Hike Buddy 1.5 makes guided outings more reliable and GPX routes more flexible. - Follow your outing, progress, and guide from Apple Watch. - Walk a GPX in either direction, join it midway, or take a detour without confusing what the guide describes next. - Get steadier off-route alerts and guidance that better matches your real position. - Open an interactive map of a completed outing from the Journal. - Optionally save completed hikes to Apple Health. - Maps use fewer resources and background continuity is more resilient. - If Voxtral is unavailable, Apple’s voice continues in your selected language. Your existing routes, outings, and settings are preserved.

Hike Buddy 1.4 introduces a completely redesigned Explore experience, richer place discovery and smarter timing for guide stories. You can now ask the guide about a place whenever you want to hear more, open nearby places from the Live Activity, and enjoy smoother, better-centered maps during active walks. GPX routes, elevation, AI and voice setup, and onboarding are also improved. The app is now free.

What’s new: - A smarter AI guide for city walks and hikes, with more relevant timing and context-aware suggestions. - Improved point-of-interest guidance: the guide can now decide whether to speak immediately, wait until you are closer, or stay silent. - Better use of map context during walks, helping the guide understand where you are and what is nearby. - More natural behavior during free walks, planned city routes, and nature hikes. - Improved reliability after provider timeouts and slower AI responses. - Better handling of AI models with image support, including safer validation when changing models or providers. - Cleaner, more stable AI conversation handling so the guide keeps context across the walk without unnecessary repetition.

What’s New: - More reliable AI narration when using OpenAI-compatible providers. - Improved OpenRouter compatibility for users who connect their own provider. - Better handling of unexpected AI responses, so walking and hiking sessions can keep falling back gracefully.

HikeBuddyAI now makes narration setup clearer and easier to tune. Settings have been reorganized into dedicated sections for narration, exploration, AI provider, voice, audio, and data. Language selection is easier to browse and better reflects the selected voice context. AI and voice configuration has been improved for compatible providers, Mistral, and Voxtral beta voices. Guided coaching during hikes is smoother too, with better timing around spoken messages so useful guidance fits more naturally into the outing.

Version 1.0.1 improves Voxtral voice playback in HikeBuddyAI. What’s new: - Added an optional Voxtral volume boost to help spoken narration stand out better over background music. - Improved the reliability of boosted Voxtral playback. - Refined spoken audio behavior when other audio is already playing. The new voice boost is optional and remains off by default.