AllTrails: Hike, Bike & Run Ratings and Reviews

All Trails is the best for anyone that loves to hike!

All Trails is such a great resource for anyone who loves to hike! I use the app for all my hiking! I love the record feature that allows me to track my progress on any hike, and I love even more that I can put my phone on airplane mode so that I’m not using data while on my hike and still use the record feature! I always check out the All Trails reviews from other hikers before heading out, and usually find that other hikers have great insight/feedback about trail conditions. The only feature I don’t love about All Trails is the rating technique that is used for hiking trails. Trails are rated as either easy/moderate/hard and I have found through my experience that trails aren’t very consistently rated. I’ve hiked some trails that were rated as hard and the hike felt easy. I’ve hiked some rated as moderate and the hike felt hard. I understand that rating trails is a challenging component of hiking due to different levels of experience and fitness, however I would love to see an option where hikers who have completed the hike are able to submit their feedback on how challenging the hike was from 1-10. I think, overall, a 1-10 scale for how challenging a hike is would be extremely beneficial. Overall, I absolutely love All Trails and use the app daily! I recommend it to anyone and fully support what they are doing! Keep up the great work, All Trails!

Few issues lately. Oct 2018

Removing the check-in was a bad idea. Hiding it in the “...” was worse, didn’t know it was there and my history is now not accurate, and now I have to make up a name for each recording on the fly. Waste of time. Please put check-in back where it belongs, it’s a critical feature, and right map loads with the name of the trail on the saved history.
I also agree with the other user about trail hopping. In New England many trails connect but are listed separately. If you are no longer on the same one you started it appears you are just going rogue on the map. How about auto loading the newly entered trail?
Also being able to edit history would be helpful. There’s been a couple times where I started driving home and forgot to hit pause and save. And why the “pause” button when the trail is complete? It’s a weird way to “finish” or “end hike”.
Big issue with crashing during use lately. Thought I was recording and it had crashed once phone was put away. If I didn’t stop to take a pic early i would have gone pretty far without noticing. Stinks for tracking distance 😐. Overall I do love and use and recommend this app almost daily to find trails and track my history. Can’t live without it but its been acting weird lately.

Great app with one major flaw

I’ve been using AllTrails for a couple months now and I love it. It is a 5 star app by far, yet that is not my rating for it. There are a few quirks I have with the UI, but they are not worth mentioning as they are minor and do not effect the app use whatsoever.
My only real issue, which caused my 4 star rating (which killed me to do so), is the fact that you CANNOT LAUNCH THE APP WITHOUT A CELLULAR OR WIFI CONNECTION!! It is ridiculous, plain and simple. I am a Pro subscriber to AllTrails. I did this solely so I could download trail maps prior to going in case I lost service on the trail. That feature works beautifully. But let’s say you download your map, head out to your trail, arrive and go to open app to use the map that is already saved on your phone. Guess what?? Unless you have service, you can’t open the app! So it’s essentially useless. The last thing I want to do is have to add “open AllTrails prior to leaving home” to my to do list to get ready.
AllTrails, lets be real for a minute. Hiking, biking, exploring, etc. are all off the grid things! Chances are you won’t have service if you are in a remote location. Fix this issue!! Make an offline version of your app so that paid users who have already downloaded maps can actually use them!
With that said, this is an amazing app that is worthy of 5 stars. It is just failing miserably in one particular area that is critical to its use.

Developer Response ,

Hi there - we're sorry to hear you are having trouble launching the app in low-signal areas. We'd recommend setting your phone to airplane mode to help get the app launched. One you open the app, you can access downloaded maps by tapping Plan then Maps. If you are still running into issues, please reach out to us at support@alltrails.com so that we can help troubleshoot!

