What apps are useful for travelling in Morocco?

After enough trips you settle on a tight little toolkit, and the one I always have guests install before they fly is led by Google Maps — but with a crucial step most people skip: download the offline maps for each region while you still have wifi. Medina alleys, mountain roads and desert tracks are exactly where signal drops, and offline maps with GPS still place a blue dot on the map even with no data. It is the difference between confidently finding your riad and wandering the souk in circles.

For getting around, two categories matter. Between cities, the ONCF app (Morocco's national railway) shows live train schedules and lets you check fares and buy tickets — invaluable for planning a Marrakech–Casablanca or Fes–Rabat hop. Within the big cities, a ride-hailing app spares you the taxi-meter negotiation: Careem works in Casablanca and Rabat, and inDrive, where you name your own fare, has spread widely. They give a clear price up front, which guests find far less stressful than haggling kerbside in a new place.

Language is the other big one. Download Google Translate and, importantly, the offline language packs for French and Arabic before you arrive — Morocco runs largely on French in daily commerce, with Darija (Moroccan Arabic) underneath. The camera-translate feature is genuinely magic for menus, shop signs and pharmacy labels, and works without a connection once the pack is downloaded. A few words of French go a long way, but the app fills every gap.

Finally, install WhatsApp if you somehow do not already use it, because in Morocco it is the universal channel — your riad confirms your arrival on it, your guide sends the meeting point, the carpet shop sends shipping photos, the surf school sends conditions. Pair these with your banking app and an offline currency converter, and you are genuinely well equipped. My one rule: do the downloading at home on hotel wifi, not at the airport, so your toolkit is ready the moment you land.