ViewRanger: Hike, Bike or Walk

Getting back into hiking and this app has been very useful for navigation, tracking my route, planning routes, and health syncing for my fitness regiment. The health sync is very important to me, and this has it. I would like to see easier controls for quickly navigating to the trail head through Apple maps. I also feel the UI could be a bit refined on iPhone for quick button mashing while cruising in the backcountry. I’ve downloaded a bunch of routes and am planning more hikes when I’m done with this review. Please keep improving the app and I’ll keep exploring with it.

I stumbled across this app recently when looking for a replacement to my current GPS logger. I’ve found it to be very feature-full, while still being simple enough for most people to use. The user experience appears to be pretty well thought out. The peak identifier is awesome. I would like to see some more stat options on the Apple Watch, such as heart rate. Speaking of that, the heart rate statistic is very finicky on the phone. When adding it to the stat screen, it will say Apple Watch not available, even though it is. During a recorded activity, it will sometimes show the heart rate as a static number, sometimes not at all. This doesn’t make any sense because it’s supposed to be recording the activity as an exercise, so should be sampling the heart rate continuously. Another issue is integration with Apple Health and not reporting workouts from a recorded track. Sometimes it does, sometimes it doesn’t. I’ve had a workout from a hike show up in Apple Health, then disappear. The Apple Health permissions are all set correctly. I will likely look for another solution due to the above couple issues. I need reliability, and when data is missing that’s a big problem for me.

I’ve been trying this app out in order to track the areas I walk around Gaborone Botswana. So far I am pleased with it. I’ve been able to record trails that I walk in the woods, add interest points, and add photos of interesting things to each path. It also records the time and distance of each trail. I hope to go beyond the trails I already know and walk in new places without getting lost! I feel confident that this app will help me to achieve this. My only concern is that if I accidentally swipe the app up while walking, I will loose the maps that were loaded while at home with WiFi. I do not have the ability to reload through my phone service.

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It’s a cheap gimmick. There are tons of free ways to do this, yet they want more than a Netflix subscription? For what? The app does all the work. If it’s for fixing bugs, that comes with the programs of all types. The app is useless. Like I said there are free ways to trace your path. The “augmented” view is terrible, often pointing out things you don’t care about, like the next town over and is far from being accurate. It’s local “paths”, are several towns over because it’s amount is limited therefor useless. A search online will give you more info. App runs great, well, because there isn’t much to run. Ended free trial in a hurry. Terrible. Those who say is great, haven’t browsed the iTunes Store long enough and just know how bad this burn in their pocket is, or don’t know much about the industry of app rip offs.

I’ve used this app for years at home in New York and on long distance walks in Europe (Switzerland, UK, France, Austria). With the right settings it’s very accurate and doesn’t use much battery. I love the ability to draw routes ahead of time, to import and export gpx tracks, modify and save tracks, share my routes with other users, download maps for offline use including high quality free maps (eg. open cycle) as well as a wide selection of premium maps. It’s my go to app for walking and hiking throughout Europe and English speaking parts of the world.