Gaia Classic stopped working on iOS 14.6 - are tracks lost forever?
I was recently surprised to discover, while out in the backcountry no less, that Gaia Classic no longer works at all on iOS 14.6.
I've been a Gaia GPS user for many years and have dozens of useful tracks and waypoints saved with the app. Had I known that the app was going to stop working I would have exported them, but I'd used the app within the past several weeks and saw no indication that it would abruptly stop functioning with the next iOS update.
The instructions that I've found for exporting tracks from Gaia Classic all assume that you can launch the app. Can anyone recommend a way to get these exported or transferred to the new Gaia?
Thanks!
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Official comment
Thanks for reaching out about this.
Unfortunately, the Classic app is no longer supported and can't be updated. The back-end infrastructure to work on it is no longer available.
In 2017, we released a new version of the Gaia GPS app. At the same time, the Classic app was removed from the AppStore and discontinued. It has not been supported since.
I am very sorry. We were not aware that iOS version 14.5 would disable the Classic app.
It may be possible to recover the data by restoring a backup like is mentioned here. I know this has worked for users who have lost their data in other situations. However, we haven't tested this with regard to Classic and 14.5, as the app is no longer supported.
Again, I am very sorry. I have reached out to you both directly to set up a free subscription extension to apologize for the trouble.
Let me know if you have success restoring from a backup. I'm happy to help you get that restored data synced to the new app.
If you have any further questions, please contact Support here.Comment actions -
Thanks for your response, Jim. I do have a local backups of my iPhone both from before and after the iOS upgrade that appears to have broken Gaia Classic, but from past experience I know that it is difficult, if not usually impossible, to downgrade to an older version of iOS that would allow the restored app to run in order to facilitate the export process.
I was however able to use the trial version of the iMazing app to extract the application data files from the backup. Side note for anyone else considering this: I'm very wary generally of using third-party tools this one given the security and privacy risks that are inherent in installing and running them. This app seems to have a good reputation and their website contains the necessary details to verify the signature of the download and app binary, but it's still a big risk, so be aware and take precautions if you can.
So, the upshot is now I have the data saved on my computer (see below image) and just need a way to reimport it to the new (non-classic) version of Gaia. This doesn't look like a standard format, but it's easy enough to read and parse, so I'm curious if you can supply a script or utility to translate it to a suitable import format. If not, I'll probably just write one myself, but it'd be great if you guys had one that you could share.
Thanks!
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@jwixn
Unfortunately, we don't have an existing utility for the files you extracted, as it's not a workflow we've used before.
If you have any further questions, please contact Support here. -
@tyndalljp99
If you weren't syncing the Classic app to the website or you were unable to restore from a backup, there's unfortunately not a known way to recover the tracks.
I am very sorry. We were not aware that iOS version 14.5 would disable the Classic app. And, unfortunately, the Classic app is no longer supported and can't be updated. The back-end infrastructure to work on it is no longer available.
If you have any further questions, please contact Support here.
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