Fix the bug issues

The app is good overall, but there is still some crucial bug fixes that haven’t been fixed yet. One huge one is that while you’re using the gps, sometimes the map will cut out and will give you a white screen and the app will crash. This is bad because if I am deep on trail and the map I need to navigate fails I could get lost. I pay for premium so luckily I have access to the maps that I download, but if someone doesn’t have premium and low service it could be bad. Sometimes the app will just randomly pause the gps even if the phone is locked which isn’t as big of a deal but still annoying. There is a lot of minor bugs in the app itself that seem to get looked over. You can’t swipe between month and year to view your statistics and if you create an album of hikes that start at the same trailhead they all say “0” unlike before where they would say a number like “7” or “5”. One last one that is a big pet peeve is they removed the photo feature from the map while you actively use the gps. The only way to view other photos on trail is the go into someone else review, click on their photos and then navigate to the icon from there. One of the big reasons why I liked the app was because I was able to view community photos while I was navigating so I knew when a viewpoint or a point of interest was coming up. The app is helpful but almost needs an overhaul which is why I give a mid score.

Crashing on Course

Hello! Pro member here and have some concerns. The app keeps crashing while I’m in the middle of 20-30 mile hikes. This is dangerous when you rely on AllTrails to alert you when you’re off course and have a lifeline feature engaged so your husband can track your progress from work! I am also frustrated because when it crashes, it also leaves me with gaps in my recordings till I figure out that it’s not working. I prefer to be enjoying the surroundings and not constantly checking if the app is recording and connected. I have been a Pro member over a year and have had no major issues till recently. Just sent an email to AllTrails about this concern. Thought maybe leaving a review would get a quicker response. A few notes to eliminate user error when the crashes occur - My phone battery has plenty of charge. No other apps are open on my phone. It literally has an error message that something went wrong. AllTrails please help! Please fix! Also, I’m discovering that some of the maps underestimate mileage up to a few miles. Have been planning on those underestimates because they’re unreliable when planning how much daylight a hike may require and the quantity of supplies to bring.

Developer Response ,

Hello - Thanks so much for the feedback and so sorry about this! As a first step I would suggest deleting and reinstalling the app on your phone and then seeing if this problem persists while out on a hike. If so, it would be helpful if you could please send us a log file by going to your profile in the app, then to 'settings' then to 'email us' which will automatically attach the log file to your email. That will help our mobile development team investigate the issue. Thanks in advance!

No Tech support and app doesn’t always work

We could not use the app to find the rail trail in Newport, Vermont because the map was so small that the start of the trail could not be found when we were sent somewhere that had a trail but was not the rail trail. Finding the location of the start of the trail was impossible. We were sent to a farm which had nice trails but were not part of the trail we wanted. When we started out on our bikes, the app showed us where we had been in a dark blue line but still gave no indication where the trail began. We ended up going to a Visitor Center in the city which had a map of the trail. What was supposed to be an 8-mile trek became a 16-mile trek because the app was not usable. We were in a city, so it was not a disaster. Had we been hiking deep in the woods, we would have been hopelessly lost with no way of discovering how to find our way out.

I tried to write a review but got interrupted. AllTrails published it anyway (there is nothing to click to say you will publish). I tried to edit it. I tried to delete it. The app wouldn’t respond. I tried the Help menu. It was just articles on how to use AllTrails. I looked into “Connect with us” and it sent me to various pages on the web (Pinterest, Facebook, etc) but had no option to connect with a person for support. Finally, several months later, I was contacted to see if I wanted to talk to the developer.

Developer Response ,

Hi there - Thanks a ton for the feedback. If there's any trail information you think is incorrect, on any Trail Details screen tap the button in the upper right corner with the three dots and select 'Suggest Trail Edit'. From there you can provide feedback for how we can improve the trail. You can also email support@alltrails.com with suggestions.

Never Ending Trails

I love it! I’ve moved to a new town about a year ago and I’ve only ever known my town hiking spots. So to move somewhere new and not know anywhere to go was frustrating! I love bringing my dogs hiking and even better to find spots they can swim or frolick in the water. BUT once I go somewhere I feel accomplished and ready for the next. So to find so many varieties and close by places to hike is amazing! Whatever town I’m in I just look up what’s around. Whenever I’d Google placed to go there was NOTHING. Or very short and disappointing places. This app is great because it will give you direction right in the app instead of trying to Google Maps it yourself. You can map your rout and GPS where you are to ensure you stay on track and don’t get lost. I’m so much more comfortable going alone when I can see where each path leads and about how long it should take me. People also are great at providing pictures and comments of the trails so it is so easy to find. My biggest annoyance is not being able to find the place to begin with! GPS is all good and dandy but sometimes it will just bring you to the location but the location isn’t clarified. So by people uploading their photos let’s you get a visual of what you’re looking for. Overall, the best app!

