Things to know about downloading maps

This post is for those who are attempting to do large downloads for offline use, or those experiencing downloads that appear to be hung or not succeeding.  In my case, I needed to (re)download all of New York State, for maps Gaia Topo (feet), USGS TOPO, and USGS TOPO Historical 1930.  Gaia support is sure to have the same experience should they wish to explore the endeavor and associated issues.

For a while, I thought downloaded maps were hopelessly broken.  The good news is that you can successfully download large detailed maps - if you have the time, patience and tenacity to survive the process.  Meditation (and maybe alcohol) helps.  I'll not repeat the instructions here; the intent of this post is to tell you the pitfalls and decoys so that you don't waste the days I did learning the following:

1) If you downloaded maps a long time ago, the latest software may not work with it.  I have a phone in that state and I've offered my micro SD card to Gaia support to troubleshoot. 

2) If you get into that state, you'll need to remove all maps from your account (browser from PC online) - as well as the phone (I have Android) and then uninstall then reinstall and then start downloading the maps again.  And be sure to set your root folder to the SD card before you start as you may run out of memory in your phone.

3) Follow the instructions for downloading maps, but know that if you want high resolution, you'll need to do a little back and forth through the workflow to find a download under the 100,000 tile limit.  The good news is that if you're downloading multiple maps, the 100,000 limit is for the map with the most tiles.  That is, the maps can total above 100,000 tiles, but no single map can.

4) Once you start a download, you'll want to watch the progress (Saved >> Downloads).  THE HARDEST LESSON I LEARNED IS THAT THE DOWNLOAD PROGRESS PAGE PROVIDES COMPLETELY WRONG, CONFUSING, EVEN DECEPTIVE NUMBERS AND THE PROGRESS BARS ARE EQUALLY WRONG.  NUMBER OF TILES: LIKELY WRONG, NUMBER OF FILES DOWNLOADED: LIKELY WRONG, FILES SKIPPED: LIKELY WRONG!!! STATUS BAR: LIKELY WRONG!

5) And for some unknown reason (Saved >> Downloads), many downloads will stall, requiring the user to babysit the long downloads.  You need to long press the download, and resume - but the screen will (usually) not confirm that it has resumed.  What I find does work is wait until all progressing downloads finish (or all downloads stall), and restart all of the stalled, hoping that one actually restarts.  If not, exit the program, re-enter, and wait for the screen to update - after it deceives you (as discussed below).

6) Please read this long litany if you want to understand the (Saved >> Downloads) screen.  Further discouragement comes from the Saved >> Downloads screen readjusting its count (and making all of its numbers deceivingly wrong) - at seemingly random intervals or events.  Leaving the screen, tapping on anything, even plugging in my charger has caused this squirrely behavior.  Once I figured out that the DOWNLOAD was not broken - just the status screen (Saved >> Downloads) is, I calmed down and figured out what it's doing:  When triggered (for what?), it shifts some number of downloaded tiles into the "skipped" category, and subtracts them from the total files to download bin.  So wile in fact, it's downloading all those files, the screen tells you that it's not going to download all the files (total count reduced), that it's skipping most of the files (downloaded tallied as skipped) - even saying it skipped more than it's going to download (those two falsehoods combined) and that it's only downloaded a few (restarts the counter.  It seems like the (Saved >> Downloads) screen was designed to discourage, frustrate, even depress the user!

Other notes are as follows:

Saved >> Downloads - When downloads appear to stall (and maybe actually do stall), long press to resume downloads usually does NOT appear to resume downloads.  You may need to exit and re-enter the app - and then wait a dogs age to see if it resumed.  BUT...

Saved >> Downloads - When you return to the screen, it will ell you there are no downloads in process - until you wait a dogs age - and then it restarts the count from zero - for a very very very long time - until it gets past the tiles it already downloaded - and then screws up the numbers (all of them) as described above!  Have patience.  If it finally restarts downloading tiles, you're making progress.

Saved >> Maps - Upon entering this screen, it often will show blank for a long time - as if you have no maps.  Give it a LOT of time to see what maps you have.

For what it's worth, I've been trying to complete my download for four full days, including getting up in the middle of the night to either start the next download or resume the stalled ones.

I hope this helps you succeed and not age too much in the process of downloading maps.