11 posts tagged with "burning man"

Whether this is your first time to the burn or you've used dust before, in 2026 we've added quite a few new features to the app. So please take a look through this guide for the dust app for Burning Man 2026!

The map

Camps, art, ice, medical and restrooms are visible on the map. Open the Home tab, tap the Map tile. Pan and zoom to see the full city. Tap to learn what is there. Camp boundaries appear in the app when gates open on August 30.

Camps

Use the Camps tab to search for a camp. Camp details include location info, events and parties. Press the Star on events to favorite and get a reminder of the event 30 minutes before it starts. The map shows the distance and direction to the camp from where you are.

Press "Near Me" to sort by the camps closest to you, press ⌄ and filter camps (eg for BRC Passport Camps)

Events

Tap the Events tab and pick a day in the day selector. Tap the Event Type ⌄ and choose a category (eg Food). Tap the map icon at the top right and the screen switches to a map of the events for that day and type.

Press the Star next to events to quickly Favorite the event and get a notification reminder 30 minutes before the event.

Use the "Now" tab to show events happening right now, and the "Near Me" option to show events that are happening close to you.

Art & Mutant Vehicles

Tap the Art tab and type a name in Find Art. Tap ⌄ and choose "Audio Tour" to show all Art with audio - play and it will also auto play the next audio track (great for the ride to the burn). Also tap ⌄ to filter by Mutant Vehicles or Art.

For 2026 Mutant Vehicles also have a listing of parties with lineups coming from Rock Star Librarian.

Favorites

Tap the star on anything you like. It lands in the Favorites tab. To send it to a friend, tap the ⋮ three-dot menu, then Share Favorites. A modal opens with a six-character ID and QR Code. Tap the share icon at the top right to send it. You can also choose Scan Favorites and scan the QR Code from your friends phone to download their favorite Events, Camps & Art.

You can also print the list or sync it to your calendar from the Favorites header.

If you have an Apple Watch tap Update Watch to send your Favorite events, camps, art, restrooms, ice & medical to the watch - this way you can leave your phone at camp.

Ice and Restrooms

Tap the Restrooms tile on Home or the Ice tile. Each opens a map layer with its own pins and shows the nearest.

The Now button

Tap the Now button on the Home page to show a map of events happening in the next hour. Tap a camp or art to find out more. You can also tap Now in the Events tab to see events happening now.

Friends

You can save where everyone is. From a camp detail page, tap the menu, then Add Friend. The modal opens pre-filled with the camp address. Type a name and save. Or from Home, tap the + plus in the Friends card, use the address picker to set a street and time, type a name, and save.

Friends camps are also synced to the Apple Watch.

Where you parked your bike

Every bike on the playa looks the same, especially at big sound camps. When you park, open Home, scroll to the Find card, and tap My Bike. Dust asks for your location once, drops a pin at your GPS, and confirms it saved. Later you walk straight back to it.

Reminders for shifts and private parties

If you have a Volunteer shifts or invite-only parties you can Tap + plus on the Reminders card on Home. Type a title, set a time , add an address and notes, then save. The reminder appears in the list and exports with your calendar. You'll also get a notification beforehand.

Go offline

Before you leave home, open the Home tab, scroll to the Go Offline card, and tap the arrow. Dust downloads every image and audio file (these typically require cell service unlike events and text).

When you get to the burn toggle airplane mode - the app will start faster and use less battery.

Note: Cell service is needed to share favorites between friends, or to visit links.

Apple Watch Support

The new Apple Watch feature puts your favorites on your wrist (available in v2.137 released August 24th).

The iPhone app copies from your Favorites to a paired watch.

Set it up

1. Open the Favorites tab in the app on your iPhone.
2. Tap the ⋮ three-dot menu.
3. Tap Update Watch.

The app copies your Favorites (Events, Camps, Art) plus the Restrooms, Ice, and Medical points to the watch.

What the watch does

The watch runs on its own GPS, so it works even when your iPhone is back at camp. From the list it picks the nearest Restroom, Ice, or Medical point, plus your favorite camps, art, friends, upcoming events and parties, and reminders.

