The Story Behind the app

SAR Tools History

From a single idea on the water to a trusted tool carried by rescue crews across the globe — the history of SAR Tools, its most notable rescue, and the crews that use it.

Origin

How It Started

In 2013, Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue Advanced Crew member Adam Hyde was out for a training night doing search paterns. After some frustrating runs using a stopwatch and working out course headings in a notebook, he thought there must be a 21st Century way to improve search efficiency and accuracy.

In 2014 the first SAR Tools app was developed and thoroughly tested in Station 1, West Vancouver for the iPhone (it also worked on iPad). At that time it was integrated into an existing Safe Boating app he had previously created. Shortly thereafter, the app was released as a standalone SAR Tools app in the Google Play store for Android devices. In 2019 the app was moved to a dedicated SAR Tools app on iPhone with new version 2 features. At the same time the Android app was updated to version 2. The app has more than 10,000 downloads to date.

Here's the 2019 announcement from RCMSAR. Since then the app has disappeared from the Google Play store due to a lack of funding and updates. The old iPhone version remains in the Apple App Store but is no longer supported.

Deployment

SAR Tools 2026

Buy Now and Install

SAR Tools 2026 is the evolution of the app designed to work on both Android and iOS devices as a Progressive Web App. A Progressive Web App (PWA) is a type of application software delivered through the web, built using common web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) but designed to act and feel like a native app. It offers features like offline functionality, and hardware access (e.g. GPS). Moving the app outside the app stores, is the only viable way to keep supporting the app for the future.

Famous Use Cases

Notable Rescue

SAR Tools was used to run sector search patterns during a successful search mission on October 30th, 2017, to rescue Mya DeRyan who had jumped from a British Columbia Ferry into dangerously cold Canadian waters. Mya was found by an RCMSAR crew after 5 hours, one of the longest marine survival stories in Canadian history. See the North Shore News Article.

Global Reach

Crews Around the World

SAR Tools in use by Royal Canadian Marine Search and Rescue, RNLI, USCG Auxiliary, Coast Guard NZ, and other agencies worldwide.

SAR Tools — iPhone app (2019)