Updated: December 11, 2025
Need the best travel apps for your beach vacation? We've got five must-haves that locals actually use: Magic Seaweed tracks tides and sun times, TripAdvisor provides honest reviews, Mike's Weather Page monitors storm patterns, PackPoint creates custom packing lists, and TripIt organizes all your reservations in one spot.
Top 5 Favorite Travel Apps
Magic Seaweed
Magic Seaweed is my go-to app for checking sunrise times, sunset times, moonrises and moonsets; tide times and so much more. Simply put in what beach you are located in, and it will pull in the information real time.
Note: After acquiring Magic Seaweed in 2017 and fully integrating it in 2023, Surfline now offers all these features plus wave forecasting, live wind conditions, and over 500 streaming beach cameras. Simply enter your beach location for real-time information.
Mike's Weather Page
In addition to NOAA and the NHC, we love all the spaghetti models and graphs this website includes on one page. Please note, all official warnings for any wind activity will come from the National Hurricane Center, but this a good resource for additional information to consider.
PackPoint
The PackPoint app basically packs your bags for you! I just type in the days I'll be traveling, where I'm going and any activities I'm doing, and the app puts together a list for me. You can add in categories and items as well to make it completely customizable. It even features "repeat items" to account for any laundry you may do while on your vacation.
TripIt
The TripIt App is a master itinerary app. Simply forward your reservations to an email and it adds it all into the app for you. You can even access them when you are offline, instead of constantly searching through your emails. You can also upgrade to the Pro version for real-time updates on any flight changes, security line wait times and more.
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These apps work just as well on the East Coast! Planning a North Carolina beach getaway? Carolina Beach Realty offers beautiful vacation rentals along Carolina Beach and Kure Beach, where you can put all these travel tools to good use.