Walk to something

Tap a destination on the watch and a compass needle appears. The needle rotates so that up on the screen is the way to walk. It shows the live straight-line distance and the destination name. The distance counts down as you move. When you get within about fifteen meters it flashes You've arrived and gives a haptic. Stop returns you to the list.

Tips

Run Go Offline at home on your Wi-Fi. The download is big and you want it done before you leave. Use Airplane mode. The app runs faster and the battery goes further. Mark your bike when you park. Camps and art locations unlock on Sunday when the gates open. Until then you only get approximate points for camps.

Get the App

Download dust from dust.events. Regional burns also use dust. Fuck your burn!

Here's compendium of the Mutant Vehicles of Burning Man 2025: https://updates.dust.events/brc-mutant-vehicles-2025.pdf

Check out the video for the new dust features for Burning Man 2025:

Dust features for 2025

Calendar Export

You can export your favorite events and reminders to your phone's calendar! Press the calendar icon on the favorites page.

Go Offline

Before you get to the playa be sure to choose the “Go Offline” option to make sure all images and audio are stored on your device because you can’t rely on having any cell service when you are there.

Friends

You’re going to want to note down where your friends are. If you know their camp then add them from the camp page, or you can add friends by their address on the home page. You can see your friends on the map by pressing the "Friends" button on the home page.

Find my Bike

It is easy to lose your bike at large camps, so mark it on the map before you leave your bike, so that you can find it later.

You can also use this feature to pin secret camps, mutant vehicle locations, etc.

Reminders

Going to a private party or have a volunteer shift? Add it as a reminder and get a notification before it happens. Reminders are listed on the home page.

Restrooms

Porta potties are hard to find in the dark and sometimes you’ll need to find the nearest one. Press the "Restrooms" button on the home page.

Ice

Want to find out opening hours, prices and locations for Ice? Use “Ice” on the home page.

Art Audio Tour

Want to hear about the art on the playa? Many art pieces have an audio guide. Look for the audio icon.

Mutant Vehicles

Want to know more about that mutant vehicle you just saw? You can now find them under “Art” or filter by “Mutant Vehicle”. Mutant Vehicles registrations were managed through dust this year.

Rock Star Librarian

The music section is a collection of DJ sets and Live music collated by Rock Star Librarian. Favoriting a musician will notify you before their set. This feature unlocks in the app on Tuesday 19th August.

Rock Star Librarian registrations were managed through dust this year through a collaboration with Kate Houston.

BRC Passport

If you have got your passport from the BRC Passport Office (5:30 & B), you can find theme camps issuing stamps from the Camps page. Press the down arrow and choose "Passport Camp".

Queer Burners

Looking for inclusive and queer-friendly camps? You can find them, thanks to queerburners.org, by pressing the down arrow on camps and choosing "LGBTQIA+ Inclusive".

Burn Planner

We've built an integration with Burn Planner to allow you to import any events you have chosen there into dust!

Other New Features

We've added several new features since 2024 Burning Man:

• Clear Favorites - You can clear the list of favorites.
• No Recurring Events - From the events page press the down arrow and choose "No recurring" to only see one-off events. This can be helpful to cut through the noise of repeating events.
• Camp Images - Camps now have images! You can find their image on event page too.

Say Hi!

This year I'm camping with Kosmik Dust at the Center Camp Keyhole. Come say hi, I may even have some swag for you!

Cheers, Damian.

Dust now has theme camps, art and events for Burning Man 2025 - Tomorrow Today! New for this year is images for theme camps, and BRC Passport office camps.

Burning Man provides data through its Innovate program to apps like dust and other projects.

For dust, we import this data and make it available for download onto your phone. The data updates frequently and will update if you have a cell or wifi connection when you open the app and choose the burn (or if you choose "Download Update" from the more menu).

Anyone submitting updates to events can do so at playaevents.burning.org up until August 18th. Dust DOES NOT control camp, event and art data.

Important Dates

• August 18 - Playa Event submissions end.
• August 17 - Theme Camp Locations will be displayed in the dust app.
• August 24 - Art locations will be displayed in the dust app.

Theme Camp Images

Burning Man accepted theme camp images for the first time in 2025 and we've got them in the dust app!

