Download your region once. Then see where you are, record your hike, and navigate — deep in the wilderness, on airplane mode, at zero bars.
Tap your region and Switchback pulls the whole thing down — topo tiles, trails, elevation lines, and trail stories — into local storage. Flip on airplane mode at the trailhead and everything just keeps working: your position, your route, your recording.
Real contour lines rendered from elevation data, hillshade for the shape of the land, and a day / night / twilight palette that stays legible from a sunlit ridge to a headlamp descent. This is the map, not a road app with trails bolted on.
Hit record and Switchback tracks your distance, pace, elevation, and time, saving it as you go. It keeps logging with the screen off and the phone in your pack, then hands you the trip when you're done. Export any track as GPX.
Drop a waypoint and Switchback points you to it — a bearing line, live distance, and an honest ETA that reads your real pace. Turn on Field Mode for a heading tape and coordinate strip built to be glanced at in blazing sun with one gloved hand.
Pass a notable peak, a historic site, or a hidden spring and a short, grounded story surfaces — the kind of thing a good ranger would tell you. Every story ships inside your region pack, so it works with no signal too.
Switchback has no account to create and no servers that receive your location. Your position and tracks live only on your device. There are no ads, no analytics, and no tracking — because there's nothing collected to sell.
The outdoors is the last place you should be renting your map by the month. Switchback is built to be bought once and kept — no recurring bill, no paywall between you and the trailhead.
Get early accessSwitchback is heading into TestFlight. Want to help put it through its paces — or just get it early?
Request a beta invite →iOS · iPhone · TestFlight