Who doesn’t love looking at a map? What secrets hide between those closely spaced contour lines? Is there a route to that peak? The paper map still has a place in your pack, but now we are more likely to plot a route by joining the dots on a navigation app or upload a GPX track our friend has sent us. Then we print out a map of our route, stuff it in a pocket for emergencies, and download the digital map to our phones to use as we walk.
Read our review of different navigation apps to understand why we choose GaiaGPS to find our way on the trails.
Table of Contents
TLDR: If you are a regular bushwalker who loves maps and exploring – you need GaiaGPS. If you are a social butterfly following well worn trails in a big city, you might prefer AllTrails. If data privacy concerns you, consider OsmAnd.
Testing navigation apps for bushwalking
A map for bushwalking or hiking must show contour lines, this is called a a “topo” or topographic map. A navigation app needs to support offline topo maps, as there is often no mobile coverage on bush trails. GPX support is useful for sharing tracks. Land ownership, vegetation, map grid lines and satellite imagery are also useful when exploring new areas. The NSW Government topographic maps contain a lot more useful information than Google or Open Source Maps – compare the maps shown below.
I made an initial list of nine navigation apps to review, based on what people most said they used in a Facebook hiking group.
I knocked out Maps.Me (no topographic map, no support for GPX files) and PocketEarth (no Android version, what universe do they live in?). Wikiloc looked promising but I culled it as they only offer one Australian topographic map which was out of date and inaccurate: streets in my local area didn’t exist.
I installed each of the remaining apps, purchasing the level that gave me essential topographic map detail and offline access.
Why can’t I use a free app?
How much is your life worth? More than a Big Mac with fries and a coke?
Prices vary, but you will need to pay for quality maps and for apps – usually this is an annual subscription, sometimes you pay per map (or bundle of maps). Buying a good map and app is cheaper than the cost of an SOS callout when you get lost. None of these apps support family sharing but you can install the app on all your devices (phone, tablet) using the same login credentials.
GaiaGPS is currently on offer for USD36 annual subscription, but this is excellent value as it includes the government topographical maps for NSW, SA, VIC, QLD, TAS and NZ. Also included are offline satellite maps and fun layers such as geology for rock-lovers, and a First Nations map of Australia so you can acknowledge the traditional custodians of the country you explore.
AllTrails is cheaper at USD30, however this doesn’t include official topographical maps. AllTrails are a closed system and provide open source maps and a satellite layer for Australia.
Aren’t open source maps good enough for hiking? Yes and no. If you hike in a densely populated area on well known trails that are accurately mapped, then open source maps may suit you. Where I walk, in north east NSW, the country a lot rougher and we often go off-track. Open source maps don’t include old forestry snig tracks that we use. The official state government Topo maps have these tracks, as well as rich detail on man made infrastructure (such as power lines), vegetation (rainforest full of lawyer vine or swampy), all the creek lines etc. This added information from the state Topo maps, combined with online satellite imagery, is essential to help keep us out of trouble when exploring.
Avenza appears a good deal at USD30, but requires you to purchase maps from their Map Store to get coverage, which quickly adds up (each sheet of the NSW 1:25k Topo map is $1).
OsmAnd is priced like a fast food store – for $11.50 you can have a bottomless cup of coffee! Can we up sell you a croissant? Or cross-sell you some steak knives? The in-app purchase menu of plugins and maps and live subscriptions is confusing, but may still be a good deal. NSW Topographic maps are included, but are only available online, not offline.
While the Memory Map app appears to be free, you can expect to pay a lot for maps from the Digital Map Store. For example, the NSW Topo East Map (1:25,000) is $59, QLD Topo $59, VIC Topo $99 – throw in TAS and NZ and that pays for a decade of annual subscriptions for GaiaGPS. Memory Map also charges an annual subscription of USD10 to synch your data between devices.
Let’s all be friends!
Facebook built a big business on social connections, collecting and exploiting your data to sell you stuff.
So why am I surprised when the first thing I notice when I open up AllTrails is the emphasis on the social connection? Let’s show everyone where we’re hiking! Give us your tracks, photos, ratings for free so we can build valuable community content!
The benefit to you of course, is that you can search for trails in an area. AllTrails certainly has a lot of trails where I live – you can filter the list of trails, add trails you want to do to a list, rate and mark as “completed” trails that you have done. Although the AllTrails filters and reviews can be helpful, crowd-sourced data may not be reliable.
GaiaGPS only had a few “Hikes” listed in my region, but it does offer an overlay called “public tracks” which exposed hundreds of green tracks on the map view. Unfortunately there is no way to filter these green tracks to narrow them down, for example to hiking only, excluding vehicles, which limits its usefulness.
Alltrails is the clear winner amongst these apps for helping finding new trails, but it comes at a cost – your privacy. This ageing cynic notes all your AllTrails data is public by default, everyone can see what you are doing. You can make your tracks private one by one, but it is a tedious slow process.
Alltrails offers location tracking to your friends, they call it Lifeline. I think I’ll stick with an old fashioned Aussie “cooee!” Suffice to say, although I’m a chatty hiker, this highly social app isn’t really my thing, but maybe you like the social public aspect.
OsmAnd, by contrast ticks all the privacy boxes. Data is encrypted when transferred. Your personal data is not collected, there is no public sharing but you can export your GPX tracks and share with selected friends. The service is transparent (the code is open source). You can even pay with bitcoin. The downside of the tight privacy is the lack of synchronisation between your devices and no cloud application, which means you need to remember to manually backup your phone data. However OsmAnd still has community at its heart – you can directly edit Open Source Map data from the app to improve track and point of interest information for everyone.
