Support

Common questions

Does Keep Wild tell me where I can fly?

No, and it's built so that it can't. It shows two kinds of protected land your drone has to stay out of. Where it shows nothing, it simply found no National Park unit and no Designated Wilderness there — which isn't clearance, and never turns into clearance.

So what is it actually good for?

Three things, mostly. Knowing when you've walked into somewhere your drone has to stay packed. Finding out exactly where those invisible edges run, which is more fun than it sounds. And having something to show the person who's about to launch in a National Park without realising — the app quotes the rule so you don't have to.

Is Keep Wild official?

No, it's independent. Not affiliated with or endorsed by the FAA, the National Park Service, the USDA Forest Service or the U.S. Geological Survey — though it does use their published data.

What do I need to run it?

An iPhone running iOS 26 or later. There's no iPad build and no Android version, and none is planned.

Which places does it cover?

Every National Park Service unit, and every Designated Wilderness Area, in the United States. "National Park Service unit" is broader than it sounds — it takes in national monuments, recreation areas, historical parks, preserves and seashores, not only the places with "National Park" in the name.

Nothing beyond those two, though. State parks, tribal land, wildlife refuges and ordinary BLM land outside designated wilderness aren't in there, and plenty of them have their own drone rules worth checking.

Does it cover airspace, TFRs or LAANC?

No, and it doesn't try. Keep Wild answers a land question, not an airspace one. Keep an airspace tool next to it, every flight.

Does it work outside the United States?

Afraid not — the boundary data is US federal data.

Does it work without a signal?

Yes, once you've downloaded the region you're in. With no download and no connection it says so rather than handing you an empty map you might mistake for empty ground. The guide covers how to download one.

How much space do downloads take?

It depends on the region and how much detail you ask for — a small territory is a few megabytes, a large western state is hundreds. Keep Wild caps its own downloads at 3 GB in total and leaves 256 MB of device space spare, so it won't fill your phone.

How do I free up storage?

Open Settings ▸ Offline maps and swipe a region away. Deleting the app takes everything with it.

How fresh is the boundary data?

Online, boundaries are fetched from the federal services as you move, so what you see is current.

A downloaded region is different, and worth understanding. Its boundary data is captured at the moment you download it and is not refreshed afterwards. If a boundary is redrawn or a new wilderness is designated, an old download won't know about it. There's no automatic update, and the app doesn't yet show you how old a region is — so before a trip where it matters, delete the region and download it again.

How accurate are the boundaries?

As accurate as the agencies make them — they're the agencies' own published lines. Close to an edge, treat it as a rough guide: GPS error and boundary error stack up. Give it a wide berth.

A boundary looks wrong. What should I do?

Tell me anyway, because it may be a bug in how Keep Wild reads or draws the data. But if the published boundary itself is wrong, the fix belongs to the agency that publishes it — the National Park Service or the USDA Forest Service — and correcting it there fixes it for every app that uses the data, not just this one.

What does the app do with my location?

That's all set out on the privacy page.

What's coming?

An indicator showing whether the boundaries on screen came from the network or from a downloaded region, and a warning when neither covers where you're standing. After that, a watch app.

What is Keep Wild built with?

The map is drawn with MapLibre Native and the geometry handled by Turf, both open source and both credited in full under Settings ▸ About ▸ Acknowledgements in the app. The map tiles come from the U.S. Geological Survey and the boundaries from the National Park Service and the USDA Forest Service.