Hiker: Offline Trail Mapsv1.3

What changed

• New featureNew route planning tool with multi-point routing and terrain-aware modes
• UXDetailed elevation profiles colored by gradient and surface type
• SocialAbility to save routes with custom notes and export as GPX or GeoJSON
• New featureCustom place markers with color-coded categories and personal notes
• UXImproved offline-first search for summits, huts, and trails
• UXConsolidated Library view for routes, places, and offline maps
• New featureMountain Finder feature using elevation data to identify visible peaks
• New featureSun path tracking relative to the actual local skyline
• ContentNight sky view featuring 1,600 stars and constellations
• PerformanceVarious fixes for route planning, compass calibration, and download reliability

Original release notes

Route planning

Tap two points on the map and Hiker plans the walk between them. Tap more to extend it, or drop one beside a leg you've already planned and it offers to route you via there instead. Tap a point again to take it out, and undo takes back the last change.

• Hiking, walking, mountain bike or road bike — hiking prefers trails and accepts steep ground
• Recommended or shortest, and you can rule out ferries, river crossings and steps
• Up to fifty points, replanned as you edit

What the walk is actually like

"1100 m of climb over 14 km" describes a steady valley path and a flat approach followed by a wall — different days out. So the panel shows the shape, not just the total.

• An elevation profile coloured by gradient — the wall is the dark red part
• How far you'll be on made ground and how far on unpaved, in kilometres
• Paths, tracks and roads broken down the same way, plus the trail's grade
• Colour the line on the map by surface or by steepness
• Climb and time measured from the terrain itself, so they match the trail figures elsewhere in the app

Keeping a route, and sending it on

A saved route keeps its whole line on the phone rather than just its end points, so it opens in a car park with no signal — which is where it will mostly be opened. Give it a name and a note ("park at the church; last water at the refuge") and it's in your library.

Send it on as GPX for a watch, GPS unit or another walking app, or GeoJSON for anything that draws maps.

Your own places

Press and hold anywhere on the map — or tap a fountain, hut or summit the map already draws — and keep it, under the name you'd use, with the note nobody else has. "Spring above the col. Dry in August."

• Colour-coded categories, made as you go
• Your markers over every basemap, at every zoom
• Tap one on the walk to read back what you wrote

Search

Summits, huts, springs, towns and trail numbers. Places from the map you've already downloaded come first and need no signal; the wider world is added when there is one.

Library

Downloads is now Library: your routes, your places and your offline maps in one list — everything you have with you when the signal goes.

Mountain Finder

Point your phone at the mountains and Hiker names them.

Rather than floating labels over a camera image, Hiker draws the horizon from real elevation data — so it knows which summits are genuinely in vi…