Gaia Left me Stranded, again.
I'm sick and tired of the "sign in" feature of Gaia. We live in New Mexico and spend plenty of time hiking and off roading our great state, yesterday for example, we left main camp on foot at around 8 a.m., everything was fine, and we hiked to one of the abandoned mines, in the afternoon, turn on the phone, fire up Gaia, and get sign-in screen?, luckily we always carry paper maps of the areas we hike, but without them the 7-8 mile hike would have been nearly impossible to accomplish with the little sunlight we had left.
I have all the off line maps downloaded on my phone (hiking), tablet (driving) and laptop/PC (planning), but the sign-in feature totally defeats the purpose.
Take off the 30 day sign in crap, or lose another long time customer. At least add a "warning period" on it, start giving a warning for "sign-in" 7 days before, or make it user friendly and give us a choice of - every time you log in on PC, tablet, phone (automatically) extend sign on for 30 days... anything but, just cut us off in the middle of back country.
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@hpinson33 - Relatable! It happened to me on a trail Dooragan NP, NSW (Aus.) - Thankfully I could see the landmarks and navigate, as couldn't get it to log in until eventually I found a ridgeline that got enough signal to let the login work, though it still took 30 minutes of struggling to get it signed in. Outside are a liability. GGPS needs to be it's own thing and independent of their bullshit. Agree this could be deadly. Navigation is a lifeline necessity, not a techbro toy.
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Exactly. They have no interest in addressing because this is a gimmick meant to force people to interact with Outside, so the Sign in process now goes through Outside, which no one asked for and no one wants. They know that but they are not about to pass an opportunity to expand their advertising space. We, the users, come in second.
So either we make enough noise so they'll listen, or we move on to another app. If I find one that allows me to take pictures as part of a recorded hike, and lets me download my photos afterwards instead of locking them up in the Cloud, I'm gone.
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The Snooze option is a joke because it only appears in you have cell reception. If not, the Sign In process freezes and you can't access your maps, or anything else.
This happened to me. I am in the middle of nowhere, with no cell reception and I am counting on GaiaGPS to help me get back home and it won't load unless I sign-in through Outside, which requires good cell reception.
When I contacted Tech Support, they told me to use the Snooze button. Who are they kidding? If you are in an area with no cell reception, you'll never even see the Snooze button. Who are those people? Do they actually use GaiaGPS in the real world?
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These new issues have made the app incredibly dangerous for users. Today I was bushwhacking and made sure to track my path so I could find may way back to where I started. Then I discovered that the app had glitched -- it had logged me off ages ago, so the track was lost. I kept trying to open Gaia again ... It would take nearly a minute to load, then shut down as soon as I turned my screen off. I ended up completely disoriented, with my phone battery draining quickly.
Here's the funny part -- I gave up on Gaia, and the only way I found my way back to the trail was by using Google Maps.
You guys trashed a really good app. I used to love Gaia, and now I think it is incredibly risky to use. These new changes are so awful. I'm rgoing to have to dump Gaia for onX or CalTopo. Even Alltrails would be better than this.
I hope someone there decides to fix these issues before the app is completely destroyed.
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I am also considering GaiaGPS as unreliable. I used to depend on it to keep track of where I was going in places with no mapped trails, so I could retrace my steps in case I got stuck or run out of daylight. No more.
I also used it to take photos on the way, so I could refer back to them and try to recognize landmarks. That doesn't work anymore. For one thing the photos do not get saved in the Gallery anymore but even on the map, last hike I recorded photos, 14 of them didn't make it on the map. Those that did, only the little icon is there but I can't see the actual photo.
I think they did something to the default settings, like how far apart two pictures have to be for them to be recorder as separate. And unlike with other apps, like Avenza, we don't have access to those settings. Same thing with the accuracy, how many feet? Right now I would say it's between 50 and 100 feet, not great and barely usable offtrail.
It's all fine for the casual Sunday walker who stays on well marked trails or even fire roads. Not if you're going off trail or on undocumented trail and want to use the recording features as a back up.
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