UK student launches worldwide toilet locator app

A UK student recently launched a toilet finder app that allows users to find the nearest public toilets around the world.

Jake Ruston, a student from the University of East Anglia, recently launched his ‘Flush Toilet Finder’ which uses the owner’s GPS location to find the nearest public restrooms.

The app currently has information on 100,000 facilities in its storage. Users can also add the location of public restrooms that are not shown on the app, in the hope of its expansion.

Samita Sall, a first-year History undergraduate lauded the app’s locating of only public facilities: “A lot of the time the nearest restrooms are in restaurants, and you can’t use these unless you’re a customer.”

In addition to providing the location of the closest facilities, the app offers details on the whereabouts of disabled toilets as well as indicating whether or not they are free to use.

Mr Ruston said that he created the app to help people with conditions such as Crohn’s disease and irritable bowel syndrome (IBS), as well as tourists, reported the Daily Mail.

He added: ‘There have been times when I’ve been in other countries such as Germany and I’ve needed to find a toilet, which has been difficult to locate due to obvious language barriers and unfamiliarity with the area.”

Prior to the ‘Flush Toilet Finder App’, Ruston created ‘My Currency Converter’ and ‘London Tube Live’. He was asked to include details about public toilets within the latter app, but decided to approach this function in a way that would make it usable across the world.

The iOS app currently has an average rating of four and a half stars out of five, based on ten reviews.