I stumbled across that “lose your downloads” statement by accident while trawling through the OA website whilst pondering the loss of VR. I can access my VR lifetime maps ok online but the fun begins when you download some tiles (a time consuming process and a real pain for me as I like to have the whole of Scotlandshire accessible – I just love pouring over maps), if you log out of the app you’re stuffed, it’s tile roulette when you open the app to access your downloaded tiles – some randomly don’t load for about half an hour, the black screen that appears far too frequently on opening the app and takes about 90 seconds to clear – an age when you are out in the field, overall just a buggy piece of crap. I really tried hard to get on with it but gave up. All I want is quick, reliable access to a map (not bothered about route planning or any of the other fancy stuff – I’m a dyed in the wool old codger), ended up investing in Memory Map and perfectly happy now – apart from the additional cost but my VR maps needed updating anyway.

I think OA is about to be dumped by me! I’ll have a look at MM and OS I’m like murdooverthehiill and just need reliable access to maps and am not too bothered with route planning and fancy stuff.

Moved to OA under duress this evening.
Useless.

Tried to plot a route across a local hill for Mrs SC and it wouldn’t do it. Routes back to the village and up again – when all I wanted is 100m across a hillside. Pah!

Do I understand correctly that there is no way to download all of the UK maps for offline usage? I think you can only download 50km squares, which totally sucks. The beauty of Viewranger was that once you have downloaded all the maps, you don’t have to worry about network coverage.

Once you have to selectively preload maps, it doesn’t give the confidence that the maps will always be there when you need them.

Yep. The offline maps was the best feature of viewranger and as far as I can tell no other app does this. The download on outdoor active falls a long way short.

You can download entire maps with MM and it also gives the choice to use SD card if you wish.

Had a look at OS and read this ”
<div id=”savelost” class=”cms_faqquestion cms_faqactive”>”Why have I lost my downloaded maps?</div>
<div class=”cms_faqanswer”>

The most common reason for this is because you have logged out. As all downloads are linked to your OS Maps user account, they will be deleted if you choose to log out”.

That sounds the same as the OA statement.

</div>
I’ve taken the plunge and opened a MM account.

I have just downloaded OsmAnd.

It actually looks OK. Will keep this on my phone and will use it to test it. Have also deleted OutdoorActive.

Neither OS Maps nor Outdooractive can be trusted to actually work in the hills.

Had problems with OS before not showing any map despite having downloaded it offline. Had the same today with Outdooractive.

With ViewRanger I’d happily go out on shorter rides with just a hip pack and no paper map. Highly recommend not doing that with these two apps.

@StirlingCrispin in OA it defaults to snap to route planning. When you enter the route plan mode there is a little magnet icon to toggle it on and off with one touch.

I only know this because I was trying to plan a canoe trip and getting very frustrated. It’s actually quite a smart design once you get used to it as you can flip between the snap to and bee line really quickly while doing A single route.

At the weekend I plotted a route on my phone with OA, whilst waiting for the rest of the family to arrive. No problem doing this on the phone with a poor mobile connection.
We all jumped in the Van and navigated to the start point using google maps – which lost the connection due to no signal in the valley and so I was expecting the OA route I’d plotted to be useless, but (much to my surprise) it worked flawlessly. Full OS mapping all the way to the top of Pen Y Fan.
Was this because I plotted the route with a decent phone signal and it cached it on my phone? I don’t think I closed down the OA app as such, but we used my phone to navigate to the car park starting point (on Google maps).
Who knows, but I’ll give it another chance.

I have just stumbled across this thread
I am also irritated by the demise of viewranger. Been using that for 10 years and had it all set up very nicely.

