New in 7.5: your stats and an elevation profile right on the watch map, Auto-Pause, and new fields for runners, like cadence and grade adjusted pace.
Plan a route on your iPhone and follow it on Apple Watch with spoken turn-by-turn directions and topographic maps. Record your outing along the way. The watch works without your phone, and downloaded maps keep you covered offline.
FOR EVERY ACTIVITY
WristTopo is built for hiking, running, gravel and mountain biking, skiing, and paddling: 30 activity types across foot, bike, snow, and water. It adapts to however you move.
TURN-BY-TURN NAVIGATION
See the next turn and its distance, with spoken directions and alerts on your wrist. Navigate routes planned in WristTopo or imported from GPX. Mark a hut or summit as a waypoint and get a tap and its name announced as you approach.
CLIMB GUIDANCE
Know what’s ahead on every climb. While you navigate, Apple Watch detects climbs and descents, with wrist taps and optional voice cues at the start and finish. Zoom into the current climb on the elevation profile to see the elevation, distance, and time left, and preview the next ones in Up Ahead. At the top, check how long the climb took you.
ROUTE PLANNER
Tap the map to drop points and the route snaps to real trails, with distance and total climb updating as you add them. Close it into a loop, extend it into an out-and-back, or reverse it in a tap. Five routing modes cover running, hiking, biking, mountain biking, and straight lines for when there is no path at all. When the route is ready, one tap starts navigation on the watch without saving it first.
RECORD YOUR WORKOUTS
Record workouts on Apple Watch, with a GPS track and your live stats in the corner of the map. Fill up to six screens per activity with pace, cadence, running power, heart rate zones, grade adjusted pace, the climb to the finish, and 50 more metrics. Save workouts to Apple Health and send them to Strava. You can also use Apple’s Workout app alongside WristTopo: recording and navigation work independently.
QUICK ROUTE ON YOUR WATCH
Tap a destination on the watch map and Quick Route finds a path from your location, without reaching for your iPhone.
SAVED PLACES
Mark the trailhead parking, a water source, a shelter, a campsite. Save them on the iPhone while you plan, or drop one from your wrist the moment you stand there. Places sync both ways, carry their own symbols on the map, and one tap routes you to any of them.
BACKTRACK TO YOUR START
One tap while recording turns the track you have already covered into a route home, with turn-by-turn guidance all the way to the start.
OFFLINE MAPS
Download summer, winter, or satellite maps straight to the watch. Take a whole region for general use, or grab just the area along a route in one tap. The maps show contour lines, shaded relief, and marked ski trails.
IMPORT YOUR OWN ROUTES
Import routes and activities directly from Strava, or GPX files with waypoints on your iPhone. Follow them on Apple Watch and display several routes at once.
ICLOUD BACKUP
Routes, places, and downloaded map regions sync across your devices through iCloud, and they survive a reinstall or a new iPhone.
PRIVATE BY DESIGN
No account to create, no ads, and no tracking. Your routes and recordings stay on your device and sync only to your own iCloud.
FREE TO START
The free version covers shorter days out:
• Up to 3 saved routes
• Up to 20 saved places
• 3 small offline map regions
• Plan with up to 5 route points
• Follow routes on your Apple Watch
UNLOCK PRO
Pro adds:
• Unlimited routes and places, larger offline regions
• Voice-guided turn-by-turn navigation and climb guidance
• Workout recording with Apple Health and Strava sync
• Quick Route planning on your Apple Watch
• GPX and FIT export
• Support independent app development
Terms of Use: https://www.apple.com/legal/internet-services/itunes/dev/stdeula/
Privacy Policy: https://wristtopo.app/privacy
I have been looking for years for outdoor navigation on a watch that best suits my use case. As a hiker and mountain biker, but not a serious athlete in training, I have used Garmin watches and various apps on an Apple Watch. Having used this app for several months now, I think WristTopo is as close to perfect for me as any device or app I have found. And it keeps getting better! It rivals Garmin routing and navigation. Routes can be created in-app but if creating a route using other applications such as QGIS, OSMAnd, or other mobile apps then GPX imports are a breeze. WristTopo base maps are sourced from OpenStreetMap and updated more frequently than Garmin. Edits I make to trails in OSM appear much sooner in WristTopo than they do in Garmin apps. The developer is super responsive to inquires and issue reporting. Support this excellent independent developer and make a purchase now!
