About RHUL Mobile | RHUL Mobile

RHUL Mobile is the campus app for Royal Holloway, University of London students. It is built and run by SHACKSOLUTIONS LTD, and it is independent of the university and the Students' Union.

The story

The idea got tested at Founder's Square in the rain. We were reading a paper timetable pinned to the bus stop, waiting for a bus with no way to tell if it was running late or on time. Citymapper did not cover the campus shuttle. The official Royal Holloway app did not do bus times. The intranet had a PDF.

Two weeks later the first build of RHUL Mobile shipped with one feature: live bus arrivals. A handful of students installed it. Then their friends did. The next feature was laundry, because the second most annoying part of halls life was walking down to the basement of Founder's to find every machine in use. After that, the campus map, because freshers kept asking where the Moore Building was.

Five years and a lot of updates later, RHUL Mobile is on more than 6,500 phones across Royal Holloway. Still free to use, still no ads.

Why it's independent

RHUL Mobile isn't run by Royal Holloway and it isn't run by the Students' Union either. That independence is the point. The official Royal Holloway app exists, but it's built on a procurement platform aimed at admin teams, not students who need to know if the bus is running. RHUL Mobile does the opposite. It covers the handful of things students actually open their phones for, and it does them in two taps.

The app uses public data sources: the operator's own published timetable and running status for the buses, and the public machine-availability API for laundry. The campus map data is OpenStreetMap, manually verified against the official Royal Holloway maps and checked on foot.

Who built it

RHUL Mobile is built and run by SHACKSOLUTIONS LTD, a UK-registered software studio. We build useful, opinionated apps. RHUL Mobile is our first. If you want to get in touch, email [email protected].

What is in the app today

RHU and RH2 departures, counting down, for every campus and Egham stop.
Live laundry machine availability across five hall laundry rooms.
Interactive campus map with real walking directions over OpenStreetMap data.
SU and university events in one feed.
Every RHUL society and sports club in one place.
A student marketplace for textbooks, furniture and tickets.
Deals from local Egham businesses shown right next to your campus map.
Food outlet opening hours across campus.
News from the university and the Students' Union in one feed.

How it is funded

The student-facing app stays free to use. There are no ads in the app and no subscription to read content. The Deals tab is paid placement from local Egham businesses, and there are a small number of optional in-app purchases (marketplace bump credits and the like) that some students choose to use. Server costs are covered by the Deals tab. If you run a business near Royal Holloway and want to reach students, have a look at the partner page.

Guides

Things on the site that are not features of the app, just useful for being a Royal Holloway student:

Wellbeing and mental health support at Royal Holloway. What the university offers, what is free anywhere in the UK, and how to access it without a login.
Getting from Heathrow Airport to Royal Holloway. Bus 8, Uber, train. Costs and times.
RHUL Mobile vs the official Royal Holloway app. What each one is for.

Get in touch

Bug reports, feature requests, anything else: [email protected]. We read every email and reply within a couple of days.

Press and partnership enquiries: same address. The full press kit is here.

Find the app on Instagram and TikTok at @rhulmobile and @rhulmobile.