Main grumbles..
Although I started off buying a load of OS maps and I do have access to OS mapping in OA (probably temporarily) in recent years I had been using Open cycle Map much more due to the increased detail and number of paths. This is not an option on OA. There is an Open Street Map overlay but it does not have anywhere near as much detail. Second biggest irritation is that viewranger used to show you elevation in the top right corner as you scrolled around the map. I used to use that feature loads when planning routes and when out in the mountains (e.g. have I got enough daylight to climb over that peak..?).

there are other grumbles (inconvenient offline mapping etc) – enough for me to ditch OA.

Does anyone know of a mapping app that has open cycle Map and shows altitude in real time ?

If you select open street map from the map options you can then scroll down and add cycling or MTB as an activity. Not sure if this is exactly the same as open cycle map but looks about the same to me.

I’m also very frustrated with outdoor active.
Driving me mad – all I want is to see an is map online and show me where I am on it when offline.
On view ranger I had all of Wales at 50,000 and my most ridden areas at 25,000 It was great.

Is there any app that does this when offline
More than happy to pay. – would save me hours getting lost when exploring

So today I went to use ViewRanger for the first time in months and it wasn’t working grr. I loved ViewRanger and had a lot of money invested in it.

Anyway I’ve downloaded trail boss, free, downloadable (unfortunately OS maps not available) and I’ve got to say it’s really good, better for our uses than ViewRanger, plotting a route is easy, downloading map tiles is really easy. I haven’t tried the route guidance yet, but this Canadian app is looking really impressive so far.

I have finally got the os maps to work offline
There is a setting to save to device and not to cloud which lets you download chunks of the os 25k
Not as good as viewranger but works ok
North Wales is about 12 chunks for example
Found outdoor active to be crap for all the reasons stated above

Installed an older ViewRanger version and disabled auto-updates. Went out into the hills two days later, app had updated regardless and all I had was the “we’ve switched it off” screen.

What I miss the most is having the whole UK 1:50k just on my phone already, so there’s no need to remember to load a map for wherever I go. All the apps I’m aware of now only let you download offline maps one screenful at a time. Outdooractive is better than OS on this front because it actually shows you the already-downloaded areas so you can line up the next square to download.

Damn these companies.

Seem to have lost all OS access to areas previously downloaded and have nothing to show for my spending on Viewranger over the years.

That’s the final confirmation I’ll need to go elsewhere. Either Memory Map or OS maps.

Viewranger was good whilst it lasted.

Seem to have lost all OS access to areas previously downloaded and have nothing to show for my spending on Viewranger over the years.

If you had lifetime maps then you can access the same type of map through outdoor active. I’ve got the whole of the UK in 25k and 50k OS which is more than I had with viewranger. The app is not as good so its a compromise but the extra map access is handy.

If you had lifetime maps then you can access the same type of map through outdoor active

Seems to have vanished on my app…..

Friends plotted a route through many of the peaslake trails, on plotaroute and send me the GPX

Komoot got horribly confused in some places where the route crossed over itself, and ended up routing the wrong way up so e trails

OA got it spot on. So I’m slightly reluctantly keeping it to use in some circumstances

Seems to have vanished on my app….

Contact support. They are pretty quick to get back to you, so that’s a plus for OA.

I’ve been using OA since the demise of VR and whilst it is not as good as VR, I do like:

1. The voice turn by turn option. Works well and no need to have a phone accessible. I’ve yet to try it in an area with a poor/no phone signal though. I’m hoping it loads the whole route to the phone once started?

2. Zooms easily to both OS map scales.

3. Route plotting seems to have improved, but sometimes it will not re-route when you’ve made a mistake.

4. Whole of UK and France is a massive bonus.

Potential PSA

I can’t say if this still works because it’s some time since I did it, but I’d like to link you to another post. It may be of interest to some of you.

viewranger-ressurection-android

p.s. This is still working for me. I’ve additionally made good use of an old phone by setting it up this way as a stand alone VR gps device – now without SIM card, & wifi off (just to be sure)

PSA for anyone else that got kicked over onto outdoor active.

As well as the 25k and 50k os maps the subscription let’s you easily switch between os and Harveys maps layers.

