Guru Maps - Offline Navigation

Be wary about looking at old reviews. The app has been updated/upgraded radically from years ago. I love this app and use it regularly, especially when traveling. You download maps to your phone, which means you don’t need an active internet connection (which you might be able to rely on). There are a few other apps that work this way but, in my opinion, this does “just what you need” very well (it’s not overly complicated or too lacking in features). It is a bit expensive (I bought it years ago when it was cheap).

This is very much like Waze but It’s almost impossible to add a location from your current location. It’s pretty easy to add a location by its location by almost any point that is gps or address based, but the ability to name that location is impossible to input. I wish a developer could use the product from their desktop by adding 3 locations from their workplace then input them and know which one is “Billy’s house” or Grocery store. It’s great if you want to remember each address of each place you’re going to visit. And scrolling back to find that great place you stopped. Forget it. But it does work well and I gave them 4 stars because the map etc. is really smooth and software in general seems to be somewhat intuitive.

I’ve been using Guru since the days when it was called Galileo. I selected it because it was free and feature filled. It didn’t do everything I wanted back then, so I primarily used MapOut which is one of my all time favorite apps. Over the years, Guru has been adding features - enough so that I decided to pay for it and I have been really happy with the thought and updates that go into this app. I like how it can create waypoints from my clipboard, saving me tons of clicks. I like the export feature - allowing many formats. The map layers for pro are awesome - being able to use satellite view is very helpful. I also really love waypoint sync. My wife and I share an account and we work together to make waypoints for trips and the ones she makes just “show up” on my phone (and vice versa). This app saves me a ton of time in that regard. I like the wide selection of maps - you have to do an extra download step to get access to these, but it is pretty easy once you know about it and worth the extra effort. I also really like how waypoints can be displayed by category and how the search feature works. So, if I want to filter waypoints by drinking fountain, I can quickly see all of those highlighted in an instant. These features all work extremely well!! It’s still not my 100% goto app. MapOut has two features that keep me switching between Guru and MapOut. For one, MapOut has a neat slider where I can measure distance and total ascent along a track (or any arbitrary segment of a track by moving the slider). Also, that app has a useful elevation profile that is easier to utilize than the more buried one on Guru. I really like the updates on Guru; you can tell that the developers care about the app and its progress. It has been around for years and is still being updated. Thank you developers!!