The more they "develop" it, the worse it performs...

This post was in response to Gaia GPS Review – The Killer App For The Great Outdoors?

I have been a Gaia GPS user since the app was first launched (using it for wildland fire fighting) and continue to use it to this day (for hiking and boondocking). While the app still has utility, each update and upgrade has made it more difficult to use, bloated and buggy. Downloading maps has always been a major downfall and is even worse now – often requiring multiple restarts of the app over extended periods of time. I just downloaded a map, checked it was fully cached (when offline), went to download another map and the first one started redownloading, thus slowing the second map download. It’s taken all morning for 4 maps (about 1.5 GB) to download on a 5G system clocked at around 120 mbps (no VPN – Gaia slows download speeds). If you switch to another app and come back to Gaia the map position you had been viewing will have changed to a seemingly random location and you’ll need to relocate it. The status bar in recent versions takes up 1/8 of the screen. The original version took up less than half of that. The map list on the web map has never been sorted and still contains maps that are no longer available. The app cannot search for DMS coordinates – only decimals. I’ve never been able to get the compass reading to read correct bearing. When plotting routes the route paths sometimes do not conform to roads and trails. Bottom line: if you are a hard core, outdoor map user it may be worth investing money in but beware – you will also be increasingly investing time getting the app to function like it used to and like it should. Also, they just increased the pro price despite the app working less well compared with previous versions. TrailBehind (developer): If you’re reading this: stop monkeying with the app, fix its faults (including the web map) and also bring back the old online user discussion and suggestion space!

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