HikeGPS: Offline Trail Maps

Trails drawn properly, downloaded before you lose signal, and a recording that survives a crash. No account, no ads, no tracking.

HikeGPS records your hike and shows you the trail — with no signal, no account, and no tracking.

Most map apps draw footpaths as near-invisible hairlines that only appear when you zoom right in. HikeGPS draws its own hiking cartography instead: trails, tracks, steps, and bridleways are separated by line style and colour, named along the path, with summits labelled by elevation. Campsites, shelters, viewpoints, water sources, and trailheads are marked. It looks like a map made for walking, because it is.

DOWNLOAD BEFORE YOU LOSE SIGNAL Pan to where you are going, or drag a rectangle around it, pick a detail level, and see the size before you commit. Downloaded areas render in airplane mode with no failed network requests and no waiting. Map data stays on your device and is never uploaded.

FIND A TRAIL NEARBY Open Trails and HikeGPS lists what is within a hundred miles, nearest first, with length, climb, and difficulty on each. Filter by length, distance, type, and grade, or search by name — nearby or anywhere. Pick one and its route is framed on the map at a zoom that fits the trail, whether it is a mile long or forty.

BRING YOUR OWN MAP Add a map by URL — a topo sheet, a slope-angle layer, a regional survey raster — and either draw it over the built-in cartography or use it as the base map instead. Several can be added, each switched on and off from the layer sheet. Some can be taken offline; the app says which.

RECORDING THAT DOES NOT LOSE YOUR WALK Recording continues with the screen locked and the phone in your pocket. A checkpoint is written continuously, so a crash, a flat battery, or a forced restart does not cost you the hike — you are offered the choice to continue it, save it as it stands, or discard it.

Pause and resume by hand. A pause never invents distance, and never charges the break to your moving time.

BUILT TO BE READ OUTDOORS Distance, elapsed time, and ascent are set in large tabular figures. Below them sits a grid of details you choose and reorder yourself: pace, moving and stopped time, grade, vertical speed, elevation range, GPS accuracy, distance and bearing back to the start, battery. A high-visibility mode thickens strokes and raises contrast for bright sunlight.

Elevation combines GPS with the barometer where the device has one, smoothed so a wobbly fix is not counted as climbing.

AFTER THE HIKE Every finished hike keeps its route, elevation profile, waypoints, and full statistics. Drag along the profile and a marker traces the matching point on the map. Name it, add notes, and export it as standard GPX with timestamps and elevations intact.

History groups by month with lifetime and recent totals, search, sorting, and a weekly distance chart.

PRIVATE BY DEFAULT No advertising. No third-party analytics. No account. Your routes are never sent to the map provider or anyone else. Turn on iCloud and completed hikes sync through your own private database; leave it off and everything still works, entirely on the device.

ALSO INCLUDED • Live Activity on the Lock Screen and in the Dynamic Island, with a timer that respects your pauses • Home Screen and Lock Screen widgets for the current hike, your last hike, and the past seven days • Backtrack view showing your recorded route in reverse with the bearing to the trailhead • Waypoints with name, note, elevation, and time • Metric and imperial units, Dynamic Type, VoiceOver, and dark mode throughout

PLEASE READ HikeGPS is a navigation aid. It is not a replacement for navigation training, a paper map and compass, official trail and closure information, emergency communication equipment, or proper preparation. It does not provide turn-by-turn routing and has no emergency or SOS capability. GPS position and elevation can be wrong. Continuous GPS recording uses significant battery.

Map data © OpenStreetMap contributors.