A figure in a hooded coat stands at a rural Irish bus stop in the rain as a green bus approaches in the distance.

BogBus

Bus tracker for rural Ireland

“The 432 is mythological. We know where it actually is.”

BogBus is a real-time tracker for rural Bus Éireann and TFI services. It tells you where your bus actually is, when it's actually coming, and how late it actually is — and then it takes the piss while you wait.

Built for the people standing at a pole in the middle of nowhere wondering if the bus still exists. If you live in Dublin, you don't need this. If you don't, this is for you.

iOS 17+ iPhone No tracking No ads

What it does

Live positions for every Bus Éireann and TFI service in your area, with a small live map showing the bus crawling toward your stop
Lateness called out honestly — “Running 4 minutes late (sure what's new)”
Live Activity on the lock screen and Dynamic Island. Focus a bus, lock the phone, and the route number plus a rolling countdown live in the Dynamic Island until the bus arrives
Twenty-six weather-themed header images that reflect what's actually happening outside
Two-channel rain forecast: weather for the stop you're tracking, plus a separate rain warning for your location so you know if you'll get wet stepping out the door
A commentary engine that reacts to your bus, the weather, the time of day, and how long you've been standing there
A dwell timer that counts how long you've been waiting once you arrive at the stop and offers a fresh observation every minute, ranging from gentle resignation to cosmic horror
A lifetime visit counter for every stop you've stood at — the app remembers, even if you'd rather it didn't
Sibling-stop awareness — towns with multiple physical stops under the same name (Ennistymon, Lisdoonvarna, etc.) are merged automatically so you never miss a bus by picking the wrong pole
Offline-aware: keeps showing the last known data when your signal vanishes (which it will)
Nearest-stop auto-detection: walk up to a stop, the app figures out which one it is

If you've ever stood at a stone wall outside Ballinasloe at half five on a Wednesday in November and wondered whether the universe was personally targeting you — yes, it was, and now there's an app that knows.

What it isn't

Not a corporate transit app. One developer, one app, one purpose.
Not for Dublin commuters. Dublin already has its own apps. This is not one of them.
Not affiliated with Bus Éireann, the National Transport Authority, or Transport for Ireland. It uses the public real-time data feed they publish.
Not a complaint mechanism. It's a dignity preservation tool. There's a difference.

How it works

BogBus pulls live vehicle positions and trip updates from the National Transport Authority's public GTFS-Realtime API, the same one every other Irish transit app uses. Predictions come from your bus's actual reported delay, not a wishful timetable.

Weather comes from Open-Meteo — free, open, no API key, no auth gymnastics. Current conditions and 15-minute precipitation forecasts feed both the hero image and the commentary engine.

Real-time data is served through a caching proxy on AWS so the NTA's API key isn't hammered by every device individually. Your phone never speaks directly to the NTA.

Support

If you have a question, found a bug, or have a feature in mind — or you just want to tell the developer that the 432 was twenty minutes late again — the place to do it is GitHub Issues:

No support email. No help desk. No chatbot. Just a person, a bog, and a GitHub repo. Stand at the pole. The reply will come. Eventually.

Real-time data via the National Transport Authority GTFS-R feed.
Weather via Open-Meteo.
BogBus is not affiliated with Bus Éireann, the NTA, or TFI.