Places & Hours – Find It Fast Near You

Imagine being able to find a coffee bar near a new restaurant you’ve just tried out. Sometimes you find yourself in a new place and want to know if you can find a particular kind of store or business close to where you are, and check in to see if they are open before making the trek to their location.

Place & Hours is the app that takes you there.

With a clear and easy to read display, Places & Hours gives you information about your surroundings based on the filters you plug in, which makes looking for certain types of venues a lot easier. Let’s say you’ve planned a nice dinner out and want to know where you can go first to get a cocktail. Plug in the address of where you will be and search for bars or lounges, and voila, you will get a map that pops up with possibilities.

Once you get the list of places that meet your criteria, you can then select each one to find out what their operation hours are, so you know before you go there if they are open. It’s a time saver and an entertainment suggestion box all in one. You click on the flag with a clock on it.

Easy to use and simple by design, Places & Hours will be your go to app to quickly decide on where to go next. Its uses are boundless. The map populates with several locations near you, designated by a small flag. Click on the flag to find out if the business is currently open. Then, make your way there.

The search window can be easily cleared for other searches as you slowly figure out what it is you want to do.

What was a little hard to use was the directions. You can get walking directions to your destination, but for some reason I had trouble pulling that up and the app ended up showing me the paths to all destinations I searched for, which pretty much marked up the entire screen. It was also very hard to move the map around to view all destinations that popped up from my search. The screen kept moving back to my current location instead of staying on the new area I wanted to view just left of my location.

As a workaround, you can select your destination and view it on Google Maps, then take it from there. Until they have their own map fixed, this is what I will do to get the most out of Places & Hours.

A free download, the app leverages the power of your device’s internal GPS and links it to a map to detect your current location, so the moment you open it up and ask about a certain kind of business or just want to check out what’s available nearby, you can do so easily. It is also extremely helpful in letting you know if a store is open or not.

Rating: 9/ 10
Price:  Free