Similarly to OsmAnd, Memory Map allows you to export your tracks and share the GPX file with your friends, but has no public sharing.
GaiaGPS is somewhere in between the privacy extremes of Alltrails and OsmAnd. Your data is private by default, but you can share with your fiends, and make public selected routes, tracks, waypoints if you choose. Uniquely, GaiaGPS allow you to set up folders to organise your tracks. You can then give read or write access to the content in the folder to selected people – very useful for sharing routes among your bushwalking club or a meetup group.
Let’s go for a walk!
You could find a walk that someone else has done that looks fun, on CoffTrails maybe?
Once you’ve chosen your walk, you need to get the GPX track information and load it into your app. All these apps support importing GPX files, as well as some other formats.
Or you can plot a walk yourself on the map using the app. All apps support route planning and creation of waypoints, although some are easier to use than others. In the ideal world, a route is plotted in advance at home on a big desktop screen using the website and then seamlessly synced to your phone. But worst case, you may need to plot an emergency exit route on your phone if someone is injured or the weather turns foul.
Avenza and OsmAnd do not support route plotting on a website, and AllTrails doesn’t offer route plotting on the app. ViewRanger and GaiaGps offer both web and app route planning. While Memory Map does not have a website application available from anywhere, you can download an app for your PC or Mac for route creation on all devices.
GaiaGPS has a handy “snap to trail” feature, allowing quick creation of routes, including when offline if you have download routing data. OsmAnd and AllTrails also produce intelligent routes based on your chosen profile. Memory Map produces straight line routes, which you can then optimise from a menu.
Now your route is planned, you’ve got a printed copy of the map in your pocket, make your way to the track head and press the “record” button. All these apps do an acceptable job of recording the track, showing statistics such as distance, elevation and time, geotag photos etc. This is core functionality.
If you want turn by turn directions (where’s the fun in that), GaiaGPS makes an attempt with “guide me”, ViewRanger has arrival alerts and like AllTrails will beep if you are “off route”. All except AllTrails allow you to save a waypoint as you walk, which can be useful to mark an old mine hole or a nice campsite.
When you are done you can save your track and export your GPX file. GaiaGPS allows you to organise your track data into searchable folders, which is very useful as you start to accumulate a large collection of tracks. AllTrails allows you to make lists. OsmAnd conveniently stores your GPX tracks in the Files app on your device.
Where did I put my glasses?
Perhaps you are like me – lots of hiking in your youth before family and work got in the way. And then you get back into it about the same time you discover you need reading glasses.
A well designed app is easier to use. If you can’t easily figure out how to use the app, or don’t enjoy using it, move on. Life is too short for clunky ugly apps.
Have a closer look at a map on the app – does it zoom in and out smoothly? Can you see the contour lines, are the fonts readable? Can you customise the track colour, change the location marker, does it support dark mode?
When the map is too hard to read, I don’t look at it as often, its easier to just keep walking and hope I’m going in the right direction. And we won’t mention the ahem interesting “discussions” between two co-leaders both struggling to read a poorly legible map on their phones.
I found OsmAnd to be highly configurable, but at the price of a steep learning curve. The Memory Map user interface design seems quite dated and confusing to me. I found both AllTrails and GaiaGPS intuitive and easy to use, but GaiaGPS is far more customisable. GaiaGPS, unlike AllTrails, has a tablet app as well as a mobile app, which is useful for planning and review on a bigger screen.
Only you can decide which app design lights your way.
But wait, there’s more!
ViewRanger seems to have entered a Best Features race – we have 3D flyover! Virtual skyline! Others support integration with Apple or other watches. AllTrails stores your personal bests and lifetime stats, kind of like a pedometer on steroids. Heatmaps (or OSM Traces), hill or slope shading and various other bells and whistles are available in Gaia, AllTrails, OsmAnd and ViewRanger. All arguably useful and fun, but probably not the main course for hikers.
GaiaGPS provide features that hard-core bushwalkers used to reading paper maps will love. Such as a compass bearing (true or magnetic north), map grid lines and grid references (you can even search by grid reference!), you can set the datum and coordinate type (eg UTM WGS84).
GaiaGPS supports CarPlay and Android Auto and is good for navigating to the track head to start your walk. See our review of GPS navigation apps for 4WD adventuring.
These more advanced features together with the local government topographic maps is what clinches the GaiaGPS deal for me.
Love the one you’re with
Its relationship advice applied to apps. If you already own and use one of these apps, and have built up a nice collection of maps and tracks, then stay with it.
But if you haven’t committed yet, my recommendation is GaiaGPS.
Links to GaiaGPS are affiliate links, I earn a small commission at no cost to you. This does not affect my recommendation of this app that I use and love however.
Software marketing departments like to come up with Cute Words when there is already a well understood ordinary word.
I have used these meanings. A map is a flat representation of the features of an area of the earth. A route is a way of getting from one place to another, and is something you are planning. A track is a collection of breadcrumbs showing where you actually went. GPX is a common GPS format for recording tracks.
Reading maps
Of course, these navigation apps assume you know your way around a topographic map. If maps aren’t your strong point, but you are keen to understand more, I can recommend the free booklet Map Reading guide: How to Use Topographic Maps Edition 4. Geoscience Australia, Canberra. Lotsafreshair has an excellent three part series of posts on How to navigate with with a map and compass and has published a book.
There are also practical hands-on navigation courses you can take, try your local bushwalking club or commercial courses such as those run by Ashley Burke (MountainSphere Adventures)..
Orienteering is an effective and fun way to practise and improve your map skills – search out your local orienteering club or look at the app MapRun which has some local Coffs Harbour routes.
