A marine navigation app for US waters: NOAA charts, draft-aware routing, charted depth read against your draft, tides, currents, weather, AIS and a logbook. It runs on iPhone and iPad, natively on both.
Helm is free to download, and the charts, chart pack downloads, route planning, search and the measure tool work without paying. The depth reading, tides, weather, AIS, the anchor alarm, the logbook and CarPlay come with a subscription that starts with a free trial, and during the trial you get the whole app, 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.
Charts built from NOAA electronic navigational chart data on the coast and the Great Lakes, US Army Corps of Engineers Inland ENC on the rivers, and USGS shoreline data for the state lake packs, all reprocessed by Helm. They are not an official NOAA product and do not replace official charts. Satellite imagery and a night palette are alternative styles.
Yes. Coastal water, the intracoastal and the Great Lakes are on NOAA charts and the rivers on US Army Corps of Engineers charts, all with depth. The state lake packs draw lakes by name and shoreline from the USGS National Hydrography Dataset, and Minnesota also has state depth contours.
Helm is built for US waters, and it also has 60 packs outside the US, built from each country’s public data: 42 German rivers and canals, 12 Irish coastal bays with depth shading and contours, and 6 Dutch waterway areas. Tide and tidal current predictions come from NOAA stations in the US. Weather forecasts and the wind, wave and current overlays work anywhere.
Yes. Download the chart packs for your area first, and charts, depth where the chart carries it, routing in the coastal and Great Lakes packs that carry it, tides, the anchor alarm and track recording all keep working.
161. You download the ones covering the water you actually run. The median pack is around 6 MB, and most of the river, lake and European packs are small. The big US coastal and Great Lakes packs run roughly 90 to 240 MB each. Helm shows the exact size before you download.
From the chart: NOAA electronic navigational charts on the coast and the Great Lakes, and the US Army Corps of Engineers Inland ENC on the rivers. Where a NOAA tide station is within 25 nautical miles, Helm adds that station’s predicted tide from NOAA CO-OPS, so the number moves with the water. 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.
The subscription is $99.99 a year, which works out around $8.33 a month, and it starts with a free trial. It adds the depth reading under your keel when you tap the chart, the Tides, Weather, Waves and Logbook tools, satellite and night chart styles, the wind, wave and current overlays, AIS, drawing on the chart, the anchor alarm and CarPlay. The charts, chart pack downloads, route planning, search and the measure tool work without it. There is no chart cartridge to buy and no separate chart library subscription, because the NOAA charts underneath are public data. You pay nothing during the trial. When it ends, Apple bills the subscription unless you cancel it in your Apple ID settings before then.
It depends on the survey behind it. The depth card tells you what kind of figure you are reading: a charted sounding, a depth band from the chart, or water the chart has no soundings for. Some areas were last surveyed decades ago, so treat the chart as a guide and use your sounder.
Yes. Tap a bridge or an overhead cable and Helm shows its charted vertical clearance above mean high water, and for an opening bridge the clearance closed and open. The check against the air draft you entered happens when Helm plans the route for you, in the coastal and Great Lakes packs that carry routing data. 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, with a subscription. Helm has a CarPlay interface that puts the nautical chart, with your position on it, on the built-in screen of your car or truck for the tow to the ramp. More on that here.
Yes, natively — a real iPad layout rather than a stretched phone screen.
Yes, once you sign in to the same Apple, Google or email account on both. Routes, saved spots, recorded trips, chart drawings and boat profiles 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