Login prevents remote use
Twice now recently I have been at a trailhead or remote location and Gaia wants me to login and give my password. Of course this won't work as there is no internet connection. I used Gaia without such a problem for nearly a year. This is something and new and a serious problem. I can't be the only person facing this major issue. This makes the app useless and undependable until something is fixed. Everyone who is paying and now facing this should be speaking up and making known how serious this is. My major use case if for remote navigation, not desktop/urban fooling around.
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dkozicki - interesting that "the team is aware of the issue, and they're working on finding a solution." They've been aware for over a month now.
The solution is simple. Reverse the code changes that caused this.
Since that hasn't happened the challenge must not be technical, but rather bureaucratic. Maybe Gaia and Outside are busy negotiating policy changes while the rest of us are being inconvenienced by their quest for profits over safety.
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They won't because they want us to log in through Outside, with the hope that we'll get sucked into using it as a platform for outdoor activities. It introduces additional demands on the connection, which makes it less reliable.
Problems login in isn't the only thing that got messed up with the introduction of Outside. The photos I take while recording a hike don't get stored in the Gallery on my Android phone, even though the Setting is On, which means I have no way to download them to my computer anymore. And the Sync functions stops before it is done so half of my recorded hikes don't have their Waypoints anymore.
GaiaGPS went from being a useful, reliable app for people who actually depend on it for their outdoor activity, to trying to be a toy for social media addicts.
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Agree, this needs to be changed, I too have been put in really bad positions because of this. I've used Gaia Premium for years without issues, pre-Outside. Their comment about downloading maps first is useless because you can not get past the login screen. It worked when I started the trail and logged itself out midway, not a good feeling, even with backup maps. Do I need to switch to OnX?
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Here is the latest from Customer Support:
Thank you for providing the additional information and sharing the forum link. I have read through the comments. While there is a dedicated team monitoring this, I will also share it with the rest of the team.
It seems that what users in the forum experienced, including yourself, was an app update that occurred without notification while you were off-grid. I understand how frustrating and potentially risky this can be, so we have brought this to the attention of our engineering team. We appreciate your feedback and are working to improve the app experience for our users.
Please let me know if I can be of help with anything else.
Ben | Gaia GPS Customer Success
Outside Inc. Team0 -
Ben - does Outside realize that the "Snooze" feature is completely unavailable if the phone of cell range? There is no bypass option for offline map usage for premium or any other user.
USERS SHOULD NEVER BE FORCABLY LOGGED OUT. It can be life or death.
Update is necessary, but make update on the users terms and schedule.
Does Outside understand this?If anyone is interested how many have been affected by this introduced "feature" and REPEATED forced logouts - take a look at the GaiaGPS reddit forum, and the justification from the Gaia rep "offroadee". It is appalling.
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Ben, we have already surmised "how" this happened. The question is "why".
Lacking a clear answer to that question raises suspicion of negligence on Gaia's part and triggers consideration of competitive alternatives. This would normally be a code red item with upper management.
BTW, Avenza Maps has assured me that they would only require a customer to log back in if a) the customer had logged out or b) changed devices.
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dkozicki
Calling it an "app update that occurred without notification while you were off-grid" is a misnomer. There has been app updates before and they never required a new Login In, as long as GaiaGPS was independent from Outside.
This was a result of an ill-advised integration with the Outside platform, where Logins are now frequent and forced to go through Outside, even though one doesn't want it it or need it.
This is not the only problem that resulted from this hybrid between Outside and GaiaGPS, other essential functions like Syncing and photo storage have been affected. Most likely because Outside makes more demands on the system and the load is too heavy on the servers.
And maybe the most sneaky one is the change of privacy settings from private to public for one's activities, without notification.
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It is surprising that they are entirely casual about what could be a life threatening flaw. They call it inconvenient, and I am sure it seems that way to someone sitting in an office rather than someone shivering in the dark in the backcountry.
There is a fair bit of doubletalk going on. Saying that this is for "your security" as an example. It should be clear to anyone that this authentication is to weed out non-paying users and is entirely for their bottom line. And it is pretty easy to read between the lines and see that this is being mandated by someone higher up in the Outside management and that the Gaia developers have their hands tied to a great extent. All of this is surmise of course and reading between the lines. That they haven't simply backed out the change that required online authentication points to this view.
It is all working fine for me now, after two outings where I was blocked by the login screen and a fair amount of frustration sorting out getting this reenabled when I was finally in cell range again. If it never happens again, we can move forward, but the rumors that the poorly named (and hidden) Snooze button has now vanished leaves me feeling uncertain. I fully expect to face this again at the worst possible time.
Always carry backup maps on paper. Look into other options (Avenza and OnX have been mentioned).
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I'm going to get another app because of this and a multitude of other issues they are causing.
I am fairly reliant on this app to work as expected when I am deep in the wilderness, in thickets of trees or in a whiteout conditions. To have an app used for wilderness travel where a cell phone signal doesn't exist and to force a login seems like the most asinine thing a corporate executive could come up with.
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For those of you who think you’re responding to “Ben,” you’re not. If you read my message, he responded to me. Gaia doesn’t even monitor this community of their users. It’s really looking like it’s time to “abandon ship”. They are F’d up!
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dkozicki
I'm afraid you're right. I initially though you were the author of Ben's response but you were just passing it on. I think you're right about GaiaGPS not monitoring these messages.
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I feel Outside is the problem...never liked that publication. I'm on the verge of leaving this platform due to this need for a sign in away from cell service.
4/2025 update!
Gaia seems to have fixed all this a while back. Android Auto works almost flawlessly with Gaia now.
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Definitely Outside is the problem. They have imposed new terms for using GaiaGPS and are also adding to the load of the servers, which can't keep up.
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This happens to me everytime I get on Gaia now, and has impacted me dramatically twice. This is super dangerous in my opinion. The whole point is to be able to use in the backcountry aka no service.
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I dropped using gaia, really liked the app. I demanded my money back and got it. Was hopping to come here to find out they had corrected the issue.. but not finding that.
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