Footpath Route Planner 4+

This app is absolutely fantastic for planning hikes. Even though we have used other online route apps, we've been looking for an easy to use route planning app for our phones that exports GPX route files for use with our favorite iPhone GPS software (GaiaGPS). Footpath does it seamlessly. We also upload the route files to fitness apps like RunKeeper where it tells us in advance how many calories our planned hikes will burn. Wonderful!

Suggested future updates: add the ability to import existing GPX route/track files for easy sharing and editing (this is Footpath's most glaring deficiency in our opinion--right now you can only export routes to other apps); make it possible to easily move starting and mid-points of a route you want to edit (right now you can only edit an existing route by deleting segments of the route starting at the end until you get to a fork or turn you want to explore and then continuing along a new path from there); and it would also be great if your routes were automatically saved to a personal account on a website maintained by Footpath so they could be more easily managed and exported to your favorite GPS and fitness apps.

All that said, Footpath is pretty awesome as is and has already benefited us greatly by giving us the ability to quickly and easily plan and execute our weekly hikes anywhere we are whenever we have a couple minutes. Thank you!

OK this is going to be a rave.

Nobody is mentioning what I thought was the most interesting thing about new version 3. The old version would switch maps automatically depending on zoom level, but the new Footpath Outdoors map appears to just combine all the information of the old maps without the jarring switch.

The tutorial is very brief with only the basics covered, but if you haven’t found a feature you want - for me it was how to switch snap types on the fly - keep poking controls in the corners and it’s a good bet you’ll find it in one of them. (The snap switch is a few extra taps to switch but it does work smoothly and consistently.)

The new editing tools are hugely welcome! I don’t recall if I could edit saved routes in the old version, but that’s in here now. I haven’t found a way to edit start points, so unless I’m just missing something I’d recommend zooming in very close on your start point and then backing out to complete the route.

I also appreciate the new account system where I can create/edit routes on my iPad and see the same routes on my iPhone. The grandfathering of my old saved routes into the iPad was very nice - I was briefly afraid I’d have to pay again until I found the secret instruction to invoke it. (Pssst - hey dev, I’d have paid it anyway, but thanks, that was very kind.)

I feel bad rating this too low because I did not use it for very long. However, that is because I started to get genuinely upset with it. It seems that it would be great for legitimate trails, city streets, etc. However, I had great difficulty getting it to stick to actual suburb roads. At one point it decided I should take a nice detour and bike through the pond. When drawing a simple path with a stylus, it thought it would be fun to throw in a few circles. Additionally, it did not give me sufficient editing abilities. On one trip I tried to map, it had a random straight line going through a woods. I attempted to erase it so I could shift it over, but it just kept reappearing in a different, equally incorrect location. It also completely ignores a popular footpath. The “snap to map” is somewhat a useful, and certainly an innovative feature. It just needs some love. I could see this working on longer trips that need less accuracy, but for my suburban 10 mile excursions it brought nothing but anger. For now, I’m going to stick to drawing vauge lines on a map, and finding out the mileage later.

TLDR: I can see it’s applications and situations it could be good in. It just is not at all conducive to my biking or running excursions.