Help

Support · Braided

Braided is made by one person in Aotearoa. There's no help desk, just an email address, and it's read.

The map

Why is this river grey?

Grey means no reading we can use, not that the river is fine. The Kawarau is drawn but not measured: its live gauge belongs to Earth Sciences New Zealand, which doesn't let its data be passed on. Leaving it off would imply the country's rivers are only the ones we hold. The Rangitāiki and the Whakatāne were grey here until September 2026, when the Bay of Plenty Regional Council gave us access to its own gauges.

A gauge shows a level and a chart, but no colour. Why?

A few gauges are close enough to the sea that the tide moves the water more than the river does. Colouring one would be colouring the tide, so the app shows the level and says why.

What does the percentile mean?

Where today's reading sits in that gauge's own history: the 20th percentile means the river has been lower than this on 20% of days on record. It's worked out for each gauge on its own, because the same flow means something very different on the Clutha and on a Canterbury creek.

Why doesn't the scale go up to flood?

Only about 7% of river gauges publish a flood threshold, and today every one of them is in Canterbury. A national red that could appear in just one region would be false everywhere else, so the scale ends at "High" and each card says whether its gauge has a threshold at all.

Why is a reading hours old?

Because that's when it was measured. The time under every number is the measurement time, never the time you opened the app, and a large gap fades the reading rather than letting it look current.

The number here doesn't match my council's website.

Usually timing: the council has a newer reading than the last one we fetched. Now and then a council corrects a value after checking it; we show what they published. If it looks persistently wrong, email and say which gauge.

A swim spot says "no recent result". Is that bad?

It means nobody has published one, not that the water is bad. Councils test through summer and stop outside it; in four regions a forecast fills the gap. The card tells you whether you're looking at a test or a forecast, and how old it is.

A lake says "suitable for swimming" and also carries an algae warning. Which is it?

Both: they answer different questions. The swimming result tests for bacteria from sewage and animals. Toxic algae is something else, tested separately on its own schedule, so a lake can be fine for one and dangerous for the other. The card shows both, each with its own date, and algae never changes the colour of the pin. If either says don't, don't.

The algae warning is months old. Is it still true?

Probably not, and the card says so. Councils sample roughly November to March, so out of season the newest result in the country can be months old; one site still carries a warning from 2021. Past a fortnight the row switches to the past tense and carries its date.

Where does the air quality reading come from, and is "Good" official?

From LAWA, which carries every council's air monitoring stations: a few dozen, in 14 of the 16 regions. It shows on the card of any place within 25 km of one, and deliberately not as a map layer, because that few pins would look like national coverage when it isn't.

The word is ours; the numbers aren't. LAWA publishes no air quality index and no named categories, and no official New Zealand scale could be verified, so "good", "moderate" and "poor" are measured against the World Health Organization's daily guidelines and New Zealand's legal limit. The card says which one it used, and the word is always about the daily average, never the hourly reading, which is often several times higher.

Is the fire season on here the official one?

It's Fire and Emergency New Zealand's own status for that zone, in their words, with a link to their site. Whether you need a permit is their call, so read it before you light anything.

Why is there no avalanche danger on here?

The NZ Avalanche Advisory's forecasts aren't available for other apps to show, so Braided links to them instead. In the mountains a hut, campsite, track or place card has a row that opens avalanche.net.nz. Read the whole advisory there before you commit to any terrain.

Why doesn't my card have the avalanche link?

It's on hut, campsite, track and place cards, and only where there is land of 1,500 m or more within 25 km; otherwise the place isn't in avalanche country and the link would be noise. That is a test of the terrain, not of where the advisory forecasts, and a card without the link is not saying the snow there is safe.

Using the app

How do offline regions work?

Download a region before you leave coverage and its map, terrain, gauges, huts, campsites, tracks, forecasts and photos are stored on the phone. Readings are as fresh as the moment you downloaded them, and the app shows that age. A hut's booking calendar is the exception: it's checked live, so it needs a connection.

Can I book a hut in Braided?

No, but you can see whether it's worth trying. On most huts and campsites that take bookings, tap the night you arrive and the day you leave, set how many of you there are, and the card shows which nights have room, asked of DOC's booking system as you pick. Book on DOC opens that hut's own booking page, where you book and pay. The numbers change as people book, so a free bunk here isn't held for you. Hunters' huts, and the huts and campsites DOC doesn't take online bookings for, show whether they're bookable and nothing more.

Do river alerts work when my phone is off, or out of coverage?

No. An alert fires when a reading we've received crosses your threshold, and delivery depends on the gauge reporting, our servers picking it up, and Apple or Google reaching your phone. It can be late and it can never arrive. No alert has ever meant a river is safe to cross.