BRC Passport Office

This year's we're working with BRC Passport Office to show camps that have stamps. On the camps page of dust press the down arrow and choose "Passport Camps".

The Black Rock City Passport Office aims to foster a more interconnected, explorative, and immersive Burning Man experience by providing attendees with unique passports.

These passports not only serve as compact mementos but also inspire burners to discover new camps, engage with different communities, and collect creative stamps - deepening their connection with the Burning Man spirit and community.

More to Come

We've got some more tricks up our sleeve for Burning Man 2025, but you'll need to wait for announcements!

The event selection screen of dust has been given a revamp!

We've added the ability to list events vertically to quickly browse, and we've also added the region/state/country of the event. You'll also notice we no longer use the word "regional" to describe events as we're including community events like camp fundraisers, decompressions and "non-official" regionals.

Another revamp has been the search screen which now shows the distance and direction of camps, art and events and also shows the closest camp/art or event.

We've been working on making registration of theme camps and event easier for everyone.

You'll notice a new button in the dust app Manage my camp & events which will let theme camp organizers (or any burner creating an event) to easily manage their camp, it's events and music. You can also use this as a way to manage the regional burn from your phone.

The new button handles registration of new camps or editing a camp or burn. Once you have registered a camp the label will change to Manage [your-camp-name].

The new button appears when your burn has the setting Allow Camp Registration turned on in Settings and is hidden if you turn the setting off (You'll need to click Publish when you make a change).

Newsletter

We've recently started a newsletter for dust. If you are interested in finding out about new features and update you can sign up for the newsletter.

Volunteeripate

We've been chatting with Cabbie from Volunteeripate about a collaboration. If you haven't heard of Volunteeripate, it's a platform for volunteer management and ticket sales for regional burns. Details of the collaboration are still being worked out but we're excited at the opportunity to make it easier for burners to volunteer at a burn and easily access their tickets for gate checkin.

We're super excited to announce some new features for dust related to messaging burners interested in your regional!

Push Notifications

You can now send push notifications out to burners who have accessed your regional in dust. This is a great way for announcements like ticket sales, burn times, deadlines for submissions or soliciting volunteer signups.

Notifications can be sent on their own, along with a social media post or when an email is sent out for your newsletter.

Mastodon

You may post to social media when you have important announcements. Now dust can also show these posts in a "Messages" tab that will appear. When the notification goes out it will also send a push notification to burners who have accessed your regional burn.

Mastodon is a radically different social media platform. It is more akin to email in that it is not in control of any one company. It is also open meaning that unlike Facebook etc it is possible to easily integrate into systems like dust.

As Mastodon has no advertising and selling your data not their motivation, it feels like it fits in a lot better with the 10 Burning Man principles, particularly Decommodification.

You can read more about how to setup the Mastodon integration in the docs.

Newsletters

Do you have a mailing list for important announcements? Now you can have any emails sent out automatically appear in the dust app and a push notification sent out to your burners.

You can read more about how to set this up in the docs.

This month I had the pleasure to present at Burn After Meeting which is a conference for regional burn event organizers to share practical concerns and solutions, to learn from each other rather than learning the hard way, and to build an environment of mutual support.

I was able to run through a demo of the dust app and what it can do for a regional burn. All of this was in person, which makes a big difference as up until now the regionals I've worked with have all been achieved by coordinating over Google Meet, email or Messenger.

It may not be that helpful but here is the presentation from the session.

October Fixes

This month there have been a few fixes with dust including:

• When pasting descriptions for events from a PDF the text is cleaned up to remove line breaks.
• When imported KML files the pin for polygons is now calculated as its center.
• A new feature was added to delete all events.
• Fix for importing events via CSV where the start day is different to the end day (ie over midnight)
• Support for shuttle stops and other markers added for maps.

Upcoming Features

Work has started on new communication features for dust!

The dust app has primarily been used during a burn but some new communication features will mean that it can be used year round.

You'll be able to send push notifications out to burners interested in your burn!

This is going to be done in an interesting way: posting to social media. You'll be able post to Mastodon and your message will be sent out to all dust users who have accessed your burn in dust. They will also be able see all previous messages in dust.

