Need a hand? Open an issue at github.com/smandable/brown-sign (opens in new tab) or email support@seanmandable.me and I’ll get back to you.
Brown Sign tells you what those brown highway signs point to. Photograph the sign, import a photo, or just type the name, and a few seconds later you have the Wikipedia article, a map, a summary, and directions. There are no accounts and no tracking, and everything on your device stays there.
Frequently asked questions
Is my data private? Yes. Photos are processed on your device and never uploaded. Only a small thumbnail is saved locally for your history. Searches go to Wikipedia, Wikidata, and the National Park Service with no personal identifiers attached, and location (if you grant it) is used only to rank nearby results. There are no accounts, analytics, or ads. See the Privacy Policy.
The scanner read the sign but found the wrong landmark, or nothing at all. Sign lookups are a chain: on-device text recognition, then a search across Wikipedia, Wikidata, and NPS, ranked by name match and distance. A blurry capture at 65 mph, a sign with an unusual name, or a landmark with no Wikipedia article can all break a link in it. When the match is shaky, the app says so. Try typing the landmark’s name instead, or import a clearer photo someone snapped from the passenger seat.
Does it work without an internet connection? Reading the sign happens on-device, but looking up the landmark needs a connection, since the results come from Wikipedia, Wikidata, and NPS. Landmarks you’ve already found keep working offline: the article image is saved with your history so you can browse what you’ve collected later.
Do I need Apple Intelligence? No. The app works end-to-end without it, and without location permission or any API keys. On devices that support Apple Intelligence (iOS 26 and later), it’s used on-device to clean up the sign text and polish summaries, so results get a little better. Nothing is sent to any cloud AI either way.
The moment passes fast. What’s the quickest way to launch the scanner? From just about everywhere: Siri, Control Center, the Lock Screen, or the Action button. Set one up and the scanner is a single press away when the sign appears.
Why doesn’t the Nearby tab show a landmark I know is there? Nearby is a curated list: heritage sites, covered bridges, battlefields, and the like. Operating schools, hospitals, and most other geo-tagged articles are filtered out, and a landmark needs an English Wikipedia article to appear. You can also widen the radius (2 to 25 miles), and if you’ve hidden a landmark before, un-hide it and it comes back.
How do I clear my history? Your history lives only on your device. Delete entries in the app, or delete the app to remove everything: history, thumbnails, and cached images. There’s nothing to clear anywhere else, because nothing ever left the device.