Does it tell me when the aurora is out?

If you ask it to, and only for one place. Set the aurora alert on the Alerts screen, pick where you'd actually stand, and on an evening when the aurora should be visible from there, you get one message early on, based on the aurora forecast and the cloud over your place. One a night at most, never in the small hours.

How far south you are decides everything, and it's not the latitude on the map. The aurora circles the magnetic pole, not the South Pole, and that puts Aotearoa further from it than it looks. Storm strength is measured on a scale called Kp, from 0 to 9, and the strength each place needs runs roughly: Rakiura and Invercargill about 4, Dunedin 4.4, Wānaka 4.9, Ōtautahi Christchurch 5.7, Te Whanganui-a-Tara Wellington 7, and Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland about 9, the top of the scale, which is why Aucklanders saw it in the May 2024 storm and hardly ever otherwise. The app shows you the number for a place while you're choosing it, so you know if an alert will hardly ever go off.

Two limits. Midsummer is the worst time to look, however clear the sky, because the nights are short: in December Rakiura gets about two and a quarter hours of real darkness against nearly twelve in June. And the best displays often come late at night with about an hour's warning, too late for an evening forecast. What it answers is "is tonight worth going outside for", the question you can still act on at six o'clock.

Does Braided track me?

No account, no advertising, no analytics in the app. Your location, saved places and downloaded regions never leave the phone. The only thing ever sent about you is a code that lets us send notifications to your phone, and only if you create an alert. Set the aurora alert and we also get the name of the place you picked and the forecast area it sits in (about 14 km across), so we can check the sky there. Not where your phone is, then or ever. Opening a hut's booking calendar asks our server about that hut and that month, and nothing about you; we don't keep a record of it. The privacy page is short.

Is it free? Will it stay free?

Free, and it has to stay that way: several sources are open to Braided precisely because it's non-commercial. No subscription, no paid tier, no advertising; the only money in the app is a voluntary koha that buys nothing.

The data

Where does it come from?

Regional councils (flow and level, rainfall, water temperature, turbidity), LAWA (more council gauges, and the bathing results behind the swim spots), DOC (huts, campsites, tracks, alerts, and which nights a bookable hut has room), GeoNet (earthquakes, volcanoes, sea level), LINZ (topography, tides, place names), Fire and Emergency New Zealand, MPI (fishing and shellfish restrictions), NOAA (sea surface temperature, and the Kp index behind the aurora alert) and open global weather models. Every source is recorded with its licence and credited in the app. Nothing that refuses reuse is read at all, and nothing that blocks automated access is read without the holder's say-so; where a licence is an open question rather than a no, the reading is marked Awaiting licence reply where you read it, and it comes out if the answer is no.

Why isn't the MetService forecast in it?

MetService is commercial and its forecast isn't open, so Braided neither uses nor scrapes it. Forecasts come from an open global model, which is worse in the mountains than a New Zealand forecaster looking at New Zealand terrain. For the official forecast, go to MetService.

So why are MetService's warnings in it?

Because those they publish openly, under an open licence (CC BY 4.0). Warning and watch areas are drawn on the map, and any place inside one gets a band on its card. It's the one MetService product Braided reads, from their own feed and nowhere else.

How does the home page choose the places it shows?

By rule, and the rule only ever chooses the subject, never the reading. The river card takes the gauge with the longest record and the biggest flow on one of the 150 main rivers. The hut and beach cards start from a place we chose once, and fall back to a rule if it disappears from the data: the hut with the most bunks, or any coastal swim spot with a sea temperature. The track card does the same: a route we chose once, else the track with a photo and the biggest climb, 300 m or more. Each card then shows whatever that place happens to be doing. The two matching gauges further down the home page are found in the live data when the page loads, and if no such pair exists today that section doesn't appear.

What happens if a council says no?

Its data comes out, off the map and off the cards. Several councils have been asked in writing and haven't replied; their data is in the app meanwhile, marked Awaiting licence reply on the Sources page (ⓘ, then All sources and licences), so you can see which readings rest on an open question.

How complete is it, really?

Exactly as complete as Aotearoa's open data. Braided takes no measurements of its own. Where a reading doesn't exist the card says so rather than filling the gap. And a gauge only ever measures one point on one river.

Can I have my region's council added?

Often it isn't technical: the data exists, collected with public money, and it's the permission that's missing. If you work at a council and can point us at an open data feed, that email would be very welcome.

Still stuck?

Email the address above. Bugs, wrong gauges, misnamed rivers and requests are all fair game.