembering it exists.
- Seconds-long capture — photos, text, and voice notes with automatic transcription, so recording the day doesn't feel like homework.
- Travel Lens — camera-based help with menus, signs, and tickets in your language. (Availability depends on region; the feature hides itself where it can't reach the model.)
- Exportable travel album — the trip as a long image or PDF you can keep or share, with several layouts to choose from.
- Private by default — no account, no ads, no sign-in. Data stays on your device and syncs through your own iCloud.
- Ten languages — English, 简体中文, 繁體中文, 日本語, 한국어, ไทย, Français, Italiano, Deutsch, Português.
Frequently Asked Questions
What problem does BeforeGo solve?
It keeps one trip in one place. Instead of a packing app that expires at the gate, a journal app you open twice, and a camera roll that swallows the rest, BeforeGo carries a single trip from preparation through capture to a keepsake you'll actually reopen — and rolls what you learned into the next one.
Who should use BeforeGo?
People who travel a few times a year and take one trip abroad seriously: you'll spend an evening preparing, you want to remember the trip afterwards, and you don't want a second job managing it. If you're the person who plans a fourteen-stop itinerary with collaborators and map layers, a dedicated planner like Wanderlog will serve you better — that's not what this is.
When is BeforeGo the right choice?
When the preparation and the remembering both matter to you. It's the right fit for a first international trip, a destination whose practical details you don't know yet, or any trip you'd regret losing. It's the wrong fit if you need collaborative day-by-day itinerary building, flight-email parsing, or offline maps — BeforeGo deliberately doesn't do those.
Is BeforeGo free?
Yes, to a real extent. Unlimited trips, unlimited checklists, reminders, widgets and text notes cost nothing, and there are no ads. Premium covers the heavier features — unlimited photo and voice memories beyond the first few per trip, Travel Lens, and album/PDF export. There's a monthly and a yearly plan, and a one-time lifetime unlock if you'd rather not hold a subscription.
Do I need an account?
No. There's no sign-up and no login. Your trips live on your device and sync between your own devices through iCloud — I never see them.
BeforeGo is for personal travel organization. It doesn't replace official visa, health, airline, or government guidance — always check important requirements with official sources before you travel.
Download BeforeGo on the App Store — iPhone, free to start.