Outdooractive: Hiking Trails Reviews

Hunting to find a simple gps app as a backup to my paper topo maps when I go backpacking I was looking for something free. I came across viewranger as it provided a decent enough map option for free offline downloads. I’ve been using it for years and although I wasn’t happy with how they kept taking away free features and moving them to their subscription model it still served its basic purpose as a backup to good old map and compass.

Then this app took over and offline mode was taken away from the free version , this tool has now become completely useless to me in the backcountry.

I get it, you’ve got to make money, but I’m not going to pay a subscription for something I use 2-3 times a year.

My wife and I were lucky enough to win a lottery spot to hike to The Wave in AZ. The information that was sent to us had us a bit concerned about the difficulty of hiking the mostly unmarked trail. The night before I found Outdooractive and saved the offline map since the area we were hiking had no cellular service. The marked trail on Outdooractive was absolutely spot on and made this hike worry free for us. We are most impressed and will be using it a lot more.

Rather than have one app for hiking and one for biking, this one can do it all - walking, skiing, horseback riding etc. and gives great information or things to do in your location. Also perfect to find activities for kids and find access for my disabled family member.

this app would need to compare favorably to my most-used biking and hiking apps, namely Gaia and Strava. I couldn’t find much in this app’s favor. To begin with, Outdooractive seemed to think I was in Europe. Locations in Italy and Switzerland came up and when I shifted the map to the west coast of the US, nothing appeared. Then click a different part of Outdooractive and the focus was on Europe again.

I used only the free features, determining that I would pay for Outdooractive only if the free features seemed to indicate there were worthwhile additional gems in the paid content. I saw no reason to continue. Deleted Outdooractive .

At first I thought Outdooractive would be a great addition for my workouts with Apple Watch. Unfortunately I was wrong and I a disappointed in the results I have seen. I thought the activity tracking with Outdooractive would calculate the workout minutes on my Apple Watch correctly. Apparently that was not the case and the only accurate readings were the calories burned. So I’m sorry to say, but so long. Even the cycling workout on Apple Watch has always been inaccurate.

Not only did I loose my lifetime subscription but the over all app is garbage compared to view ranger. Thousands of points that don’t work properly on Outdooractive now. Motion-x is way better but unfortunately still not ViewRanger. Swallow your pride and re-open the ViewRanger app so we can use it. Also if you want us to use your map we need a way to permanently set our old waypoints onto the map and always have them available. ViewRanger was a outdoors app where many of us wondered off the grid. Your app is useless.

I have found Outdooractive extremely helpful when doing outdoor activities with my kids. The navigation is very accurate, there are regular releases of new helpful features and the community is fantastic.

I paid for lifetime subscription “USA Slopes” “USA topo” etc… I can’t see or understand anything on Outdooractive. View ranger I was able to zoom out and see the whole state where I’ve dirt bike, snowmobile, kayak, hot air balloon ride, etc.. Outdooractive I can see like 1 mile??? I’m not happy about this switch over.. 3 months free then I’ll have to pay? I already paid for lifetime subscription maps with view range, down load area & use off line. I believe Outdooractive should honor that and it should be identical to view ranger app.

I paid for lifetime U.S. maps with Neotreks, then Accuterra, then ViewRanger. Now this company has bought ViewRanger, and they are the first to not honor my lifetime maps download. This is a terrible company. Don’t give them any of your money.

ETA: I never had to contact customer service with any of the other companies to get access to what I already purchased. They always managed to integrate, yet this company is only responding to poor reviews.

I’d like to see all my tracks which are beside each other in one place same as last app(ViewRanger). But in Outdooractive I can’t do it.

I’ve been a long time user of ViewRanger which merged with this app.

All the premium maps that I purchased along with the existing AR functionality to mark landmarks on the skyline are now locked behind a subscription paywall that costs more per year than my original one-time purchase.

Account migration claims to include access to purchased maps, but I haven’t seen them show up yet. So many ads.

Outdooractive is supposed to replace Viewranger, which I used for offline navigation in many countries and always found easy to use and perfectly reliable. In contrast, Outdoor Active lacks easy access to key functions and can’t be relied on in the field. This makes it useless in the mountains or anywhere else where reliable offline navigation is a must.

I paid for ViewRanger. Im not paying for another 30 dollar per year app that cant even present a lat long. None of the integration works from the switch. Thanks for ruining a good app, u will ultimately fail and maybe even have a class action suit against u for all these comments i see regarding a new paid prescription when we paid for lifetime access to ViewRanger!

Very disappointed after migrating from view ranger to see that all of my lifetime map subscriptions are gone. If you are in search of a new gps mapping app maybe you will like this. I personally won’t pay for a subscription to something I already bought. If I am going to pay I will use other apps that are better suited for my needs.

Outdooractive is great for planning hiking and cycling routes. I also appreciate offline saving for places with bad cell service.

Outdooractive is so full of extra stuff, that it is hard to find exactly what you need. ViewRanger would also allow you to download much larger areas for offline use. I’ve used ViewRanger for years for topo maps when doing consulting work and Outdooractive just doesn’t do what I need it to do.

Being the acquiring company you probably have a big ol’ bias choosing between this and ViewRanger. I’d like to add my voice to the choir asking for ViewRanger back. Outdooractive is feature bloated, user interface is a mess (4 different ways to access a map, each with its own quirks) and the best features of ViewRanger are lacking.

This is an excellent app a bit complex but learning it so much info only used Once and Love it so far. T
Thanks!

I really like that Outdooractive keeps track of my biking routes!

Something always seems to be broken.

Sometimes the watch app crashes every 1-2 minutes.

Other times it doesn’t record activity to my fitness app.

The watch app continuously asks for permission to access the Health app.

The tracking is always saying I’m off track or going the wrong way when I’m not and then immediately notifying that I’m back on track.

I want to like this but it’s not worth it.

I am not a technical savvy person, but I love to walk with my granddaughter. This is the perfect tool for me.

Nicest to visit in family or in groups!

I cannot even get them to send me an activation email so I have no idea if Outdooractive is even worth it. I’ve tried 5 times. Email is correct.