V2 is here

Booking is easier than ever

No more making an account before you’re allowed to book. Pick your day out, choose a date and how many of you are coming, then pop in your name and email at checkout. We set up your account as you pay, so your booking is waiting in the app next time you open it.

Search is one place now. Tap the search box on Explore and tell it what you fancy, where, when and who’s coming. Add a filter or two, like price, distance or dogs welcome, and everything you’ve picked sits at the top as a chip you can clear with one tap.

And you can have a proper nose around first. Explore, search, farm pages, Saved and Me all work without an account, so browse for as long as you like.

Trips: your day out, sorted

Trips has its own tab now. Your next visit sits at the top with the forecast, directions and your booking one tap away. Underneath are things to do nearby, so a morning at the farm can turn into a whole day out.

Your shortlist lives here too, along with a passport of every farm you’ve been to. It’s a lovely thing to scroll back through on a rainy day.

Can’t decide where to go? Guide me deals you days out one card at a time. Swipe through five and it picks one for you, with a date and how the day fits together, ready to book. It remembers what you loved, even if you started swiping before you made an account.

Set up your farm and list in minutes

Adding your farm is a few short steps: its name, where it is, what you farm and a few photos. Before you finish, you see your farm page exactly as guests will, so there are no surprises.

To list something, tap ⊕ and describe it the way you’d tell a friend. Something like “lambing walk, adults 10 pounds, children 4 pounds, Saturdays at 10am”. The app drafts the listing with its prices, times and places, and you check it over before it goes live.

Every step saves as you go. Get called away to the lambing shed halfway through and your draft waits at the top of the ⊕ sheet under Carry on where you left off.

Editing is simpler too. Each listing has one editor and your farm has one, laid out the same way in the app and on the website console.

Your Business area, rebuilt

Business brings the running of your farm into one tab. Bookings shows your week with the forecast and today’s guests, and Needs you gathers booking requests, chats and reviews waiting on a reply, so nothing slips through the hedge.

Listings shows everything you offer, to guests and to other farms. Insights tells you what’s earning, when guests come and what market prices are up to. Grow has ideas from the farming year, plus promo codes and memberships you can start from a ready-made idea.

The Market sits at the top of Business: farm jobs, people looking for work, equipment, livestock and contractors, each with a live count. And your farm’s Social is close by, so you can post from ⊕, share a listing in a post or start a herd with other farmers.

A lighter, cleaner app

The whole app has had a good tidy up. Pages are white and calm, buttons say what they do, and every tab in the bottom bar has a name, so you’re never guessing what an icon means.

Maps have our own countryside style, with woods, national parks and hills showing when you zoom out. It feels a lot more like the places you’re heading to.

Social reads better

Text posts read like writing now, not boxes. When a farm posts about something you can book, it shows as a slim Bookable strip with a Book button right there in the post.

Comments are simpler, herds are easier to find and join, and search covers people, herds and what was said in them. Chat is one inbox for guests, community and requests.

Field Notes, now in the app

Field Notes brings stories from the farms into the app: the people, the places and what’s happening this season. Anyone can read it, account or not, and you can subscribe by email to get each issue when it lands.

The small stuff

1. Every price includes the 2.5% processing fee wherever you see it: search, the map, Guide me, farm pages and every booking step.

2. Explore, search and listings load faster, with smaller photos and fewer reloads.

3. A second search from Explore no longer gets stuck loading.

4. Search a place with nothing nearby and you can ask to be told when something opens.

5. Places to eat and visit in an area you pick are listed nearest first.

6. Distances show in miles or kilometres, depending on your setting and country.

7. Event listings lead with the cheapest paid ticket, and say From when prices differ.

8. Evening sessions show at the right time on the availability calendar.

9. Hold + or − to count tickets or a whole school group quickly.

10. Stay and camping bookings show check-in, check-out and your pitch.

11. A trip you’ve just paid for no longer asks you to finish payment while the payment is confirmed.

12. Book again only shows on a past trip when it can still be booked.

13. On iPhone, Add to calendar adds your visit straight to your calendar.

14. You can see a farm’s membership plans before making an account.

15. Approving a refund tells you how much the guest gets back, and refund times are given in working days.

16. Cancel booking has moved to a quieter Change or cancel row, so it’s harder to tap by accident.

17. Business no longer says Nothing booked after you switch farm.

18. Checkouts abandoned before payment no longer show up as bookings.

19. Waiting lists never count more people than the event can take.

20. Courses and events over several days now get their after-visit email.

21. Videos on Social can be up to 5 minutes long, up from 2.

22. Videos from newer phones no longer look washed out.

23. Job seekers can add a CV and a one-minute intro video to their work profile.

24. Chat shows an unread count for each conversation.

25. Times use the 24-hour clock and dates read the UK way throughout.

26. If a photo or page fails to load, you get a clear message and a Report it button instead of a crash.

27. Broken links open a proper page instead of the sign-in screen.

28. Screens fit properly at the largest text size, from the welcome screen to your profile.