About Compass

Plans made together tend to fall apart in group chats: the dates drift, the link to the cabin gets buried, and nobody is sure who is actually coming. Compass keeps one shared picture instead. Every plan is a Venture, whether it’s a ski week, a weekend upstate or a dinner crawl across the city, and each one sits on the calendar of everyone invited.

A few beliefs shape how it works:

• One calendar, not ten threads. Every Venture you host or were invited to, with its dates, destination and weather, in one place.
• Everyone gets a say. Anyone on a Venture can suggest places to explore and places to stay, and the group decides with a thumbs-up, not with the loudest voice.
• The host stays in charge. The person who starts a Venture sets the dates and destination and decides who’s invited.
• Quiet by default. Compass only tells you what changed on your own Ventures, and never sells your attention or your data.

1. Start a Venture. Tap New Venture, or click a day on the calendar. Give it a name, pick one to ten locations from Google Maps, set the dates and choose an icon.
2. Get ideas. On the New Venture page, Gemini can suggest things to do (trails, cafés, bars, museums, concerts and more) and places to stay (hotels, homes or resorts, in your budget), each with an approximate cost. Accept the ones you like: they go on the Venture for the group to vote on, and the rest are left out.
3. Invite your people. Add their email addresses. New friends get a link to join; people with an account see the Venture straight away.
4. Plan together. Open the Venture to see the weather for your dates, who’s coming, and the two boxes: Places to explore and Places to stay. Add to them and vote; the favourites rise to the top.
5. Answer and keep up. Accept or decline with a note for the group. The bell tells you when a destination changes or someone suggests a place.
6. Add your own days. Personal events only you see: one day, or repeating daily, weekly, monthly or yearly until a finish date, all day or at a set time. Change one of them or the whole series.
7. See it your way. Look at the calendar by day, week, month or year, with weekends and US holidays marked. Pick one of seven themes in your profile; it follows your account to every device you sign in on. Download a PDF of your Ventures, or of your calendar for up to 400 days.

Compass is in beta and available in the United States. Things will change as we learn what helps groups travel well. If something is confusing, broken or missing, tell us: every message is read.