Describe a Website or App You Use

The app I'd like to talk about is Google Maps, which I know sounds like the most boring possible answer — it's not glamorous, nobody raves about it at parties — but if I'm being honest about which app has genuinely changed how I live, it wins by a mile.

I've used it for probably ten years, since my first smartphone, but I only realised how dependent I'd become on it when I moved to a new city for work a couple of years ago. In those first months it wasn't just an app; it was a lifeline. I have a genuinely terrible sense of direction — the kind where I exit a shop and confidently walk the wrong way — so arriving in a city of millions, alone, would once have been quietly terrifying. Instead it was fine, almost immediately, and that still feels slightly miraculous. Within a fortnight I was navigating the metro like someone who'd lived there for years, which fooled absolutely everyone, including occasionally myself.

In terms of what I use it for, navigation is only the start. I use it to time my departures around live traffic, to find whether a pharmacy is still open at 10 p.m., to read reviews before trying a restaurant, and — my favourite feature — to virtually walk down a street before I visit, so the place already feels familiar when I arrive. I've also built up years of saved lists: cafés I want to try, spots friends have recommended, places I've loved. In a strange way the app has become a map of my life as much as a map of the city. There's a pin on a tiny dumpling place where I had my first proper conversation with the person who's now one of my closest friends, and I sometimes scroll past it just for the memory. No other app I own has accidentally turned into a diary.

Why is it so useful to me? Beyond the obvious practicality, I'd say it removed a specific background anxiety I'd carried for years. Once you know you literally cannot get lost, you say yes to more things — I explore neighbourhoods I'd never have risked before, take spontaneous detours, and wander freely knowing the app can always reel me back home. For someone with my sense of direction, that's not a convenience; it's a personality upgrade.

I do have mixed feelings, which I think is worth admitting. My natural navigation skills have almost certainly withered from disuse — it's a textbook case of a tool absorbing a human ability. And there's something a little sad about never being lost, because being lost occasionally led somewhere wonderful. But on balance, the trade is clearly worth it. It's the one app I'd keep if I had to delete everything else, and I don't even have to think about that answer.