I didn’t know it had this. Love a Harveys map, the paths often seem better marked than 25k OS and scale is more mtb friendly.

I’ve used it a fair bit now – the offline maps seems to work really well and you can download very large areas. Route tracking is a bit weird but other than that it seems fine.

Former Viewranger lifetime map owner here. Been using Outdoor Active since VR packed in.

Had an email today saying my Pro+ subscription has expired. Anyone else had this?

My understanding was that OA had agreed to provide indefinite access for lifetime VR owners but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

If the reduced access doesn’t provide offline access to maps then that’s going to be a major problem.

@mrb123

My understanding was that OA had agreed to provide indefinite access for lifetime VR owners but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Yep, thought that was the case as well. Not had an email yet though. I always suspected it was a bit too good to be true tbh.

On the other hand, and despite mine (and others) scepticism I’m a total convert. I’d actually pay the subscription if I had to. Loads better than OS and the utter garbage that is Komoot. I don’t use Starva (more garbage) or Garmin, but it looks like OA will link to these?

Got to love the off road voice guidance and the nasal mildly American assistant. ‘The route is 50 metres to your right . . . You have left the route. . . You are back on the route’.

My understanding was that OA had agreed to provide indefinite access for lifetime VR owners but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

My take was that you had lifetime access to OS Maps but saving them offline was a Pro (not Pro+) feature.

My Pro subscription runs out next month and is shown as renewing at €14.99, which is better than the listed price. I’m OK with £12pa to retain that to be honest.

The original, auto generated message I had said I would automatically have a year of Pro+. When I queried it I got this response: “The OS GB is permanent. For offline access, if you don’t take Pro after the yera, just get us to add it.” (sic)

If my sub ends I’ll be pinging them an email. Not sure if this is universal for lifetime map owners or I’m special.

My understanding was as nickjb’s: that you got a year of free Pro+ which gives you access to everything (probably as an easy way to give us access to OS maps/bit of goodwill) but after that it’s the minimum to match what we had under VR which they’ll probably have to sort separately. I thought they said to me it would be automatic, but apparently not.

I’ve been using OA, and while there are a lot of things that annoy me, it’s stil the best alternative. Annoyingly, I might be tempted by the Pro+ for the Harvey’s maps, though that was mainly useful for Wainwright bagging (because they’re indicated) and I’ve done them all now, but they are good maps.

If it was 15€ that would be a bit of a no brainer though.

Response from OA below. Seems to have done the trick for me anyway and restored my OS maps.

Hi,

Though the free year of Pro+ has ended, you retain the whole of GB, IGN France, CNIG Spain, Kompass. Canvec and some Italian maps permanently free under the legacy agreement.

To make sure you are ready to use them:

Use the App / Play Store; find Outdooractive; if there’s an update install it. If the app is running, close it and restart it.In the app, ​use My Page bottom right of the app, scroll down, Sync, so the app picks up any changes.

On any map screen use the map layers button, the stack of squares to the right. Choose OS or whichever with the black and white folded map icons. Zoom in and you’ll see the maps.

 Seems to have done the trick for me anyway and restored my OS maps.

Do you still have offline access?

Hmm, not sure that I do…

OA say sections can be saved for offline use as before.

My OS Maps subscription is up for renewal at £24.  (iphone)

Is there anything better out there yet? I have no real issues with it, other than off line maps dont appear to work very well, and it can take an age for an OS Map to appear.

Thanks

Still happy with memory-map subscription since VR died. Just renewed again actually.

Offline mapping is great, just save whole of Scotland in 1:25k and 1:50k so no issues when signal is dodgy.

Pretty quick with OS updates too.

as above

If anyone is a Strava subscriber you should get Fatmap included (well, I do)

Offline mapping plus all the other features such as “avalanche terrain” and 3d maps.

Obvs you wouldnt subscribe “just’ for the maps, just posting in case someone did and missed it.