Hometowns

At a glance

Hometowns is a good small curiosity if you want to see the telephone-area-code geography of an address book. It groups numbers on a map and can compare that pattern with another map. Try its fictional examples before supplying contacts: the comparison is understandable without sharing personal data. The result describes numbers and regions, not verified hometowns, current addresses or friendships.

Good fit

People who enjoy exploring the regional shape of their contacts, especially across the US, Canada and participating Caribbean area codes. The Maya versus Jordan example highlighted shared and separate regions and listed ten overlapping area codes. That is a useful visual comparison; it does not establish that the two people know anyone in common. The accompanying list also surfaces numbers that cannot be placed, rather than silently drawing every contact somewhere.

Consider something else when

You need a global contact map, reliable personal-location information or a count of distinct people. Non-geographic toll-free codes and numbers outside the mapped numbering region are separated from geographic results. The parser deduplicates normalized numbers within one import, but one person with two different numbers can still count twice, and merging imports adds their counts. Treat the geography as a prompt for curiosity, not evidence about a person’s life.

Start here

Choose Just show me the map, open See an example and select Maya vs Jordan. The tested example reported Maya’s 227 numbers across 40 area codes, with ten area codes shared between the maps. Explore a region and the Not on the map summary before deciding whether to use your own data. The app documents vCard, CSV, pasted text and a supported-device contact picker; none was used with a real address book here.

Cost and requirements

The public example opened without an account, payment or provider key. The repository is MIT-licensed. A browser is enough for viewing the map; contact-picker support depends on the device and browser, with file or text input as alternatives. The visible dataset was dated 14 September 2026. Offline use is documented, but the trial did not disconnect the network or establish that every asset was cached.

Limits to know

The inspected storage code makes Remember on this device optional. If enabled, it saves counts, contact names, the chosen home code and skipped numbers locally. That differs from a share link: the inspected encoder includes area-code counts and an optional home code in the URL fragment, without names or phone numbers. A recipient still learns that aggregate pattern. The trial used built-in fictional maps only; real-file parsing, remembering, sharing, image export and deletion were not exercised. No independent privacy or deployed-code parity audit was performed.

Still unclear

• Parsing fidelity and duplicate handling on the intended contact export were not tested.
• Offline caching, optional persistence and the actual share/export flows remain untested.