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Looking for the best apps for open water swimming? From structured training with Catch to UK water quality alerts, weather forecasting, river flow data & social motivation, here’s what to download before your next wild swim.
Open water swimming is joyful. It’s wild. It’s freeing.
It’s brilliant for our physical health, our mental health & our sense of adventure.
But it also comes with variables - weather, water quality, currents, confidence.
Here are the best apps to help you train smarter, stay informed & make the most of every dip.
By Rebecca Wetten, Co-Founder & Head Coach at Catch
If you want to feel safer in open water, start by becoming a stronger swimmer.
Catch is a globally available swim coach app - anyone, anywhere can use it.
Gold members (Catch’s premium membership - £19.99/month or £149.99/year) can toggle their training sessions between pool, lake, sea, river or lido.
You watch a focused technique lesson, then complete structured sessions designed to help you put that learning into practice outdoors.
Catch Free gives you structured sessions & monthly technique learning. Catch Gold gives you personalised progression, event preparation, tailored technique learning & 1:1 coach support.
If you want a coach in your pocket to help you improve fast - not just random swims - Catch is built for that.
Water quality is often front of mind when swimming in lakes, rivers or the sea - & rightly so.
The Safer Seas & Rivers Service from Surfers Against Sewage provides real-time pollution alerts across hundreds of UK locations.
You can:
- Check sewage discharge alerts
- View tide information
- See lifeguard details
If you swim in the UK, this is an essential safety check.
NOWCA is the UK’s largest network of supervised open water swimming venues, with 50+ locations.
The NOWCA Wild app helps you:
- Discover swim spots
- Get directions
- Connect with local groups
- Log swims via GPS
It’s available more widely, but its real strength is helping swimmers discover UK open water venues & communities.
Conditions can change quickly outdoors.
Windy is a global weather app providing:
Wherever you are in the world, checking wind & swell before a sea or large lake swim is a smart move.
If you swim in rivers, flow rate matters.
RiverApp monitors rivers across Europe, North America, Australia & New Zealand, providing:
After heavy rainfall, it’s particularly useful.
Want social motivation? Strava.
It’s available globally & adds a social layer to your swimming. Logging sessions, seeing what friends are up to & getting kudos can give you that little boost that keeps the habit going.
It’s not a coaching app - but for accountability & encouragement, it works.
It depends what you need.
- Want to check water quality in the UK? Surfers Against Sewage.
- Want to discover UK swim spots? NOWCA Wild.
- Want global weather insight? Windy.
- Want river flow data across multiple countries? RiverApp.
- Want social motivation? Strava.
- Want to train & learn to become a stronger, more confident open water swimmer anywhere in the world? Catch.
Get started on Catch for free to become a stronger, more confident open water swimmer
Open water swimming is joyful. It’s wild. It’s freeing.
It’s brilliant for our physical health, our mental health & our sense of adventure.
But it also comes with variables - weather, water quality, currents, confidence.
Here are the best apps to help you train smarter, stay informed & make the most of every dip.
By Rebecca Wetten, Co-Founder & Head Coach at Catch
If you want to feel safer in open water, start by becoming a stronger swimmer.
Catch is a globally available swim coach app - anyone, anywhere can use it.
Gold members (Catch’s premium membership - £19.99/month or £149.99/year) can toggle their training sessions between pool, lake, sea, river or lido.
You watch a focused technique lesson, then complete structured sessions designed to help you put that learning into practice outdoors.
Catch Free gives you structured sessions & monthly technique learning. Catch Gold gives you personalised progression, event preparation, tailored technique learning & 1:1 coach support.
If you want a coach in your pocket to help you improve fast - not just random swims - Catch is built for that.
Water quality is often front of mind when swimming in lakes, rivers or the sea - & rightly so.
The Safer Seas & Rivers Service from Surfers Against Sewage provides real-time pollution alerts across hundreds of UK locations.
You can:
- Check sewage discharge alerts
- View tide information
- See lifeguard details
If you swim in the UK, this is an essential safety check.
NOWCA is the UK’s largest network of supervised open water swimming venues, with 50+ locations.
The NOWCA Wild app helps you:
- Discover swim spots
- Get directions
- Connect with local groups
- Log swims via GPS
It’s available more widely, but its real strength is helping swimmers discover UK open water venues & communities.
Conditions can change quickly outdoors.
Windy is a global weather app providing:
Wherever you are in the world, checking wind & swell before a sea or large lake swim is a smart move.
If you swim in rivers, flow rate matters.
RiverApp monitors rivers across Europe, North America, Australia & New Zealand, providing:
After heavy rainfall, it’s particularly useful.
Want social motivation? Strava.
It’s available globally & adds a social layer to your swimming. Logging sessions, seeing what friends are up to & getting kudos can give you that little boost that keeps the habit going.
It’s not a coaching app - but for accountability & encouragement, it works.
It depends what you need.
- Want to check water quality in the UK? Surfers Against Sewage.
- Want to discover UK swim spots? NOWCA Wild.
- Want global weather insight? Windy.
- Want river flow data across multiple countries? RiverApp.
- Want social motivation? Strava.
- Want to train & learn to become a stronger, more confident open water swimmer anywhere in the world? Catch.
Get started on Catch for free to become a stronger, more confident open water swimmer
Catch is now the Official Coaching Partner of NOWCA. This partnership brings together safe access to open water venues & structured swim coaching, helping more swimmers across the UK build confidence, improve their front crawl & train smarter for whatever they’re swimming towards.
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