Viewranger App Reviews

Pros: - great recording features - can add waypoints and custom generate a route online on in app - can download gpx for free - add photos to trip Cons: - limited POIs - difficult to search - augmented reality gets in the way of the camera when taking photos - cannot access settings while in a trip

The Watch app is completely useless without your phone.

There are no compass headings given. It is difficult to edit a plot or remove it. No wonder I don’t use it much.

I use this app to pair with my watch and track distance/altitude. I do long distance primitive backpacking and happened to find myself caught in a complete white out, blown off track, and lost at the top of a glacier in Iceland while doing the Laugavegur Trek to Skógar... Near tears, and with frozen fingers, I was able to use the iPhone app to show me the correct vector to the trail and eventually a hut that allowed me to dry out and warm up for the night before continuing off the glacier. This app saved my life truly.

I bought this app two days ago, excited to use it with my new Apple Watch. I also bought the USA USGS topo map for $20. My account shows that I’ve been charged for USA topo map, but it doesn’t appear in the app on my phone. I’d try it on my iPad, but the app won’t even open - it immediately crashes, even after deleting and reinstalling. The $20 map doesn’t appear in my account on the ViewRanger website either. It’s just about impossible to contact ViewRanger, and their support is pretty much nonexistent. I am not happy, to say the least.

Excellent tool for bike riders wanting to track time and distance, and preserve mapped route. Great for hikes too.

1. App can't find any locations. You search for an address, and a message pop-up reads "Location not found!" 2. I can't find the mountain peak identifier anywhere within this app. 3. User interface extremely unfriendly and confusing. 4. You have to click through three pages of BS offers before you can even get into the app. 5. Moreover, my rule of thumb for apps is if I can't figure them out in 10 minutes, they're history. Not even close in this case. 6. Thank goodness I didn't pay for this jive app. Deleted.

Used to be good no no maps can be used. I don’t want an account.

This is the best hiking and outdoor app out there in my opinion. I use it very often for hiking and also to mark hunting stands.

I bought this app because it came up in the App Store when I searched “hiking in Iceland” but it does not have any Iceland maps so it’s useless for what I wanted it for

Have tried using this app several times with my Apple Watch and I continuously get the message “unable to connect to iPhone. To record a track, keep your phone on you. I have my phone in the same hand. Apparently my watch and phone cannot find each other.

Love the ability to import and export .gpx files.

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 have only used the app once on a 3-day hike in unfamiliar woods so I am SURE that I didn’t use this app to its full capacity. It worked seamlessly with my Apple Watch 3. I would remind you to turn off WiFi and cellular, it sounds obvious but I forgot WiFi on my watch and it died in 1 day. I look forward to trying this out again.

I have used this without an account hiking in Massachusetts and Maine on day hikes and overnighters. The compass and maps including trails have been very good and taken the guess work out decisions needed for obscure and even unsigned trails. I have found trails that were left out of state maps. I wouldnt go without it.

App is clunky and not very intuitive. GPS tracks was way off. Marked trails had me at over 6 miles but my gps tracks showed half that. Also, looking at the gps track it is clear that not enough track points were taken. It looked like I flew over a mountain rather than going on a trail.

Logged in via Google and every time I open the app, I have to sign back in. Also, Apple Watch app should let you view offline maps without starting to record tracks. Would be much more useful in the backcountry where battery life is limited.

I have tried other trail trackers with Garmin GPS devices - the extra steps required to sync or transfer GPX files is burdensome. ViewRanger works seamlessly with only my Apple Watch (series 3) even without a cellular connection!

I use this app a lot when I’m out on remote 4x4 trails. Works great on my iphone and ipad (with gps). I have purchased two of the topo maps and they are great. I use the Save for off line use map function a lot and that works great also.

Difficult to set up and use; couldn’t find any instructions or figure out how to navigate to the needed fields. Did it heuristically and still have questions.

What a rip off. I wanted to download a map so it said purchase whole United States for 19.99. It gave me the one map I was trying to download and that was it. I tried to download another map and it wanted me to buy credits. Really disappointed!!!

ViewRanger gets the job done, is more intuitive than the competition, easy to read and handle even while on the trail. Only reason I don’t give 5 stars is the Apple Watch integration can be a bit janky. Once that improves, I’m sure it’ll be 5 stars.

Totally kewl! Packed to the brim with features

UPDATE Feb 2018: as of version 2.3, the offline map download feature was updated and does not allow selection of specific map tiles for download. Instead it requires you to pinch-zoom the map area and it downloads everything on screen. TERRIBLE update. I am fortunate to be able to downgrade to previous versions, and lo' and behold the area I was going to download offline already had map tiles downloaded for that area. The difference was downloading 2040 map tiles with the new pinch-zoom version of the app, of 840 map tiles when I was able to only select map tiles I didn't already have. VIEWRANGER - please bring back the option to select individual map tiles for offline use. At least give me the option. Otherwise I will not be updating the app and will be lowering your star rating to 4/5. Unacceptable change to a feature I use extensively and for no good reason. ORIGINAL REVIEW (Still true): This is the best app I have used for hiking and skiing and is my go-to app for this. 5 years of using it in CO and it it great to see the my tracks over the years in a central map. It would be great if it could interface with Alltrails.com, or more easily allowed GPX import (preferably without a computer!!). Also, direct export to Google Earth would be cool! UPDATE:Viewranger's addition of many cloud-based storage locations is much appreciated and makes transferring routes/GPX files and importing into ViewRanger much easier.