Good app, but ...

I have been using the app for hiking and mountain biking. It´s very valuable and makes you feel really confident and worry free, that you are following the right trail and that you will get home safely. Although, I have found 2 things, which need improvement : 1) I was recording my day hike and when I got back to my car, I wanted to save the hike, review it etc. But, there was no cell phone signal, which typically there isn’t, when you hike, so the application wouldn’t let me finish the process of saving/reviewing/adding comments. Then I drove back to town and wanted to finish this process. But the application, was basically asking me, if I want to continue recording, if I said “no”, the only choice it gave me, was to clear the data. Of course, I don’t want to add car drive to my hiking trip ...., 2) The other improvement is related to it. I think, if one is recording hiking trip and then forgets to save it, when gets back to car, the application should automatically detect, that obviously one is not hiking anymore, since the speed is > 10 miles/hour. It should then, ideally, ask you, if you want to make the car ride part of your recording or not. Actually, this happens to me a lot, that I forget to stop recording or that I’m not able to save the trip, because of missing cell phone signal.

Developer Response ,

Hi there - thanks for the feedback. The app will still be able to save your recording even offline. If you do see this again, please contact support@alltrails.com. In regards to stopping your recording, if you have accidentally driven off, you can adjust your recording on our website by following the steps at the bottom of this article: https://support.alltrails.com/hc/en-us/articles/360019244411

MUST HAVE APP!

I absolutely LOVE this app!! I hike alone 90% of the time and I love this for finding new trails, staying in trail and keeping someone in the know of my whereabouts. I love the pictures, reviews and recordings submitted by real people so I can understand whether it’s something I think I could handle or not. The only downsides I’ve come across so far are 1) when you’re flipping through submitted photos, you can tap in the white area near the persons name who submitted it in order to see how long ago it was (ie a month, week, year etc) BUT! Be careful!! I’ve accidentally hit “suggest hide” on a couple photos and you can’t undo that!!!! Super frustrating!!! I’m not trying to flag or hide anyone’s photos! I just wanna know when it was taken. I’m sorry people! 2) when you’re looking for trails in your area using the map, you have to zoom in/out to the perfect spot for the trail markers to pop up. They disappear really easily if you zoom in or out too much in the slightest or if you move the map position even a tiny bit. I feel like those are both easy fixes.
I recommend any outdoorsy people download the app. It’s fun to pick hikes for each other when you live states away and then chat about them after you’ve completed them! I love this app!

Love the features. Old UI was iffy. New UI is bad.

I am a generally happy all rails pro subscriber - it’s made my COVID-inspired outdoorsiness possible! But the new UI is ...oh, not good. I loved the simple Record button. Now when I manage to find the button through Navigate (which is not the right word! I’m not navigating, just starting to walk from wherever I am and want the app to capture it), and press Pause, doesn’t leave it paused. .The old version often stopped my recording when I only wanted to pause - and I couldn’t get back in and tell it Nope, so I would end up with two hikes split up because I couldn’t opt to continue where I left off. But,the new design is worse, because not only is it completely unintuitive to even find the button to start a recording, now if you don’t press and *hold* to stop/save, and simply hit pause (perhaps because you don’t care if you save the recording), it just seems to keep recording. So I wound up with a ~80mi hike the other day because it captured my entire drive for the day after I had thought I stopped the recording, and the walk itself was maybe half a mile. So now I had to delete the entire hike, which is not a huge deal but now my iPhone health app thinks I was some kind of superwoman for a single day and will forever compare me to it, unfavorably.
I love this app. But please get some more experienced ux folks to review these designs.

Developer Response ,

Hey there - thanks for the feedback and sorry to hear you are unhappy with the app's new UX and so sorry to hear that you find this update disappointing. We realize that product updates are inevitably challenging, but we hope that you’ll grow to enjoy the new experience. We certainly appreciate your feedback and will relay it to our broader team. If you have any other questions or concerns around Navigator please reach out to support@alltrails.com