Organic Maps – Best Offline Maps App for Hiking
I have been an avid hiker in the Pacific Northwest for about ten years. I also have very poor direction. To make matters worse, Google and Apple Maps are virtually useless if you’re hiking: they don’t have data for most routes, and their offline functionality is usually limited to driving instructions, which is useless if you’re hiking away from cell towers.
Luckily, there is a great alternative – Organic Maps , which I have been using on my hikes for many years. This free, open-source app is available for iOS and Android, and I have yet to follow a trail that it doesn’t have data on. Moreover, it works offline and is very economical in battery consumption. I used it for several days during a backpacking trip and didn’t even need to recharge. (Airplane mode helps a lot with this.) Organic Maps also has a great privacy policy: no tracking, no ads, period.
The map data comes from Open Street Maps , an open source project that allows anyone to contribute map data. Although there is a risk of data shortage on such a platform, people obviously leave traces. I used organic cards extensively in Oregon, Washington, British Columbia, and even Croatia while on vacation last year. If I’m walking on a trail, I can see exactly where I am in the context of the rest of the trail system, request turn-by-turn directions, and quickly know how far I am from my car.
Moreover, Organic Maps works perfectly without any internet connection. Google and Apple Maps offer a shortened version of their app when you’re offline: you can perform basic actions, but features like search and turn-by-turn directions only work to a limited extent, if at all.
Using Organic Maps for Hiking
Getting started is easy. First download the app. You can start using it right away if you plan to have an active internet connection, but the real fun will happen if you download the region you’ll be camping in. Click the three-line button in the lower right corner, then select Download Maps . You can download as many regions as you want. I usually store all of Oregon and Washington on my phone, which takes up about 600MB.
Once you download the maps you need, it doesn’t matter whether you have an Internet connection or not: the app works fine either way. Search functionality, saved locations, and even turn-by-turn directions all work as you need them – perfect for when you’re on the go.
And there are several features typical for tourists. You can include elevation contours, which Google Maps and Apple Maps don’t have. When you ask for direction, you will see a change in height, which includes the total height up and down with a chart that summarizes gains and losses. This is great if you want to know how much longer you’ll have to endure going uphill (which is important to me quite often). All this, combined with a much better data set for hiking, makes it clearly the best for backpacking.
Organic Maps isn’t just for walking. You can use the app to determine walking and driving directions and it will work quite well. However, it lacks real-time traffic and transit data, so I usually use Apple Maps when I’m in a city. However, I like to have reliable maps when I’m miles from the nearest cell tower, and the directions maps are second to none.
Now , Apple will be adding walking features to Apple Maps with iOS 18 this fall , so that could be a game changer for tourists on the iPhone. However, until we see how Apple’s official Maps update works, I’m sticking with organic maps.