Can’t get maps to download to watch
ptstl
I’ve tried everything. Rebooted phone and watch. Deleted and reinstalled app nothing I have tried will get the app to start downloading. I noticed a recent update after Ed thus issue. Perhaps it still does not work?This is an update to my first review. I accidentally forgot my phone when out for a bike ride. I thought I would give this app another try as I only had my iWatch on my ride. When the watch connected to cellular the offline maps finally started downloading to my watch. Strange that it can not seem to connect and download through my phone. The developer just contacted me in response to my review to offer help, but I think i have accidentally solved my problem already.I discovered another small problem in that when planning a route for my bicycle it often a sends me back and forth a few hundred yards even though I am only intending to travel in a continuous direction. It might be related to gaps in the underlying map data? It seems to be sending me backwards to rejoin the path I am already on. So it routes me backwards to the last intersection and then goes forward again. Also it is advertised as being able to do water routes, but I only see hiking and biking options in the app. I would love it I could do canoe routes as it would be great to glance at my watch instead of putting down the paddle to look at my phone. The overall concept is great! With few updates and tweaks it should be a very useful tool.
Developer Response
Hi again, and thanks for the update! Glad the map download finally worked. :)The iPhone actually only initiates the download, while the Watch downloads the map data itself. It sounds like the message from the iPhone to the Watch was delayed by the system. This is very rare, but I’ve just released v7.2, which includes a few additional improvements to make communication between the iPhone and Watch more reliable. Hopefully you won’t run into this again.Regarding cycling routes, assuming you selected Cycle or MTB mode, what you describe can happen if a short section of a road or trail is marked in the underlying OpenStreetMap data as one-way, private, or otherwise inaccessible. That can occasionally make the router send you back to the previous junction before continuing. If you notice a repeatable pattern or a particular location where this happens, please let me know.And just to clarify the water sports part: WristTopo supports water sports such as canoeing and kayaking for activity recording, but it doesn’t currently provide automatic water-route planning. The route planner offers Walk/Run, Hike, Cycle, MTB, and Straight Line modes. Straight Line can actually work quite well on lakes or open water: you can place a series of points along your intended course and then use the route for orientation directly on the Watch.Thanks again for the detailed feedback, and feel free to contact me at piotr@wristtopo.app if you’d like to send me a specific routing example. :)Best,Piotr
Need maps? Simple wrist maps without the Garmin price point
dwhitend93
Only 6 ratings?? This deserves way more attention. This is quietly living as one of the best hiking tools on the App Store. Anything else has more features than I actually need. I just need an easy reference map on my wrist that can help me check routes and plan new ones without being cumbersome and battery draining… somehow, this didn’t exist until this app! Thank you for making this. This turns my Apple Watch into a gps mapping machine, and kept me from spending excessive cash just to get a Garmin watch for maps. It fits perfectly in that “low battery use, long day hike” space that I needed it for.
Developer Response
Wow, thank you for the awesome review! 🙌 I’m really glad to hear the app’s working well for your hikes - that’s exactly what I built it for: clean, reliable, and battery-friendly mapping right on your wrist. If you think other hikers might enjoy it too, feel free to share it around. Thanks again for the support, and happy trails! ⛰️
Smooth route creation and topo map solution for the Apple Watch!
TrailWalker77
Really impressed by how fluid and straightforward the route creation and map browsing is with this app. I’ve found that the other topo map apps for the Apple Watch can be quite cumbersome (and expensive). Route navigation works very well on the watch once you’ve started your workout. Perfect for those that want to use the Apple Workout app but still want to follow a detailed route at the same time with turn by turn directions. Developer is super friendly and responsive as well! Looking forward to enjoying this app along with seeing where this app goes.
Developer Response
Thanks so much for the kind words! I’m really glad route creation and navigation have been working smoothly for you. Appreciate the support — and excited to keep improving the app!
• Your workout stats can now sit in the corner of the watch map, beside the clock.
• Auto-Pause pauses your workout when you stop and resumes it when you move again.
• New fields for runners: cadence, grade, and grade adjusted pace.
• New fields for the distance, time, and climb left to the finish or the next waypoint, sunset, daylight left, battery, and total time.
• Precision Start begins a recording the moment you set off, with GPS ready.
• Up to six workout screens per activity, and a choice of which sports upload to Strava.
New in v7.5.1:
• The watch face complication has a new look.
Version 7.5.1
The developer, Piotr Janik, indicated that the app’s privacy practices may include handling of data as described below. For more information, see the developer’s privacy policy .
Data Not Linked to You
The following data may be collected but it is not linked to your identity:
Purchases
Location
Usage Data
Diagnostics
Privacy practices may vary, for example, based on the features you use or your age. Learn More
The developer indicated that this app supports the following accessibility features. Learn More
Supported Features
Dark Interface
Differentiate Without Color Alone
Reduced Motion
Information
Seller
Piotr Janik
Size
182.6 MB
Category
Health & Fitness
Compatibility
Requires iOS 17.4 or later.
iPhone Requires iOS 17.4 or later.
Mac Requires macOS 14.4 or later and a Mac with Apple M1 chip or later.