This chapter argues that mobile media delivered through smartphones not only is a valuable tool for historians but also allows the translation of academic research into urban public history with the ability to expand and deepen heritage engagement. It uses the case study of the HistoryCity apps, developed by the authors in, to date, ten cities in Europe, to set out how the excavation of the urban palimpsest, and questions around place, mobility, material culture and social culture, has been sharpened by the process of creating locative, GPS-triggered apps, and how such questions have then been addressed through a combination of short-form audio, georeferenced mapping and images, with underpinning online articles. This chapter discusses how HistoryCity has looked to mitigate the potential pitfalls around its first-person interpretation or ‘living history’ model, and argues that this methodology facilitates a focus on embodied experience and urban movement in the past, the connection of both well-known and overlooked sites, and the presentation of lives that are often marginalised in heritage interpretation.