This works a little bit more like email but as dust users will also be able to find previous messages in dust it means they won't miss any messages if they are a first time dust user.

The other feature this enables is that since you post to social media users can reply there.

It's still early for these features and development has only just started, so we'll see how this pans out over the next month or so.

Why Mastodon?

Mastodon is a radically different social media platform. It is more akin to email in that it is not in control of any one company. It is also open meaning that unlike Facebook etc it is possible to easily integrate into systems like dust.

As Mastodon has no advertising and selling your data not their motivation, it feels like it fits in a lot better with the 10 Burning Man principles, particularly Decommodification.

Burning Man is obviously a massive time for dust. I don't track numbers of users but having an Apple and Google developer account means that I do have some idea of how many people are using the app, and it looks like there were around 20k of you using the app on average 5 times during the week of the burn.

After burn week I posed a question asking for feedback and collected hundreds of responses. This was then broken down into features and fixes and prioritized by importance. The feature request list has been used to create a roadmap and for the fixes it has resulted in a busy September cleaning up issues not only for Burning Man but also for regionals too.

The full list of fixes for september is below, but in summary fixes included better offline support, fixes for swiping back from pages, automatically opening the app the last event and a whole lot more.

The list of features implemented has been limited because having a super stable app is the priority but there are also some cool features added including reminders for things like volunteer shifts, filtering for camp types (like sound camps) and art types (like mutant vehicles). Imports from Google Maps have been improved and visual improvements on the app and manager website too.

I'd like to thank everyone who gave their feedback and suggestions. There is still a lot of work helping out regionals with their events but I'm hoping to get to some of the really fun features by the end of the year.

Dust Manager Fixes for September 2024

• Add art type to art to support mutant vehicles
• Add camp type to camp to support sound camps
• Import KML added for art
• Fix: KML import now matches items that have additional spaces or special characters
• Added ability to change the CSS for the static camps / events pages
• Remove times for start and end of burn
• Added web page for art listings and art
• Import KML for new art and new camps
• Improve layout and styling of the dust editor

Dust App Fixes for September 2024

• Private events are now reminders and are available in regional burns
• Mutant Vehicles show location as "Out on the Playa"
• Recurring events are shown with an icon
• Add spacing between event types
• Art shows side image layout if < 50% of art has an image
• Fix swipe to remove events from favorites
• Fix for event listing
• Fix to refresh event listing when changing filter
• Fix when going back to camps/events page and seeing white content
• Fix auto starting the event if closed while selected
• Scroll to the last event you visited (after pressing < and >)
• Fix where music shows no events on first view
• The music section will scroll the current day into view
• Rock Star Librarian data for sets crossing midnight have day incremented
• Remove swipe to go back for pages that have the map
• Confirmation added when deleting a friend
• Pass version number with requests for data
• Add camp types to accommodate sound camps
• Add art types to accommodate mutant vehicles
• Use experimental zoneless change detection
• Use isolatedModules to speed up builds
• Avoid app update unless on wifi

Its been a busy month for dust to get ready for Burning Man!

A walkthrough video of dust was created to show what's new.

Here's a detailed list of the changes up to version 2.52:

Features

• Audio tour added for art
• We've optimized startup performance reducing the time by around 50%
• The print layout for favorites is now multi column and will fit on one page
• Fuzzy search for art, events and camps
• Search all feature
• We've added links for Burning Man
• Maps can now be shared (eg where I'm camped)
• Swipe on favorites will now allow you to delete the favorite
• Download updates will also check for a new version of the app
• Swipe to go back added back into the app
• Next and previous buttons added to events to make it easier to flip between events
• Add near me checkbox for camps, events and art
• Show multiple camps at a single location as a count
• Show facing directions for Burning Man
• Show badge count of favorited items
• Search on map now zooms to and animates the found item
• Double tap on map for zoom in/far/out

Fixes

• When an event is favorited in details then the favorite star will appear on the event list
• Version information shown on the bottom of the home page
• Clicking music event in favorites will not open blank page
• Fixes for calendar sync on Android
• Layout fixed when text zoom is used
• Tap anywhere on a popup in maps to dismiss it
• Show distance at bottom of event so that it is visible