Who we are
We are not a company or a big studio — just two people who make small, honest apps together, and VERT is one of them. We build the sort of tools we want to carry ourselves: quiet, uncluttered, and happy to work with no signal at all. No account, no cloud, no loading screen between you and the mountain.
The two of us are Nadya Yashchuk and Ivan Lukichev. Nadya lives in Wals-Siezenheim, just outside Salzburg, close enough to the German border that a walk can start in one country and end in the other — and the photographs behind the number in VERT are hers, each placed at the altitude it was shot. We work remotely, five time zones apart, and handle everything ourselves: design, development and the email you write to us. Our apps are published as a small sole proprietorship registered in Austria; the formal details live in our Impressum.
Because it is just the two of us, every app stays personal. We choose what to build, answer our own mail, and shape each release around what people actually ask for. VERT is our first one for the mountains, and it is only version one — there is a lot more on the way.
What VERT does
VERT reads the barometer already in your iPhone, turns the pressure into a height, and writes your day to disk as you walk. It started as a complaint about the altimeters we tried: they rented us numbers we already owned, covered half the screen with an advert, or — the one that really stung — lost a whole day of walking because the app had been closed without pressing stop. So we built the one we wanted to carry.
- Works with no signal: altitude comes from the pressure sensor, not the network, so it works in a gorge with nothing overhead.
- Never loses the day: the track is saved continuously, not when you press stop — force-quit it, run the battery flat, and the day is already there.
- Honest numbers: the reading carries the ± the system actually reports, and a flat day is allowed to look flat.
- Hiking and skiing, counted properly: climbs and descents are separated, and lifts are detected and excluded.
- Yours to keep: everything lives on your phone, and GPX export is free — getting your own season back out should never be a paywall.
A free tool on the web
You do not need to install anything to get started. Right here on the site, our what-is-my-elevation tool reads your current height above sea level in the browser — and, unlike most pages that do this, tells you how sure it is. Alongside it we keep a growing set of plain-language guides on how height is actually measured, and why your phone, watch and map so often disagree about it.
One promise: there is no subscription and there never will be. VERT is genuinely useful without paying anything — Pro exists for the extras, not to unlock the instrument, and ads never touch the altimeter or the recording.
Say hello
We genuinely read what people send us, and a lot of what goes into the app comes from those suggestions. Questions, ideas, bug reports, or just a kind word — write to [email protected]. The app is small enough that a good suggestion can be in the next release. For legal and company details, see our Impressum and Privacy Policy.