I love this app! It is the best I have found for tracking your hike. It also has lots of views and I love the ability to download offline areas. I have used this app on 4 continents and many different countries, and it has worked great every time!

I have been corrected by the developer. That's for the correction..... My review is best said by reading the developer

Good application, but need to write flights climbed data to Apple health application, when you use this app to track the mountain climbing, after finish workout, you can not find climbing flights in the health app, please check and feedback

I downloaded the app the night before a big motorcycle dual sport. I didn’t know how it would work out or if would even be useful. Well was not disappointed. No one in our group had a GPS only roll charts. Except that I had the Viewranger running. We soon got into a situation (our fault as we were looking for some tight single track) where we couldn’t agree on our location to the roll chart. I pulled out my phone and viola! Viewranger has been tracking us all day and got us back in the right direction. Viewranger rocks!

This app has outperformed everything I have had in the past. The ability to create a route has been extremely helpful. I highly recommend this app to anyone that is considering getting a mapping/trail planning app.

I love ViewRanger, I use it wherever I go and never been disappointed. Can't recommend highly enough!!

I love this app! one my favorites; especially the fact that when off-line in the middle of the wilderness it has never let me down. I just turn it on put my phone in airplane mode turn off the screen throw in my backpack and forget about it; if I see a cabin/refuge that I want to document for a future hike, I take out ny phone, document on the fly. So easy. Most of all I'm impressed by how little battery it consumes. I use this app for mountain hikes, exploring cities and documenting my rides/runs (and exploring faster commute times!). With the free maps and ability to export it to my Dropbox and open it on Google Earth flawlessly: powerful and headache-free! It's ability to Simply document off-trail paths and analyze/share them with friends, is great! Moreover there are many unused capabilities of the app I see myself using in the future: other items like the buddy beacon, Skyline, and the ability to share my routes and peruse those of others are aspects to VR I'm excited exist and I see myself using more in the future.

After installing the app could connect to the store to buy credit/maps. I kept getting the message: Cannot connect to iTunes store.

Zoom buttons get lost in the map Cancel/close buttons are not in common or expected places Primary nav is at the top in an uncomfortable place to reach if your on a mountain bike or jogging Trailheads are absent or not obvious Maps are sticky/clunky on iPhone X Maps are vastly oversaturated with information, would be nice to have an option to reduce this down. This needs work, lots more I should mention. :/

Updated review: changing to 4 stars. Developer responded quickly to feedback (thank you!) and I’m now able to export routes with maps easily. Old review: Where’s the “export map to watch” button or option?! Is this buried somewhere? I would expect it to be fairly obvious, but it is not. Giving up, may try again in a future update. Hopefully they make the app more intuitive...

I was excited about this app when I saw it at Apple‘s keynote, it has so much potential. I hope they can get things working the way it should, but for now, it is a waste of your time. This app is very buggy, and hardly ever works on the Apple Watch. I’m definitely disappointed that Apple had such a low quality app at their Keynote!

This app rocks! I’ve logged 100’s of trail and backcountry miles with ViewRanger. It has never let me down or gotten me lost. It works with out cell phone coverage and if you download a map prior to heading into the backcountry, it’s imagery is excellent! I highly recommend ViewRanger! It is a tool that I never go adventuring without! Happy adventuring!! Josh- Southern Utah

This app does pretty much everything I could want. I do have a minor quib, though. I wish the satellite map showed trails a little more prominently, instead of a faint dotted line that you can only see if you zoom way down. Otherwise, this app really rocks!

Went hiking for a few hours today and pressed record on my Apple Watch. Nothing transferred over to my iPhone when I got home and the date didn’t save on the Watch app so I guess it’s just lost??? Really annoying.

I love this app with its ability to link to the Apple Watch. It not only shows your progress, but also links into Activities and counts as exercise. The online version allows you to easily create trails that you can then publish for everyone to use. My only wish is that more people in my area would use this app that way more trails are already published.

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.

I’m the least bit impressed with this app. The pricing is crazy. Graphics for 2018 well let’s just say I’ve seen better.

My first experience with a hiking app and so far, I'm very pleased. I've recorded tracks and made my own routes and I've also downloaded existing routes from the Internet. The help files are a bit cumbersome, but after spending a few hours over several days, I feel I've got a good handle on this nifty app!

Really nice app for exploring the back country. I like that it is easy on my battery life since my phone becomes a life saving tool. Was out in sub freezing temps for 4 hours today and battery was only down to 84% in airplane mode. Thanks ViewRanger